Hanging In The Balance: How Luxury Will Tackle The Next Decade Of Sustainability
The luxury field is facing serious environmental and consumer challenges—and only the bravest and most innovative companies will survive.
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Say you’ve arrived home after a leisurely weekend down the coast. You plug in your Tesla—every spot in the garage has an outlet compatible with any electric vehicle—and you slip past the apartment’s 6 metre-tall trees and seven-storey green wall that serve as part of the building’s air-filtration system. As you consider a dip in the saltwater swimming pool, you arrive at your apartment and take in the full glory of the sunset, thanks to walls of high-insulating glass, whose clarity, due to low levels of iron in the silica, also eliminates the need for artificial light by day. Your building’s zero-waste pledge means garbage bins are outnumbered by compost containers and recycling receptacles. When you moved in, your green movers shuttled your belongings in reusable bins.
This feel-good building is not some uni student’s blue-sky thesis project. Designed by Renzo Piano and developed by Bizzi & Partners, it opened recently on Broome Street in New York’s SoHo. It’s at the forefront of urban residential design that caters to a luxury lifestyle seeking to tread more lightly on the earth.
Sustainability is driving the future of luxury, not only in residential and commercial design but also in travel, food production and fashion, as younger consumers reject fuel-gobbling private jets and other high-octane goodies. No one is suggesting the industry is where it needs to be, given the science, but, increasingly, consumers who want to make better choices have options: Ships that don’t drop anchor to avoid damaging sea beds, off-grid resorts run on solar energy, cities in China that use pneumatic tubes rather than trucks to move waste, and designer fashions made with recycled and renewable materials are becoming more readily available as luxury consumers seek out and demand such.
“It’s a baseline conversation we’re having with all clients because they know their clients are demanding this,” says John Bricker, creative director of Gensler, one of the world’s largest architectural firms. He notes the growing importance of “soft” factors such as emotional connections and the sense of doing good, as opposed to hard factors such as price. “Millennials make decisions based on soft things. It’s a topic that’s one of their passion plays.”
These trends suggest that a luxury lifestyle in the future could look and feel different at every level, from the back-of-house operations that keep life on track to the substances that we touch and breathe.
Cities will be quieter as gas-powered engines are replaced with electric and as trucks are taken off streets by more efficient technologies. Sarah Currie-Halpern, a cofounder of waste consulting group ThinkZero, sees a future nearly free of garbage trucks, predicting that organic wastes will be liquefied on-site and used
to produce energy for buildings.
Renewable energy will become a routine part of every home. Alessandro Pallaoro, managing director at Bizzi & Partners, foresees wind systems on roofs and batteries placed in walls to store energy produced with photovoltaic panels.
Green lawns will become increasingly as daily decisions commonly factor in sustainability and social impacts. As transparency increases about where materials come from and how much energy they use, impacts will be quantified and measured. Certifications such as those offered by the US-based International Living Future Institute will require many buildings to be regenerative—meaning that their positive effects outweigh the negative.
“If you’re spending a lot of money on a luxury house, you’ll know where the building impacts are,” says David Briefel, a sustainability director at Gensler in New York. Homes and offices, he predicts, will also be stronger and more resilient to withstand the unavoidable effects of global climate change—floods, fires and storms.
Gensler, with a goal to one day reach net-zero water and energy consumption for its projects, has installed sustainability directors around the world. Briefel, a specialist in adaptive reuse and a designer accredited by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), considers traditional construction techniques such as rammed earth and breezy courtyards as he advises clients about architecture. “It’s very hard for me to separate good design from sustainable design, because good design considers all constraints,” he says.
The fashion industry as a whole may be running behind, but it is now looking to Stella McCartney, who has made sustainability a tenet of her eponymous brand, for broader leadership. A longtime vegetarian, she was one of the first designers to ban fur, leather and feathers at their collections. Today she’s pressing ahead with new materials such as “Mylo” (a faux leather made from mushrooms), products that contain plastic scooped from ocean waste and even mannequins made from sugarcane derivatives. “What’s exciting to me is constantly working on changing things that are conventional in this industry,” offers McCartney, also describing her search for vegan silk and KOBA, a plant-based fur-free “fur” that incorporates recycled polyester. “I’ve referred to myself as a farmer and not just a fashion designer. Not literally, but in the fashion industry we’re taking a unit of a crop and transporting it. We just do something different with it than the food industry.”
LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault cited her eco-friendly approach as a reason for his company’s investment in her label last summer, after McCartney split from rival Kering. “We are convinced of the great long-term potential of her house,” Arnault said in July, noting that he expects McCartney’s focus on sustainability and ethical issues to help guide LVMH. Her responsibilities advising Arnault and his executive committee will go beyond implementing more sustainable materials, the company says, to advising broadly on potential initiatives.
McCartney says she is proudest of the effort that led to sustainable viscose, a common textile culpable for the harvesting of about 150 million trees a year. She and her team looked for three years before finding a forest in Sweden that is sustainably managed and offers a fully traceable supply chain.
Such examples of progress are all a long time coming. It’s been 13 years since former vice president Al Gore produced the seminal documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, which made the case that the globe was in danger of overheating. Nearly every president since John F. Kennedy has warned about the need for sustainability.
The one who may have best captured today’s mind-set for purposeful consumption put it this way: “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”
That was President Jimmy Carter speaking presciently in July 1979, having just emerged from a 12-day retreat at Camp David, where he read two groundbreaking books that still resonate today: The Culture of Narcissism, by historian Christopher Lasch, and Small Is Beautiful, by the economist E. F. Schumacher. Those ideas have become normalised for many millennials and Gen Z consumers, as much as local farm-to-table cuisine is no longer a hippie ideal.
The very definition of luxury is shifting to include products once deemed decidedly not luxury, such as faux fur. Even Queen Elizabeth recently pledged not to commission any new outfits with the real kind, which is just as well, because Gucci, Prada, Michael Kors and Chanel are among the many fashion labels that no longer use animal fur in their designs.
Outside the fashion capitals, businesses such as Askov Finlayson are trying to redefine luxury for the 21st century. Founded in 2011 as a menswear outfitter
by brothers Eric and Andrew Dayton, Askov Finlayson was named to several lists of the best men’s stores in America. But the Daytons shuttered the retail operation for a makeover, recently relaunching it as the “first climate-positive outerwear brand” and possibly the most minimalist. There are three product categories: apparel (T-shirts and a sweatshirt), the label’s popular knit caps, which are part of a climate-change campaign dubbed “Keep the North Cold,” and winter parkas, one cut for men and another for women.
The parkas’ materials are nearly 100 percent recycled, from their 3M insulation to the water-resistant polyester outer shells, the care labels and even the zipper teeth. The arctic explorer Will Steger, who led the first dog-sled expedition to the North Pole, helped with technical details, and there is a data-world consideration: an interior pocket with “Present Mode” technology that blocks cellular and Wi-Fi signals if a cell phone is placed in it, “to help Askov customers go offline and be present with friends and family,” says Eric Dayton.
“Every step, we look at how we can reduce the impact, if not eliminate it,” says Dayton, who sought out a factory that promised 97 percent of the fabric supplied would be used for the products, reducing waste. The company invests in climate solutions to cover the “social cost” of its carbon footprint, using the more expensive Obama-administration calculus of about $43 per metric tonne (more than four times the UN estimate for carbon offsets), then multiplies by 110 percent to arrive at “climate positive.”
The luxury conglomerate Kering has pledged to eliminate the negative effects of its entire production by buying carbon offsets, which help make up for operations that aren’t sustainable, including building with concrete and steel. Fortunately, given the disparities and questions about calculating those offsets, more direct alternatives are emerging, such as cross-laminated wood—essentially boards glued together to create panels sturdy enough for high-rise construction—once fire codes adjust to the new technology.
“Wood traps carbon as it grows, which is great, and it’s a renewable resource,” says Chris McVoy, senior partner with Steven Holl Architects, a US firm focused on sustainability. Holl often uses geothermal wells to sustainably heat and cool buildings, such as the Reach, the extension of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., completed in 2019.
Holl is also designing the upcoming Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, with sustainability in mind, artfully turning to old-fangled techniques for ingenious features. There, a façade of 30-inch-wide glass tubes set three feet from the building’s concrete wall will create a cooling cavity and funnel away the city’s notorious heat, bouncing an estimated 65 percent of the sun’s rays away from the interior. On the top floor, an opaque balloon-like surface will filter the sun while showering the uppermost galleries in enough light that artificial lighting won’t be necessary by day (though curators requested spotlights to highlight various exhibit items).
Inset windows, breezeways, natural lighting and cross-ventilation aren’t new.
“A lot of these things are ancient,” says McVoy. “In the ’40s and ’50s, we designed this thing called air-conditioning. We got onto this terrible track, and now we’re trying to get off of it.”
Concern about sustainability is burrowing its way into high-end furnishings, too. Achille Salvagni’s designs avoid synthetic glue, lacquer and welding. Most of his pieces are made in Rome, but he sometimes uses factories near his clients, echoing farm-to-table cuisine. If it means softening his impact on the earth, says Salvagni, “I’m happy to do research on the local materials.”
Far-flung travel is one particularly unsustainable footprint of the luxury lifestyle, with tourism accounting for an estimated 8 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Aviation compounds the problem. Last summer, the uproar over the private-jet travelling of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, was enough to cause the royal couple to fly commercial in September. It’s likely that more travellers, at least high-profile ones, could face that sort of protest and outcry in the future—much as fur wearers were once doused with red paint by animal-rights activists.
“I’m conflicted about travel,” says Gensler’s Briefel, who is hoping to see a celebration of more local travel—trips to nearby retreats rather than to other continents—just like there is for local food. “Maybe that’s wishful thinking?”
Maybe. Even the eco-conscious French cruise company Ponant, founded in 1988 by a group of sailors, has aggressively pursued cruising around the world in sensitive places, from the Arctic to the Solomon Islands, albeit in a more sustainable way.
Ponant’s luxury expedition vessels are classified “clean ships.” Its most innovative model, launching in 2021, will use electric propulsion systems near land and liquefied natural gas for longer sailing, dispose of waste in paper garbage bags and, when needed, employ dynamic positioning systems instead of anchors.
“To be sustainable is not a corporate credo,” says Navin Sawhney, a regional chief executive for Ponant the Americas. “It’s literally a way of life. We have a symbiotic relationship to the ocean.”
Ponant works with the communities where its ships dock so it can tread lightly on land as well.
“When you go and visit any place and enjoy what that environment has to offer,” says Sawhney, “you want to be absolutely sure that the environment transforms you and you don’t transform the environment.”
In Africa, Wilderness Safaris has operated camps for 36 years in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It introduced light-impact camps in 1985 and launched a full-on sustainability effort a decade ago, working to reduce waste and its carbon outputs, says Neil Midlane, the company’s South Africa–based group sustainability manager. Solar cells have replaced most diesel engines for energy in its camps; 18 camps are 100 percent solar. Sewage is treated above ground in plants that use a bacteria-based system to produce clean water and little sludge. Glamour isn’t the selling point, though the safaris rate at the top of luxury service.
“This is stuff that every company in our business should be doing,” says Midlane.
Wilderness Safaris stopped using plastic wrap in favour of Buzz Wraps (made of beeswax), offers guests coffee cups made of corn starch, plant sugars and fibres for takeaway, supplies glass water bottles and has created camps that can be built and dismantled with minimal disruption to the environment, leaving the sites able to revert to a natural state within three months.
Lance Hosey, a LEED fellow and one of Gensler’s sustainability gurus, has studied how sensory experiences promote physical and emotional wellness. He is also the author of The Shape of Green, a 2012 book that explores the relationship between architecture, ecology and beauty.
Perhaps counterintuitively, Hosey suggests that sustainability, instead of provoking feelings of deprivation, is in fact the ultimate luxury, calling it “guilt-free pampering.”
“There’s a misperception that sustainability is about sacrifice,” he tells Robb Report, noting that green living can be desirable simply for the sense of virtue it provides. “We don’t love something because it’s energy-efficient or biodegradable. We love it because it moves our heads and our hearts.”
This story comes from our latest Autumn 2020 issue. To purchase a copy or to sign up to an annual subscription of Robb Report Australia & New Zealand click here. To stay in touch with all the latest news click here.
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First Drive: Bentley’s Flying Spur Speed Is a Muscular Heavyweight That Sets a New Benchmark
The most cumbersome part of the marque’s most powerful sedan to date is perhaps the infotainment system.
“Remember, it’s 25 years in jail for damaging a cactus,” warns Wayne Bruce, communications czar for Bentley Motors Limited, as he tosses us the keys to the marque’s newest and most powerful four-door ever, the fourth-generation Bentley Flying Spur Speed. Sufficiently admonished, we’re set loose from the veranda of the Four Seasons Scottsdale and into the foothills of the Sonoran Desert. We have no plans to damage local flora, but beneath the sophisticated lines and refined amenities of the vehicle lurks a beast begging to be unleashed on this cacti-flanked thoroughfare.
Bentley’s Beyond 100+ strategy, geared toward greater sustainability, has a number of components underway as incoming CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser takes the helm. Primary among these is the brand’s first all-electric model, due in 2026. The Flying Spur Speed—a Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde of a car—is a bridge between the old Bentley and the new, a model variant that must compensate for the loss of its W12 engine.
The new all-wheel-drive Flying Spur Speed comes equipped with a plug-in-hybrid power train comprising a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V-8 and an electric motor. The pairing delivers a total of 574 kilowatts, an acceleration time of zero to 96 kph in 3.3 seconds, a top speed of 284 mph, and 75 kilometres of electric range. It’s also the first Flying Spur to get four-wheel steering.
My driving companion, Kristin, and I depart the hotel in Bentley mode, the automaker’s eponymous default setting, and—first things first—begin scrolling through the manifold touch screen controls to customise the individual climate and postural settings for our quilted, hand-stitched leather seats.
The car purports to “measure and maintain the perfect body temperature via zoned heating and ventilation.” It shouldn’t take long for the Flying Spur to learn about us. I tend toward freezing, whereas Kristin veers the other way, mentioning, “I’m a 53-year-old woman. I’m always hot.”
At least the functionality should eliminate any fighting over climate control. But we are equally intrigued by Bentley’s twist on seating comfort: a postural adjustment feature that the automaker claims “soothingly and seamlessly varies the pressure on the occupants’ muscles throughout their journey” to minimise fatigue. This sounds promising. As our route to Sedona and back is a circuitous mix of surface streets, highways, and twisty canyon roads, the prospect of traveling the 482 miles without a nap seems unlikely.
“Sitting consistently the whole time—that’s what gives you a numb bum,” says Bentley spokesman Mike Sayer, explaining more about the seating system. “It’s about blood flow. If that seat is very slowly changing shape underneath you, that [numbing] never happens.”
A look at the V-8 engine inside Bentley’s hybrid Flying Spur Speed.
The 4.0-litre twin-turbo V-8 pairs with an electric motor for a combined output of 574 kilowatts James Lipman, courtesy of Bentley Motors Limited
Leaving Scottsdale, Kristin and I get to work, so consumed with jabbing at the car’s cumbersome, 31 cm touchscreen that we hardly notice the car seems to be doing the driving for us. “Cruise control isn’t engaged?” I asked. “No,” Kristin replies. “I’m not even touching the pedals.” Yet there are no preternatural powers at play here, as this particular street features a long, imperceptible descent that requires no throttle input, a fact we learn only later.
James Lipman, courtesy of Bentley Motors Limited
That, though, is the point of the Flying Spur Speed. Like its two-door Bentley Continental GT Speed sibling, it benefits from the automaker’s most advanced chassis ever. On exhibition is Bentley’s suite of performance enhancements that includes the aforementioned four-wheel steering as well as active all-wheel drive, torque vectoring, an electronic limited-slip differential, and twin-chamber air springs.
“Then we have our little secret weapon,” says Bruce: a twin-valve damper sitting within the air springs. The independent control over compression and rebound damping means that Bentley can improve the Flying Spur’s Comfort mode without sacrificing performance.
James Lipman, courtesy of Bentley Motors Limited
As we near Sedona, we toggle between chassis settings, observing for differences in ride quality. We alternate between Comfort, which loosens the dampers to absorb bumps on the road, and Sport, which stiffens the suspension and uses active all-wheel drive to send more power to the rear axle. We also drop it into EV mode, which activates at speeds up to 140 kph. And best yet, plugging in is optional. The new Flying Spur comes with a charge mode that allows the engine to fully replenish the battery even while driving.
This new dual-character Bentley leaves us with no reason to bemoan the loss of its gas-guzzling W12 engine. True, the hybrid version is heavier, but it delivers a surprisingly nimble yet planted ride, and requires less time spent topping off the tank.
Kristin and I had no qualms about the performance—even though I did find the postural adjustment at times abrupt and bordering upon naughty—but considered the car’s main kink to be the infotainment system, which shut off the navigation just before important turns, obfuscated the menus we wanted, and continually stopped its job to nose its way into our private conversations. Didn’t we almost have it all?
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The automotive icon has announced plans for a 21-story residential building in Thailand. Set for completion by 2028, the 21-story building will house 22 “Sky Villas” priced from $23 million to $60 million.
For some time now, branded residences by household names like Armani and Fendi have attracted those with a lust for designer luxury. Car makers have entered the real estate market, too, with unique offerings by Bugatti and Bentley as well as Porsche Design, which has launched residential towers in Stuttgart, Germany, and Miami, Florida. The German lifestyle brand, founded by Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, creator of the iconic Porsche 911, now has plans to take their real estate endeavours to Asia.
This month, the company unveiled its third real estate development, a collaboration with Ananda Development, a Thailand-based developer, to introduce the Porsche Design Tower Bangkok. Construction on the 21-story tower begins next year and is set to wrap by the end of 2028. The ultra-luxury condo will be located on Sukhumvit 38, one of the most prestigious addresses in Bangkok.
Photo: @Porsche Design
“The Porsche Design Tower Bangkok is the next big thing for Porsche in Southeast Asia,” says Lutz Meschke, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board at Porsche AG, in a statement. The region is becoming increasingly important for us, which is highlighted by major events taking place here these days. To name just one example: in January we celebrated the world premiere of the new all-electric Macan in Singapore.”
The tower’s striking design, as seen in renderings, is inspired by the kinetic movement of the 911 Targa roof mechanism, according to a press release. Its exposed pedestal structure, called “X-Frame,” takes cues from the design of the auto brand’s Mission R concept car and its exoskeleton structured to create a unique entry experience. A vibrant red light strip crowns the building, mirroring light displays on Porsche’s iconic sports cars.
The tower will house 22 exclusive duplex and quadplex “Sky Villas,” aimed at attracting “ultra-high net-worth individuals,” according to a press release. The abodes will range from 5,651 to 12,217 square feet, with a price range of $23 million to $60 million.
Owners can expect to find luxury furnishings and high-end appliances throughout the residences and the building that evoke the car company’s commitment to elegance, power and flawless craftsmanship.
The complex’s many amenities will include an 82-foot-long swimming pool, fitness center, spa, social lounge, and a luxury garage with “passion spaces,” similar to showrooms, that can be tailored to the individual liking of residents. Upscale restaurants and shopping malls are located nearby for a variety of entertainment options.
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How to Make a Gimlet, the Gin and Lime Cordial Cocktail That’s Perfect for Summer
It will also keep scurvy at bay, which is nice.
“Why on earth this stroke of genius stands unheralded and unsung in this fair and allegedly free land of ours shall, to us, always be a mystery…” –Charles Baker Jr., The Gentleman’s Companion: An Exotic Drinking Book
The above was published in 1939, when the author, an American food writer travelling through Asia, first discovered the Gimlet. This is honestly a fairly common reaction to a well-made Gimlet, and the only major thing that’s changed in the last 80 years is that while we didn’t know why it wasn’t more popular then, we know exactly why the Gimlet is not more popular now. The answer is a saccharine, highlighter-yellow liquid that can be found entombed in plastic on the bottom shelf of every liquor store in this country called Rose’s Sweetened Lime Juice.
Rose’s Sweetened Lime Juice, a.k.a. Rose’s Lime Cordial, wasn’t always this way. It started as medicine and was literally lifesaving technology when a Scot named Lauchlin Rose invented it in the mid 1800s. Before then—basically, from the beginning of human sea-travel until about 150 years ago—the biggest threat to a mariner wasn’t pirates or sharks or sea-madness but scurvy, which claimed some 2 million sailors between the 16th and 18th centuries. We now know scurvy is caused by about three months without any vitamin C, but it took millennia to figure that out. Once we did, there was still the problem of preservation, because some other forms of preservation (things like boiling it or storing it in copper) are, as it turns out, incredibly efficient ways to destroy the vitamin C. It was ultimately Rose who figured out a way to preserve lime juice with sugar in 1867, the same year the Merchant Shipping Act decreed that all British sailors must have an ounce of lime juice in their rations every day. Rose’s new “lime cordial” fortified the entire British Royal Navy against scurvy, all at the mere cost of suffering the nickname “limeys” for the rest of time.
The Gimlet fits into this like so: The sailors drank rum, but the officers drank gin. A shot of lime juice is some fairly unpleasant business, but alcohol seems to help the medicine go down, so one story is that it was Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Gimlette who first took his Rose’s Lime Cordial with a spot of gin. Another story is that the Gimlet was named for the metal tool used for opening the barrels to get the alcohol out. In either case, we meet the Gimlet officially in 1923, in Harry MacElhone’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails as equal parts Plymouth Gin and Rose’s Lime Juice Cordial. Fifteen years later Mr. Baker (above) calls it a “stroke of genius.”
So why aren’t Gimlets more popular now? Because Rose’s has become a zombified version of itself, embalmed with high-fructose corn syrup and sodium metabisulfate, and is now one of 125+ brands owned by the gargantuan Keurig Dr. Pepper group. This is a problem, because while you need a lime cordial to make a proper Gimlet, Rose’s is explicitly the type of mass market, highly processed bullshit that the whole “mixology” thing was resurrected to combat. It helped get us to where we are—Lord knows I made my share of Mojitos with Rose’s in those dark and early days—but fortunately for all of us, we now have a better way, because fresh cordials are quick, easy, and savagely delicious.
If a Gimlet with Rose’s is the speaker on your phone, a Gimlet with a fresh cordial is a concert hall. It’s like tasting in technicolor, what was a chemical note of lime now a chord of acidity, piquant and resonant. A good Gimlet is bright and full, sharp and piercing, with a clarity that sings no matter what gin you choose. To try a good one is to really get what Baker was talking about, or to see why Chandler and Hemingway wrote the Gimlet into their fiction, or to understand the type of joy that comes from knowing you won’t die from scurvy, after all.
Gimlet
- 60 ml. gin
- 40 ml. lime cordial
Add ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds. Strain off the ice either up into a cocktail glass or else onto fresh ice in a rocks glass, and garnish with a lime wheel or peel.
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS
Gin: As mentioned, use whatever gin you like. Some gin cocktails have ingredients which strongly prefer one brand over another—the raspberries in a Clover Club, for example, uniquely complement the rose petals in something like Hendrick’s—but here we’re just dealing with gin and lime, and all gins will go well with lime. My perennial favorite for shaken gin drinks is Beefeater, which indeed works great. You could also take a note from both the original recipe and from Naval history and make it with Plymouth Gin, which works fantastically well in both its standard (41.2 percent) bottling and its Navy Strength (57 percent).
Lime Cordial: There’s lots of ways to make a lime cordial, and as your faithful servants we’ve made / bought every single one we could find and tried them in side-by-side to determine the best. Our surprise and breakaway favorite was a cordial developed by Portland bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler, which has the perfect balance of full lime flavor and sharp zesty edge. It requires getting some citric acid, which sounds intimidating but is natural and abundant and about $10 next day on Amazon (recipe below). If you absolutely insist on not making your own cordial, a good option was to just make the Gimlet using fresh ingredients (2 oz. gin, 1 oz. lime juice, 30 ml. simple syrup) and throw a lime peel into the shaker to shake with the ice. It lacks the cordial’s intensity, but the extra zestiness helps.
What’s great about the cordial is that not only is this spectacular with gin, it’s delicious with literally any clear spirit: tequila, vodka, rum, you name it. The sweet and sour of it is already balanced, so you can just add soda for a quick and easy limeade, or use it as a starting point for your own creativity (i.e. a Raspberry Pisco Gimlet is what happens when you add three raspberries to the shaker tin and use pisco instead of gin). The cordial will last in the fridge for at least a month and in the video above, I show you my favorite way to make, but here’s the complete recipe below.
Lime Cordial Recipe
Recipe from jeffreymorgenthaler.com
- 220 grams. white sugar
- 240 ml of warm or hot water
- 40 ml. fresh lime juice
- Zest of 2 medium or 1 large lime
- 30 grams citric acid
Zest the lime and put the lime zest into a blender. Juice the zested lime(s) into the blender, then add the sugar, water, and citric acid. After blending on medium speed for 30 seconds, strain with a fine strainer. Bottle and refrigerate or mix a cocktail immediately, if you so choose.
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Using a more natural approach, Ananda in the Himalayas heals the gut, among other problem areas, through ayurvedic treatments and medicine with a holistic program overseen by a senior ayurvedic physician specialising in gastro health and metabolic disorders. The spa is ensconced in a former palace in the foothills near Rishikesh, making the location just as relaxing. From around $1,235 per night for seven- or 14-night programs
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Upcycle Your Vacation
For merging serious riding with high-end hospitality, Le Blanq isn’t the only game in town. Here are a few others to consider.
When it comes to merging serious riding with high-end hospitality, LeBlanq isn’t the only game in town. if you are up for unapologetically indulgent weekends of eating, drinking and riding we have collected a few other travel operators to consider for your next cycling holiday abroad.
The Slow Cyclist
The reassuringly named company was founded by British author Oli Broom, who spent 412 days riding—via 23 countries—from London to Brisbane to watch a few games of cricket (and raise money for charity). The company is part of the “slow travel” movement, which aims to minimise your impact on local communities while maximising your engagement with them—and what better way to do so than arriving by bike. The Slow Cyclist will put you on two wheels in locations you might never have considered, from the mountains of Transylvania to the volcanoes, lakes and gorilla-filled wilds of Rwanda.
Cycling for Softies
As its name suggests, Cycling for Softies focuses unabashedly on the luxury hotels and Michelin-starred dining that punctuate its easy trips (e-bike optional)—“a gâteau in every château”, in the words of author and client Kathy Lette. The company operates in five European countries, with itineraries traversing the regions with the best comestibles, whether Provence or Portugal’s Douro Valley. Your bags are transported between hotels each day, and you ride at your own pace, following an app that even details the best cake stops en route.
Sportive Breaks
If you want to go harder than even LeBlanq can offer, Sportive Breaks will fast-track you into the most sought-after events of the year. From L’Étape du Tour, in which “civilians” take on a hard mountain stage of the Tour de France, to the roughly 314-km-long Mallorca 312 and other spectacular closed-road, mass-participation events (known as sportive rides), this specialist eases the logistical pain, if not the physical. Our pick? The slightly gentler annual Strade Bianche, whose 87 and 142 km routes over the white-gravel roads of Tuscany are bucket-list stuff for many.
Butterfield & Robinson
Established nearly 60 years ago, Butterfield & Robinson is the OG of the luxury cycling world. A coterie of loyal and well-heeled clients has followed the Canadian company into new fields, from safaris to superyacht charters, but bike trips remain its beating heart. Don’t bother packing energy gels or even your wheels: the aim here is seamless, stress-free travel, with itineraries curated by a firm with more experienced hands and likely a broader range of destinations— covering Europe, Asia, South America and Africa—than anyone else.
Trek Travel
The travel wing of the behemoth Wisconsin-based bike maker is your go-to for North American trips, with itineraries in 18 US states, Canada, Australia, Chile and Japan, and can organise custom private vacations for as few as one rider. As an official affiliate of the Tour de France and a team sponsor, Trek also offers excursions that follow the greatest race at a gentler pace: for around $17,000, you get six nights in top hotels in Nice and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, with VIP access to the final stage of this year’s event.
