Tyler, the Curator
The multi-hyphenate force of nature is also a multi-hyphenate connoisseur. Here, the two-time Grammy winner invites Robb Report to take an exclusive look at his numerous collections, from cars and watches to jewellery and bikes.
Style is never dependent upon resources, just as taste isn’t determined by a price tag.
The truly stylish, and those with intriguing taste, rarely begin developing their personal aesthetic at the point when their bank balance reflects their success. For Tyler, the Creator, two-time Grammy-winning artist, producer, director, composer and designer, the collecting bug that set in motion the eclectic nature of his passions and career started with, well, Hot Wheels.
“I didn’t play with toys much as a kid,” he says, “but Hot Wheels… was definitely my number-one collection. I had probably seven, and some I kept until my teen years.”
Tyler Okonma, as he was known back then, is a professional chameleon. His past several albums have involved creating personas he inhabits for the promotional cycle of the project and then switches out for whatever’s next. His last two releases both won Best Rap Album Grammys and brought him global attention.
Of all the obsessions you see on these pages—many long-lived, some relatively new—music remains his first love. On the days we spend with him in LA, Tyler, 31, is constantly humming, crooning and rhyming. In the past 15 years, he has veered from alt rap to rock to soul and R&B, but always with hip-hop overtones, knowing wordplay and a raised eyebrow. And in the accompanying videos, which he directs himself (as Wolf Haley), he has offered glimpses of an interior world he’s fiercely protective of.
He’s never invited anyone in—until now. “I’m a pretty private dude, so doing this for Robb Report was, like, a big task for me,” he says. So why do it at all? His answer speaks to how he approaches his work and, to an extent, his life.
“I said, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to change all the colours of my cars anyway. I might as well get the ill photo of the whole collection, and I might as well show all these cool trunks because who knows, man, something could happen in three years where I try to go bald and become vegan and start a family and I don’t want any of this shit anymore. So why not document it while I have the most pride for it, which is the era I’m in right now.’ ”
Cars
It’s a one-man concours. While there’s a supercar in there—the McLaren 675LT under the tree—and you’ll spot the obligatory SUV, nothing about this grouping is predictable, whether for a car collector, a musician or whatever is next for Tyler, a mogul-in-waiting. Asked to give his garage an overarching theme, Tyler offers, “Boxy cars, pastel colours.” And it’s clear that this aesthetic is no whim.
“I’ve always liked cars,” he says. “I remember being 11, and I had a toy version of a Ferrari 550 Maranello, and I was so obsessed. And then I turned 15, and I was like, ‘Man, that Golf GTI Volkswagen looks so cool.’ ”
He got his first set of wheels for his 19th birthday. It was “this gross, square-ish Honda Accord. Ill shape. Then I got my [BMW] M3 E92. Frost white, two-door. I loved that car. And then, I always wanted a [BMW] M3, an old-school E30. And once I got that, I saw what a Lancia was. I was like, ‘What is this? This car is cool.’ And once I got into that and understood what that ’80s rally shit was, it was a wrap.”
The theme continued: “When I saw that Rolls-Royce [the Camargue] that looked like it was in the vein of that Fiat and those Lancias, my brain exploded. You know people hated that car when it came out? Crazy. I think it’s beautiful.”
Tyler had no qualms about changing the colours of his rides, switching out tyres and accessorising. He doesn’t hold with the “keep vintage, vintage” brigade. “That shit is so corny, bro,” he says. “ ‘Oh it was made this year. Don’t touch it.’ Why would you buy something and not make it yours? People be like, ‘Oh, it still has the original engine.’ I don’t give a fuck. That engine is slow as hell.
Update my shit. I want AC. It’s hot in this car.” “And fuck the original paint,” he adds. “Or if you love the original paint, more power to you. But if you want to make it black, and you’re like, ‘But this paint was put on before the internet was made,’ then change it. You bought it. Why not enjoy it? ’Cause you could die tomorrow and be like, ‘Always wanted it black, but everyone on this car forum and message board is going to respect me because I kept the original paint, even though I’m dead.’ ”
Tyler’s collections don’t sit there gathering dust. “I drive most of [the cars] when I can… My Cullinan is my everyday. It’s truly a first-class seat on a plane. But then my BMW—if I had to rob a bank, I would probably use that car. Because I just know it so well, I control it differently. I drift in it, making a little left turn and letting the ass shoot out and stuff, before I go back on the straight.”
While he’s pretty happy with his current lot, there’s always space for one more. Maybe three. “I want a LaFerrari. That’s my dream. Make that shit dark Kelly green. When I get that car, I’m driving five miles per hour everywhere. I want everyone to see me in that vehicle. One day I’ll have an F40. One day I’m going to get the Lamborghini truck, the old one. Jay-Z pulled up on me in one, and I was like, ‘You are a psycho, man.’ ”
“I got into magazines pretty heavy,” Tyler says of his teenage years. “Anything with N.E.R.D. or Eminem or skateboarding. And because those are three different types of things, it opened my eyes to so many other things. And it just grew.”
He has an extensive library of magazines and coffee-table books, ranging from Japanese and British style mags to US hip-hop and street-culture titles, vintage newspapers and large-scale monographs on fashion, art and history as well as random subjects such as street style or architecture. For Tyler, the accumulation of knowledge is a pleasure. “I do like learning and having random facts about stuff… I’ve always liked books and [finding] information. I wish more people did that. I wish more people were on the internet sharing information of shit they like and not spending that time talking about, ‘Oh, I’m disappointed in Ron,’ ” he says, referring to some fictional celebrity. “Ignore it and tell us some information, so I can learn from that.” Not a fan of gossip, then. “It’s terrible.”
Bikes
Tyler, the Creator is a biker. And like his love affair with cars, this one runs deep: he can recount every bicycle he has had since his mother gave him his first to teach him to ride without training wheels. Mountain bikes, BMXs, one that “got stolen from my grandmother’s house. I was bummed”, all the way up to what you see here, just a handful of the two-wheelers in his collection.
“They’re the coolest thing ever to me,” he says. “I love biking. It’s freeing. It’s meditation. It’s a massage. It’s peace… Sometimes we’ll do 50 miles on the BMX.”
The bike with the basket at the back of the shot is very special. By Louis Vuitton, it’s a collaboration with Tamboite, an artisanal Parisian bike maker established in 1912, and was something Tyler had his eye on for a while and was given after scoring the LV Virgil Abloh in memoriam presentation. Because of that, it comes loaded with meaning. “When I rode the bike at the show earlier this year, I was happy,” he recalls. “Because one, just doing it for Virgil. That was a sick moment. Love to that man, for everything he’s done, not just for me but just in general. Two, hearing my music being presented in that way, with the orchestra, is something I’ve always dreamed about, but a lot of people never gave me a chance. So that was a moment. But three, I was on a bike that I wanted. If you see me, I’m just smiling and grinning the whole time.”
Jewellery
Giant daisies, a palm-sized bellhop figurine and a re-creation of his own Igor character face are just a few examples of the gem-encrusted pieces in Tyler’s over-the-top jewelry collection. If his watches feel almost reserved, his neck candy is straight-up in your face: each one a custom creation. Early pieces were made by LA jeweler Ben Baller, but recent designs have been executed by Alex Moss, based in NYC. Both Baller and Moss were tasked with creating the artist’s more outré pieces, referencing characters from each of his albums. Caryn Alpert, another LA jeweller, is frequently tapped for Tyler’s less flamboyant pieces—a necklace she created using four of his draft sketches ended up encrusted with large amethysts, sapphires, rubies and diamonds, among many other stones.
His creativity, however, gets more fully expressed in his thematic pieces revolving around previous albums. “You got the Cherry Bomb piece of the face, and then you got the Flower Boy necklace, where I was like, ‘Man, I want a garden. I want to wear a garden on my neck,’ so I fucking drew [it] up and figured out like, ‘Oh, I’ll do the bumblebee, and I’ll do the flower, and this and that.’ ” One of his pride-and-joy pieces is the Bunny Hop neck- lace featuring a yellow-diamond-encrusted bellhop (that alter ego again) holding two pink-sapphire cases that open at their hinges. It hangs from a chain of gem-encrusted “gum- balls” and received endless press after he wore it at the BET Hip Hop Awards last year while picking up another gong.
But his collection is as much for his own pleasure as for public consumption. Even the undersides of some of his pieces come decorated. One example: the flipside of his flower necklace spells out “Scum Fuck Flower Boy.” It’s certainly not the kind of thing you would find at any Place Vendôme jeweller. But hey, that’s precisely the point.
Luis “Panch” Perez
Trunks
“These trunks, I used to throw them in the street as soon as I bought them,” says Tyler, by way of establishing that he isn’t overly delicate with his possessions, a theme that runs through our conversations. When he talks about them, though, it’s with a breathy kind of awe. “Sometimes, I’ll just look at this trunk wall and some of these wood canvas boxes, which to some is just luggage, but I’m just looking like, ‘Man, the time they put into this,’ ” he says. Like his cars and bikes, the steamers serve their original purpose. “Anytime I travel, I use these,” he says. “When I played at Something in the Water, Pharrell’s festival, I put all my shit in here—my toothbrush, clothes and boxers.”
His interest in trunks was initially piqued by the colourful prints Takashi Murakami created for Louis Vuitton, and he tried to make his own back in 2014. But it wasn’t until a few years later, when he saw Balenciaga’s vivid, oversized and striped picnic-style laundry bags, that an infatuation began. “I wanted every fucking colour, but I couldn’t put my computer and stuff inside of it because it wasn’t protecting it,” he says. “So, the first little briefcase I got was a Louis Vuitton one with a taxi on the side, or some bullshit they painted on it. Ever since that moment, I was like, ‘Oh shit, I could fit clothes in this. This is the perfect size and shape. How did they make this?’ Then the obsession started.” Never satisfied with just collecting, he wanted to know everything about their origin. “I dive into that time, and I just get obsessed with the history of it.”
His collection is broad, ranging from vintage to ultra-rare to modern, vibrant pieces he has designed himself. One Vuitton trunk from 1904 still has its ripped label stuck on from when it boarded the Queen Elizabeth in 1949 and is embellished with hand-stitched cotton LV monograms embroidered onto the leather. Another has a blue, green and pink leopard print—Tyler had it made for his Golf Le Fleur fashion label. “We found this hip dude in the middle-of-nowhere in France who is a trunk maker, and he made the first Le Fleur trunk for us that we sold in 2021,” he says. “He made two for me, and he made this super-special one-of-one Le Fleur piece.”
Whenever he’s on tour, Tyler goes treasure hunting at antiques stores, but his latest acquisition came after he spotted a guy at Abloh’s Louis Vuitton show in Paris, for which he composed the soundtrack, holding a particularly striking Louis Vuitton carrier. “I’m like, ‘What the fuck is that?’ ” he says. “I needed it. I had to have it.” But this piece, which looks like the trunk version of his Cartier Crash with its asymmetrical wave shape and blurred monogram LV logos, is proving to be a bit more precious. “I will say, that’s the one trunk I didn’t throw in the middle of the street when I got it.”
Music
To explain fully what music means to him, Tyler talks about death. He wants to explore loss—not of life but of opportunity. “I’m not scared of death in itself. What I’m scared of is the music that I won’t get to hear after I’m gone,” he says. “That’s the biggest bummer. Every day I’m on YouTube, scouring, looking, listening, clicking, learning. Like, dude, isn’t it crazy? One of your favourite songs of all-time, you haven’t heard yet?” The moment of discovering something new is magical. “Shout out Shazam. Shazam is truly like inhalers, insulin, the internet—like, greatest inventions of all time.” What’s the last track he identified with the app, then? The iPhone comes out. “ ‘Breeze’ by STUTS. I haven’t listened to it since, ’cause it was in a random restaurant, but it probably had some good chords that I liked.”
The varied selection he picked for the shoot includes Brit acid-jazz group Jamiroquai, trip-hop pioneers Portishead, ’70s French jazz experimentalists Cortex and some classic Stevie Wonder, among others.
Tyler is an equal-opportunity listener. “I love music so much, man,” he says. “I mean, I cry to that shit, right? All the time. “As much as I love music, I’m not a super snob—yet!—about hi-fi and McIntosh and stuff. But I do have some really nice speakers set up in my room, not too much low end, not too crazy. I listen to most of my music in the car, but sometimes, if an album’s coming out, I’ll invite friends over and we’ll listen to it in the front room, front to back. We don’t speak, we’re not on our phones. And that’s fun.”
Watches
Who says fast food isn’t good for you? The unlikely piece that informed Tyler’s current collection of predominantly vintage Cartier was a SpongeBob SquarePants watch he found in a Burger King kid’s meal when he was around 13. “I based a lot of my watch taste just off of how light it feels and how it could be colourful, too,” he says. “It doesn’t always have to be gold and iced-out.” In fact, that’s just not his style. “I’ve seen some Rolexes, vintage ones, I really like, but aside from that, I’m just okay with the Cartiers. They bring me joy.”
As was obvious from his willingness to kneel perilously close to the swimming pool’s edge to get the perfect light for this shot, Tyler is decidedly not precious about his precious pieces. “I perform in my watches,” he says. “I’ll jump in the water. I’ll bike with them. I sweat in them.” Like Andy Warhol, he rarely winds most of them, not least that highly covetable Cartier Crash—a watch that became red-hot after being seen on both Kanye West and then Tyler a few years ago—which has never told the right time more than twice a day. “The battery doesn’t work,” he says. “The fucking strap is sweated through. It’s dirty; it has dents in it. I’m not spending all this money on these things that I claim I like and not enjoying them. I’m living in all of it.”
Each piece is loved for different reasons. Speaking about his striking square-faced, red-strapped Obus—a Cartier from the 1980s he successfully bid on at a live auction in Monaco in 2021—he likens its oversized blue Roman numerals to a Picasso, saying it looks sketch-like, whereas the strap reminds him of places he has stayed in Rome and Paris. “It’s [like] these super-over-the-top gaudy hotels where it’s lamps everywhere and red velvet, and it’s like, ‘Dude, I just need a bed,’ ” he says.
As for his Crash, he loves its references, intended or coincidental, to surrealism, with which he is well versed, reeling off modern adherents Marion Peck and Mark Ryden: “I love these things that are regular, but kind of skewed.”
“I based a lot of my watch taste just off of how light it feels and how it could be colourful, too. It doesn’t always have to be gold and iced-out.”
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Omega Just Unveiled 9 Watches in Its New Constellation Observatory Collection
The line-up shows up a bevy of metals and colours, too, as well as two new calibres.
Omega’s latest watch is in a universe of its own.
The Swiss watchmaker just unveiled its new Constellation Observatory Collection today, the next step in its Constellation lineage and the first two-hand hour and minute timepieces to ever earn Master Chronometer certification. And if you were paying attention to any of the dazzling watches spotted at the Oscars this year, you would’ve caught a glimpse of the new line already: Sinners star Delroy Lindo rocked one of the models on the Academy Awards red carpet, giving us a pre-release preview of the collection.
Developed at Omega’s new Laboratoire de Précision (its chronometer testing lab open to all brands), the collection houses a set of nine 39.4 mm watches. The watches underwent 25 days of scrutiny there, analysed via a new acoustic testing method that recorded every sound emitted from the timepiece to track irregularities, temperature sensitivities, and more in the name of all things precision. (Details such as water resistance and power reserve are also thoroughly examined.) This meticulous process is all in the name of snagging that Master Chronometer label, meaning that the timepiece is highly accurate and surpasses the threshold for ultra-high performance. The Constellation Observatory Collection has now changed the game, though, thanks to its lack of a seconds hand.
“Until now, precision certification has required a seconds hand,” Raynald Aeschlimann, president and CEO of OMEGA, said in a press statement. “The development of a new acoustic testing methodology has made that requirement obsolete. It is this breakthrough that has enabled us to present the Constellation Observatory, the first two-hand watch to achieve Master Chronometer certification.”
In addition to notching its place in history, the collection also debuted a new pair of movements: the Calibre 8915 and the Calibre 8914, each perched on a skeletonised rotor base. The former’s Grand Luxe iteration will appear on the 950 Platinum-Gold model in the collection, which offers up that base in 18-karat Sedna Gold alongside a Constellation medallion in 18-karat white gold with an Observatory dome done in white opal enamel surrounded by stars. The second Calibre 8915, the Luxe, will find its home on the other precious-metal models in the line, either made with the brand’s 18-karat Sedna, Moonshine, or Canopus gold seen across the case, the hand-guilloché dial, and, of course, the movement itself. (Lindo chose to rock the Moonshine Gold on Moonshine Gold iteration, priced at approximately $86,000, for Sinners‘s big night at the Oscars.) As for the Calibre 8914, it can be found in the collection’s four steel models.
Each model is a callback to myriad design features on past Omega models. That two-hand dial, for one, comes from the 1948 Centenary (the brand’s first chronometer-certified automatic wristwatch), while the pie-pan dial (seen in various blue, green, and golden hues throughout the line) and that Constellation medallion caseback both appear on watches from 1952. The star adorning the space above 6 o’clock also harks back to 1950s timepieces from Omega. And to finish off the look, you can opt for alligator straps in a variety of colours, or perhaps a gold iteration to match the precious-metal models; the brick-like pattern on the 18-karat Moonshine bracelet was also inspired by Omega watches from the ’50s.
We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for any other Constellation Observatory timepieces (or any other unreleased models from the brand) at the rest of the star-studded events headed our way this year—perhaps the Met Gala?
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In Search of White Gold
Colorado’s barely known San Juan Mountains do a fine line in bespoke skiing experiences, luring alpine-sports cognoscenti and billionaire thrill-seekers alike.
“Though no one currently on staff is at liberty to say, billionaire actor Tom Cruise is a very average heli-snowboarder. But although no one currently on staff is at liberty to say, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—the world’s second richest human—makes up for Cruise’s inability with his off-piste prowess. The pair have been clients of Telluride Helitrax, a heli-skiing outfit operating in the backcountry behind Telluride Mountain Resort, in remote south-west Colorado, since 1982. My source, a former guide who prefers to remain anonymous, admits he’s entertained a host of household-name One Percenters over the years.”
“Power billionaires aren’t going to the popular resorts any more,” he reveals over a happy-hour drink at a Telluride bar. “Luxury skiing these days, it’s all about exclusivity. No one with any clout shares snow, and at every resort, no matter how fancy, you have to share the slopes. But nowhere is more exclusive than the backcountry. That’s your billionaire’s playground. And no backcountry is more exclusive than San Juan backcountry.”
Which is precisely why I am here. Australia’s considerable brigade of free-spending, snow-crazed executives may jet off to Vail and Aspen each northern winter for thrills, but it turns out some of the world’s most choicest ski experiences have been right under their noses—only a short helicopter ride, car journey or private jet flight from said resorts.
Packed into the ultra-rugged southern end of the Rocky Mountains, the San Juans are a little chunk of the Swiss Alps in the US—young, ridiculously spectacular formations known for their steep slopes, deep powder snow and Disney-esque triangular peaks, all bathed in 300-plus days of sunshine a year. And the region is augmented by unique, and select, backcountry options that rival anything currently in the upscale ski orbit.
Case in point: North America’s highest skiing setting, Silverton Mountain. Located in the heart of the San Juans, outside the tiny town of Silverton, the 4,111 m peak boasts 736 hectares of chair-accessible terrain set among what is reputedly the deepest, steepest snow in the nation. It also offers a further 10,000 hectares of private terrain, serviced by heli-ski operation Heli Adventures. This is the Shangri-La of skiing: every slope connoisseur has heard of it, though most wonder if it actually exists.
We arrive via the treacherous Million Dollar Highway, where a disturbing lack of guard rails sometimes causes travellers to plummet into the valley floor (the death toll, grimly, averages eight people per year). Silverton Mountain was bought in 2023 by Heli Adventures’ young co-founders Andy Culp and Brock Strasbourger. While private punters can book the hill in its entirety, starting from around $14,000 per day, plus extra for single heli-skiing runs, the destination is also open to the public from Thursdays to Saturdays through winter.
“Silverton is a bastion for the pure ski experience,” Culp says. “All that corporate consolidation that happened when ski resorts all over the world developed condos and real estate and got super-busy… well, it never happened here. You’re able to access Alaska-like terrain from an old rickety chairlift, but you’re an hour’s drive from a pretty major airport [Montrose]. And you can access snow that’s even better than most heli-skiing straight off your lift.”
There’s no radio-frequency lift passes when I arrive. In fact, I don’t get a lift pass at all. A discarded school bus doubles as the “second chairlift”; it picks me up and returns me to a yurt which serves as a restaurant and bar. “There’s a time and a place to hang out at The Little Nell [Aspen’s legendary après-ski bar] and the world doesn’t need more of that,” Culp says. “This is the new luxury. We also run a heli-ski business out of Aspen [Aspen Heli-Skiing] but this is where we come. You can’t put a price tag on what we have here.”
I drive away from the mountain, back along the perilous Million Dollar Highway, park my car and disappear into the San Juan National Forest with guide Kaylee Walden. This white-coated outback between Silverton and Ouray, dubbed “the Switzerland of America”, offers swathes of primo backcountry skiing terrain. The ski touring here is often likened to Europe’s iconic Haute Route—an emblematic trail between Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.
The operator Mountain Trip offers a Colorado version of that feted circuit, on a multi-day traverse between secluded huts. All in all, there’s nearly 8,000 km² of national forest and 2,500 hectares of wilderness to explore, frequented only by the occasional intrepid enthusiast.
A wood-burning sauna is being prepared as I arrive at Thelma Hut, 4,500 m above sea level. Traditionally, US Forest Service huts were humble affairs, with rudimentary bunks, self-service kitchens, and food supplies brought in by skiers. This evening, however, a chef is preparing local bison across from an open fireplace as the sun sets through a floor-to-ceiling window against a horizon of white mountains. As he works, I walk out into the snow to study the twilight sky; beaming planets shine down on me, necklaces of tiny stars sparkle.
Back down to earth, upon my return to “civilisation”, we take a two-hour car ride to Telluride, probing through the San Juans. The small town is picture-postcard pretty, wedged at the end of a box canyon surrounded by Colorado’s tallest waterfalls, and hosts the highest concentration of 4,000-m-plus peaks in the state. Most of its buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places, including a bank that was robbed in 1889 by the outlaw Butch Cassidy.
While the locale offers everything from luxurious on-mountain dining options to 7-km-long runs, it’s the heli-ski enterprise that’s lured me. Telluride Helitrax holds sole rights to over 500 km² of completely deserted ski terrain, a few minutes’ flying time from town. The company runs a range of Eurocopters which guests can charter into Colorado’s best alpine basins, cirques and couloirs. “The range mightn’t be as expansive as Alaska,” says Telluride Helitrax program director Joseph Shults. “But the views, the terrain, the snow depth and quality is as good.”
I’m staying in a privately owned three-bedroom penthouse apartment, where a helicopter takes off each morning for convenience (when I’m done carving clouds, I move a kilometre up the mountain to the seven-bedroom, three-storey mountain retreat Hood Park Haven, valued at around $42 million). Telluride Helitrax uses an abundance of drop-off locations, all above the tree line, meaning everyone from intermediates to experts can be catered for.
During my three-day odyssey, I don’t cross a single other ski track, but it’s the peace that is most startling. In this pocket of montane paradise, there is, literally, not a single sound—a stark contrast to the whirling fury of the chopper that transports me. My experienced guide Bill Allen won’t reveal who’s come before Robb Report. “You’d know their names,” he says, grinning.
And so the San Juans remain a secret to all but a fortunate few. Of all the luxuries the ultra-wealthy enjoy in the skiing ecosphere, the promise of untouched snow is by far the most enviable. Here in Colorado is where the white gold truly lies.
Photography: Kane Scheidegger (heli-skiing); Patrick Coulie (hut); Courtesy of Colorado Tourism Office (Hood Park Haven).
This article appears in the Autumn issue 2026 of Robb Report Australia New-Zealand. Click here to subscribe.
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Best Combustion Supercar: Ferrari 12Cilindri Spider
A modern classic in the making, combining naturally aspirated power with elegant restraint to deliver performance that feels as refined as it is visceral.
In a year when carmakers of all persuasions sheepishly extended hyperbolic electric targets, it’s fitting that the monastic puritans of Maranello—who, lest we forget, won’t finally yield to the sin of battery power until October with the Elettrica—opted to make combustion their major power play.
As an uncertain future of AI omnipresence barrels towards us, the 12Cilindri—an analogue, open-topped tribute to Ferrari’s late-’60s/early-’70s grand tourer, the Daytona—represents a defiant fade into the past, a pause for breath, a fleeting return to The Good Times when nascent technology provoked excitement rather than existential dread.
Guiding this automotive nostalgia trip is, as the nomenclature suggests, a naturally aspirated 6.5-litre V12 engine, generating an unceasing wave of power as it sears towards the 9,500 rpm redline with relative nonchalance. That’s because the 12Cilindri is not a mouth-foaming attack-dog. It scales performance heights with the refinement of the finest Italian works of art; its “Bumpy Road” mode facilitates comfy al fresco GT cruising, and even the imperious powerplant is mannerly at most speeds.
For all the yesteryear romance, progressive technologies and engineering, such as a world-class 8-speed transmission, advanced electronic aids and independent four-wheel steering, are baked into the deal. The 12Cilindri’s clean, stark design somehow toggles between retro and modern; and while vaguely polarising, one can’t ignore its magnetic road presence.
In terms of aesthetics, Ferrari describes the 12Cilindri as being “ready for space”; in many ways, a fantasy vehicle that transports users to another dimension is probably what the world needs right now.
The Numbers
Engine: 6.5-litre V12
Power: 610kW
Torque: 678 Nm
Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch auto
0-100 km/h: 2.95 seconds
Top speed: 340 km/h
Price: From $886,800
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High and Low
At Le Bernardin, Aldo Sohm oversees one of the most formidable cellars in fine dining. But on the beach, he’ll happily drink a cheap rosé. The world-class sommelier explains why taste—and humility—matter more than price.
Aldo Sohm is one of the most accomplished sommeliers in the world. The 54-year-old Austrian heads up an oenophile’s empire on New York City’s West 51st Street, where he both serves as wine director at Michelin three-star Le Bernardin and leads his namesake wine bar, just across the road from the fine-dining institution. (He spends his time literally running back and forth between the two.) So it may come as a surprise that this man, who sips prized varietals all day, admits to the joys of a glass of Whispering Angel, a ubiquitous rosé that retails at stateside Target stores for US$22.99 (around $30) a bottle.
The context here is important; the aptly named Sohm is quick to clarify that he’s not about to start serving Whispering Angel as one of the pairings with chef Eric Ripert’s US$530 (around $750) eight-course tasting menu. But during a trip to the Caribbean for the Cayman Cookout food festival, Sohm’s wife requested a glass of rosé on the beach. When he went to fetch it, she specified that she wanted a cheap drop, not the fancy stuff that he likely would have grabbed. “I felt kind of gobsmacked, right?”
Sohm says as we’re sitting in the tasting room at Aldo Sohm Wine Bar. “Now, rather than just criticising, I have to admit: I got out of the water, and I tried Whispering Angel, too. It was delicious.”
Unlikely as it may be, this humility is perhaps the key to Sohm’s success. His lack of self-seriousness makes him an anomaly in the oftentimes highfalutin world of fine wine. Rather than shaming you for your preferences, Sohm will indulge your desires. Maybe, as in the case of his wife, you’re going to be right. More likely than not, you’re going to be wrong. He won’t simply tell you that, though; he’ll use his encyclopedic knowledge of wine to subtly steer you in the right direction, allowing you to come to that conclusion on your own. “You just wake up from your dream—and mistake—and realise that, ‘Oh yeah, he’s right,’” says Ripert, who has worked with Sohm for almost two decades.
Sohm intended to move to New York for only 18 months. Growing up in Innsbruck, in the Austrian Alps, he wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Like many childhood fantasies, that didn’t come to fruition, and he settled on something more practical, becoming a teacher at a hospitality school. Having overcorrected—“That was way too boring for me,” he admits—he switched to the more public-facing side of the industry, getting a job as a restaurant server. It was then, when he was about 21, that Sohm fell in love with wine. (Prior to that, he was a self-proclaimed Bacardi and coke guy.)
After studying wine on his own time, he began his formal sommelier education in 1998. He rose quickly through the ranks and was named the best sommelier in Austria in 2002, a title he defended the following two years and reclaimed in 2006. Amid that stretch, he sojourned to New York in 2004 with the goal of improving his English to compete in international competitions. It paid off: four years later, he won the top prize from the World Sommelier Association. But more than the accolades, Sohm had discovered a career. By then, he had joined Le Bernardin after stints at Wallsé, Café Sabarsky and Blaue Gans—all Austrian restaurants in Manhattan.
“Back then we had a very strong French sommelier community, and they controlled everything,” he says. “And it was an uproar because how come an Austrian sommelier came to one of the most French restaurants?” He proved his bona fides, and in 2013 Ripert and Maguy Le Coze, the co-owners of Le Bernardin, approached him with the idea of partnering with them in a wine bar. It was Ripert who suggested putting the connoisseur’s name on it.
Aldo Sohm Wine Bar debuted the following year, with a team that Sohm handpicked. Sarah Thomas was part of that opening crew, after meeting Sohm during a fateful dinner at Le Bernardin with her cousins. When her relatives divulged to him that she was a sommelier in Pittsburgh, he proceeded to serve a blind tasting to Thomas. “He didn’t say what I got right or wrong. He didn’t care about that,” she tells me. “He just wanted to hear me talk about wine, I guess. So I did.”
When he offered her a job at the end of the meal, she laughed. Sohm didn’t. Thomas promptly packed up and moved to New York. After she spent about nine months at the wine bar, Sohm promoted her to Le Bernardin, where she worked for another five years. When she decided to start her own business—Kalamata’s Kitchen, which aims to teach kids about other cultures through food—Sohm was one of her earliest investors. He may have found full-time teaching to be too banal, but it’s still a huge part of what he does now, identifying the next generation of stars and giving them the guidance to grow into their own—whether that takes them into the upper echelons of fine dining or beyond the white tablecloths altogether.
Overseeing two teams, at two very different spaces, feeds Sohm’s prodigious ambition. He’s on a mission to completely reshape the world of wine, from what’s in your glass to the glass itself to what you enjoy it with—say, Champagne with eggs. Along with his day jobs, he has partnered with the Austrian brand Zalto to create his own wineglasses. “As a sommelier, you criticise only, but you make nothing,” Sohm says. So, he also now wears the winemaker hat, producing a Grüner Veltliner under the Sohm & Kracher label, a relatively accessible quaff that’s a collaboration with his fellow countryman Gerhard Kracher. And in 2019 he added author to his résumé, releasing Wine Simple, a “totally approachable guide”, as the book’s subtitle puts it. He followed that up with Wine Simple: Perfect Pairings, to help you pick the right bottle for the right meal and the right moment.
“In wine pairings, you have three possible combinations,” Sohm says. “There’s the perfect pairing. Then sometimes you have flavours just going along… it’s like humans—they talk, they interact, but they never connect. And then there’s conflict.” It’s that first one he’s after every time.
“Sohm fell in love with wine when he was about 21. Prior to that, he was a self-proclaimed Bacardi and coke guy.”
Outside of the restaurant, the wine bar and the cellar, Sohm is an avid cyclist who owns six bikes, a number he admits is excessive—especially in New York City. Riding is what he credits with keeping him healthy, when so much of his time is spent eating and drinking—and drinking some more.
Still, despite the 18-year career at one of the world’s best restaurants, despite the top honours from his peers, despite the wine and the wineglasses and the wine books, Sohm doesn’t consider himself successful. Every day, he’s trying to figure out how he can self-correct. “I like what I do, so I go back home that night, think of things which I can improve,” he says. “I get annoyed when I make a mistake, but I improve the next day.”
His quest for perfection may never be over, but Sohm does concede that he’s happy—its own type of success. Sometimes he finds that happiness while sipping a glass of 1980 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche, a bottle now so rare and coveted that he calls it “unattainable”. And sometimes, if to his chagrin, he finds it while drinking a mass-produced rosé on the beach.
Photography by Tori Latham
This article appears in the Autumn issue 2026 of Robb Report Australia New-Zealand. Click here to subscribe.
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This article appears in the Autumn issue 2026 of Robb Report Australia New-Zealand. Click here to subscribe.
