An Icon At 70: Grange Hits A Landmark Age
Penfolds’ chief winemaker Peter Gago talks Australia’s most influential drop.
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In essence it’s just a wine. Grape juice given gravitas through fermentation. But really it’s so much more. It’s an ambassador, a storyteller, a seducer.
It’s a totem for the highest achievements, the anointer of a nation’s most special occasions. It can even topple the leaders of governments.
It’s 70 years this year since Penfolds produced the first vintage of a wine they chose to call Grange Hermitage.
The indifference—and in some cases, outright hostility—greeting that first release would eventually give way to widespread acclaim, first at home in Australia and eventually throughout the entire wine drinking world.
The story of how Grange grew from maligned wine to international icon begins with a man in possession of a packed suitcase and an open mind—a man by the name of Max Schubert.
In 1949, Schubert’s superiors at Penfolds sent him on a tour of Europe with the primary purpose of investigating the latest advances in the production of fortified wines in Portugal and Spain.
He worked a trip to France into the itinerary and it was here, among the chateaux and classified vineyards of Bordeaux which had long been the epicentre of vinous commerce, that a smouldering idea caught alight: if the great wines of Europe were famed for their ability to age, then why couldn’t an Australian be celebrated in the same way?
Schubert returned to Australia full of ideas on how to craft this Antipodean classic, ideas that quickly needed re-shaping to suit his circumstances.
While the wines of Bordeaux were built on the firm structural frames offered by cabernet sauvignon, the variety was relatively rare in Australia, and Max felt it incapable of producing the consistent high quality his project required. And so he turned to the more reliable shiraz.
Fermentation and maturation in small oak casks was a fundamental part of Schubert’s vision, but the French oak used in Bordeaux was a much scarcer commodity back home, so the more readily available American oak was used instead. These scarcities shaped the Grange style.
From the outset, Schubert had a clear idea of the winemaking required to make a wine with the kind of architecture that delivered longevity in the cellar. Fermentation would begin in large,
open concrete fermenters, lined with wax. Wooden boards would lie across them to keep the skins in constant contact with the juice and the wine would be regularly drained, cooled through a heat-exchange system and pumped back over the skins to maximise the extraction of colour, flavour and all-important tannins. The wine would then be racked to barrel to finish primary and malolactic fermentation and begin a long period of maturation.
Schubert first put his ideas to work with the 1951 vintage, having selected two vineyards he felt would deliver shiraz fruit of requisite intensity and structure.
One of these sites was the Honeypot vineyard south of Adelaide; the other was the estate block at Penfolds’ Magill headquarters, where rows of vines surrounded the small cottage Christopher Rawson Penfold and his wife Mary built upon arrival in the colony in 1884.
The wine would take its name from that cottage, The Grange, and Schubert decided that adding the name of the most prized site for shiraz in France—the steep vineyards rising up from the Rhône river on the hill of Hermitage—would appeal to the “toffs in Sydney”.
Five years after that experimental vintage, those Sydney Toffs, the Board and Management of Penfolds who ran the company like a military unit with themselves as the officer class, became increasingly concerned about the large cellar inventory of a wine that was still to hit the market.
Schubert was summoned to a tasting at head office in Sydney to present these wines, of which much had been heard but nothing yet seen. It was disastrous. The wine was panned by critics and Schubert went home full of doubt.
With the support of Jeffrey Penfold Hyland, a rare ally in the management hierarchy, Schubert ploughed on, pouring the wine for as many people as he could in Adelaide. The reaction was just as negative as it had been in the Harbour City.
Still, he never forgot the assessment of one prominent wine connoisseur: “Schubert, I congratulate you. A very good dry port, which no one in their right mind will buy, let alone drink.”
Just before the commencement of the 1957 vintage, the order came through from head office—Schubert was to cease production of Grange Hermitage immediately. The story of his quiet defiance to the directive is well known. With co-conspirator Jeffrey Penfold Hyland watching his back, Schubert carried on making the wine—albeit with more limited fruit resources and no new oak—for the next couple of vintages, not knowing if the wine, or he, had a future.
But then, with those first Granges starting to approach an age where the rawness of youth morphed into maturity, the wine began to change minds.
The 1955, perhaps the strongest of those early vintages, began to pick up a trickle of wine show awards. That trickle then became a flood and the wine earned a reputation as one of the greatest ever made in this country (in 2020, a Melbourne investor paid $103,555 for an early 1951 vintage). The legend of Grange was born.
Only three other men have followed Schubert as custodians of the Grange legacy. Don Ditter, John Duval and, since 2002, Peter Gago. A calculation of the distance covered by Gago in the cause of proselytising Grange—the Hermitage was dropped from the label in deference to European Union demands with the 1990 vintage—would be measured in multiple trips to the moon.
He has been the closest observer of the wine’s rise from something considered special “back in Australia”, to an acclaimed member of global winemaking’s uber-elite.
Gago, now 64 years old, has poured eight vintages of Grange for 1,200 admirers in Las Vegas and shared rare vintages at the dining tables of the world’s biggest, and often most secretive, collectors.
He drops household names at a rapid pace, not for ostentatious reasons—he’s known industry-wide for his humble character—but simply because he can’t carry them all. “But you probably can’t print that one,” he tells Robb Report with frustrating regularity. “A lot of these people don’t like too much public detail about what’s in their cellars.”
But among the members of royal families, heads of global corporations, movie stars and musicians that he regularly rubs shoulders with, some interesting—and surprising—names keep popping up.
Maynard Keenan, lead singer of heavy rock outfit Tool, is famously infatuated with Grange. In 2003, he dropped $70,000—that equates to a lot of Spotify streams these days—for an imperial bottle (six litres) of the 1998 vintage and worked several vintages alongside Gago when his touring schedule would allow.
Simply Red frontman and ’80s icon Mick Hucknall is a renowned collector, while Joe Cocker once pinned Gago against a backstage wall when the winemaker presented the mad-dog Englishman a glass. Not for the impertinence, but because Gago hadn’t offered earlier.
Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters and Nirvana fame has also enthusiastically transitioned from grunge to grange and, during some of his last trips before Covid-19 put the brakes on everything, Gago attended a wine-tasting seminar at an event in Nashville at the invitation of Kings of Leon (who he counts as personal friends), and presented a Grange masterclass at India’s first wine festival. Gago says it’s the way Grange continues to evolve without losing sight of its origins that explains its success.
“Grange is a tall poppy from a place that likes to cut them down, but it remains revered at home and respected around the world,” he says. “It’s a wine with a great history but it doesn’t live in the past—it evolves, it always remains contemporary, but it always remains true to style. I guess
it never loosens that anchor.”
This piece comes from the new Winter Issue – on sale now. Get your copy or subscribe here, or stay up to speed on all things with Robb Report’s weekly luxury insights.
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This Collection of Lavish Private Estates Is Ready for Your Next European Vacation
From a contemporary château on the French Riviera to a palazzo on the shores of Lake Como.
Forget a resort. On your next European jaunt, you’ll have a slew of stylish estates where you can rest your head.
Luxury travel company Red Savannah just unveiled its Ultimate Estates collection, an assembly of private vacation rentals scattered across Italy, France, Greece, and Spain, to name a few. The 21 properties essentially function as a five-star hotel, with the added bonus of not having to share your space.
Want to stay in an English manor in the Cotswolds? How about a beach club-inspired villa in Ibiza? You can expect to find a minimum of six bedrooms no matter the booking, plus epic amenities like spas, private boats, gyms, tennis courts, wine cellars, and home movie theaters. In addition, each reservation comes with a full team of staff including chefs and a 24/7 concierge contact.
Red Savannah
“These highly experienced travel specialists act as personal travel assistants to organize bespoke itineraries, secure one-of-a-kind experiences, and ensure a flawless stay,” Red Savannah said in a statement. “Past arrangements have included delivering a Steinway grand piano by helicopter to Villa La Cassinella and arranging for a soprano from Milan’s La Scala to serenade guests during dinner on a wisteria-draped terrace overlooking Lake Como.”
For bigger parties and a glitzy beach-club vibe, look no further than the 10-bed Villa Xi on Ibiza. At the property—which is just down the road from the iconic Blue Marlin on Cala Jondal—you and your family can tuck your toes in a sandy bar area nestled underneath pine trees and, by night, hang by the palm-shaded Jacuzzi. The villa’s generous 10 acres offer up plenty of opportunities to stay active, from playing volleyball to swimming in the over-80-foot pool. The villa itself was recently completed in 2017 and is decked out with modern interiors that merge Scandinavian and Indonesian designs: Think en-suite bedrooms with Balinese-style showers and tropical shrubs.
Nestled in the heart of the French Riviera on the Cap d’Antibes, Red Savannah’s Domaine de la Garoupe is perfect for smaller groups perhaps seeking a respite from the famous Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. The château has nine total bedrooms, split between a main house (known as La Palombière) and two separate dwellings dubbed La Maison du Cap and La Petite Palombière. Altogether, the abode can sleep up to 18 guests and packs a ton of perks such as a private spa, a salon for hair and nail treatments, a gym, a wine cellar, and a 15-seat cinema. La Palombière acts as the property’s hub with a marble-clad kitchen, a drawing room overlooking the garden, and an outdoor swimming pool.
Red Savannah
If you’re looking for something with say, a tropical flair, the Ultimate Estates collection includes the Caribbean, too. There’s a massive 12-suite spread in Barbados planted right on the beach on the island’s northwest coast. The Great House, as it’s known, can sleep up to 30 people between its main digs, the Hillaby House, and two cottages. However, you’ll most likely spend a lot of time outdoors enjoying the alfresco perks. Chief among them is a beach bar with a pizza oven, a 33-foot motorboat, kayaks, and water toys.
As for any non-estate escapes, Red Savannah’s got you covered there, too. One of its newest itineraries will let you explore Marrakech just like Yves Saint Laurent, or you can opt for a litany of literary-themed activities in the brand’s In the Footsteps of the Great Detectives series.
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10/09/2024
The 8 Best Watches of the U.S. Open, From Jannik Sinner’s Rolex to Serena Williams’s Audemars Piguet
From Federer’s Rolex Le Mans Daytona in Yellow Gold to Pegula’s De Bethune DB28XS Purple Rain, players past and present brought their A-game to the final Grand Slam of 2024.
Watches and tennis are a match made in heaven. It likely comes as no surprise that players past and present would have some major wrist game at the Grand Slams. Each year, the U.S. Open closes out the season with a bang, and everyone seems to pull out all the stops for the occasion. Fans have set a new record booking the infamous suites (which can cost up to $149,000), and luxury brands like Tiffany & Co. have firmly planted their presence on the grounds with pop-up activations. As a major sponsor, Rolex, of course, is omnipresent. Come August, Flushing Meadows is the place to see and be seen, and with the close ties between timepieces and tennis, the watch spotting never fails to disappoint on and off the court. Here are eight of the coolest watches we’ve seen at the 2024 U.S. Open.
Roger Federer in a Rolex Le Mans Daytona in Yellow Gold
Last year, Rolex dropped a watch that made major waves. In honor of the 60th anniversary of the beloved Daytona and the 100th anniversary of the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race, the Crown unveiled a special edition model: the Cosmograph Daytona Celebrating 100 Years of Speed. Just shy of a year after its debut, Rolex announced it’d be discontinuing the model at Watches & Wonders 2024, while quietly replacing it with a yellow gold version. This illusive yellow-gold replacement has left much to the imagination, barring some texted contraband images we saw at Watches and Wonders in April, but now it’s plain as day. At the quarterfinal matches, Tennis legend and longtime Rolex collector Roger Federer was spotted wearing the coveted model.
Jessica Pegula in a De Bethune DB28XS Purple Rain
Number six ranked Jessica Pegula has held her own for the U.S.A in this year’s U.S. Open. The New York native has made it to the quarterfinals at Flushing Meadows for the second time in her career but is still yet to land a Grand Slam win. Off the court, it’s yet to be seen how deep Pegula’s watch collection goes, but one thing is for certain: She has a particular affinity for one brand, and it shows the young player has interesting taste in timepieces. Her brand of choice? De Bethune. Pegula has been spotted wearing various models from the brand, including the DB28xs Starry Seas. However, this year, she’s been rocking the DB28XS Purple Rain that debuted at Watches & Wonders earlier this spring.
Jannik Sinner in a Rolex Submariner Date
With major upsets for Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic early on in the tournament, this year’s U.S. Open is Jannik Sinner’s to win. The young Italian player is currently ranked number one in the world ahead of Djokovic, Alcaraz, and Alexander Zverevs. Luckily for Sinner, he has Rolex on his side. At last year’s U.S. Open, Coco Gauff won in women’s singles, proudly accepting her trophy with the discontinued Rolex ‘Red Grape’ on her wrist, so perhaps the luck will wear off on Jannik. Sinner has been a Rolex ambassador since 2020, and his current model of choice is a classic two-tone Submariner Date with a blue dial.
Andrey Rublev in a Bulgari Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Skeleton Ceramic
Russian tennis pro Andrey Rublev was knocked out of this year’s U.S. Open in the round of 16 by the Bulgarian player Grigor Dimitrov, who later went on to lose to American tennis star Frances Tiafoe in the quarterfinals. Despite the upset, Rublev came to the tournament with a major wrist flex. Back in 2021, Rublev became Bulgari’s first-ever tennis ambassador, and since then we’ve seen him sport a number of models from the Roman Maison. For this year’s Grand Slam at Flushing Meadows, he opted for a pretty unique iteration from one of Bulgari’s most beloved collections. In the past decade, the brand has become synonymous with its Octo Finissimo line thanks to models shattering a whopping nine world records. Withing the collection, Rublev chose a ceramic version with a skeletonized dial and a tourbillon.
Tommy Paul in a De Bethune DB28XS Starry Seas
Who knew that De Bethune’s unconventional designs would be so popular among tennis pros? American player Tommy Paul became an ambassador for the brand just last year, with the pair announcing their official partnership during the 2023 Wimbledon tournament. Paul got knocked out by number one ranked Sinner in the round of 16 at this year’s U.S. Open, but he did so in style, of course, rocking a model from De Bethune. The DB28XS Starry Seas appears to be one of his particular favorites, and for good reason. When the model debuted last spring, it marked the world’s first random guilloche pattern along with new sweet-spot sizing at 39 mm.
Naomi Osaka in a TAG Heuer Aquaracer Limited Edition Naomi Osaka
Like Alcaraz and Djokovic, the young Japanese tennis pro Naomi Osaka was upset in an early round at this year’s U.S. Open. Despite her run being short lived, she still had a chance to put her collaboratively designed timepiece on full display. The four-time Grand Slam winner has been a TAG Heuer ambassador since 2021. A year later, she partnered with the brand to co-design her own watch, resulting in the TAG Heuer Aquaracer Limited Edition Naomi Osaka. We know green dials have continued to be all the rage the past few years, and Osaka was early to catch on to the trend, which started gaining traction three years ago. For the customized Aquaracer bearing her name, she chose light green for the dial and a darker green for the rubber strap.
Donna Vekic in a F.P. Journe Elegante 40
Croatian tennis pro Donna Vekic may be a lesser known player on the circuit. Back in 2019, she notched her career-high singles ranking just cracking the top 20 in at number 19. That same year, she made it to the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open. While she wasn’t as successful at this year’s tournament, losing to the Chinese player Zheng Qinwen in the round of 16, she certainly took her defeat in style. We’ve yet to see the full breath of Vekic’s watch collection, or perhaps she’s simply devoted to one brand—but a killer brand at that. She’s been spotted on countless occasions on and off the court wearing every color of the F.P. Journe Elegante 40 under the rainbow. At Flushing Meadows this year, she opted for the gorgeous turquoise blue version.
Serena Williams in an Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Blue Tourbillon
Like Federer, Serena Williams has been enjoying this year’s U.S. Open from the sidelines, cheering on the current players. It’s no secret Williams is a longtime ambassador and fan of Audemars Piguet, sporting countless models over the years from the tennis court to the red carpet and beyond. The former number one player and 23-time Grand Slam winner never ceases to keep us on our toes with which model from AP she’ll choose, sometimes opting for an ultra-sporty look and other times rocking a fully blinged out gem-set model. In the stands at Flushing Meadows, Williams chose the Code 11.59 Blue Tourbillon. The model came in 2022 featuring a fully blued-out design, from the ceramic mid-case to the hand-wound, open worked caliber 2948.
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Rolls-Royce Debuted the New Phantom Scintilla at Monterey Car Week. Here’s Everything We Know.
Limited to 10 examples, each car has an interior defined by “painting with thread,” and a rumored price of around $2.6 million.
Visitors to the fabled Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris might remember an exquisite marble sculpture standing proud at the top of the main Daru staircase. Named the Winged Victory of Samothrace, this eight-foot-tall headless goddess—with gossamer wings—dates to 190 B.C.
What has it got to do with Rolls-Royce’s new Phantom Scintilla Private Collection limousine, unveiled during this year’s Monterey Car Week? A lot, in fact. Rewind to 1910 and Rolls-Royce’s managing director at the time, Claude Johnson, who reportedly commissioned well-known sculptor Charles Sykes to create a hood ornament to define the new Rolls-Royce brand. Apparently, Johnson had seen the statue during a visit to the Louvre and fell in love with it.
While a change in direction saw Sykes create the Spirit of Ecstasy, inspired by Johnson’s former secretary, English actress and model Eleanor Thornton, the Louvre statue was always considered by Goodwood to be the original inspiration for its now iconic emblem.
So, when Rolls-Royce designers looked for a muse for a 10-car, Phantom-based Private Collection series to be called Scintilla—derived from the Latin word for “spark”—the marque went back to the Winged Victory of Samothrace statue and its Mediterranean roots.
You see that influence in the car’s Spirit of Ecstasy figurine which, for the first time, features a translucent white, marble-like ceramic coating. It also carries over in the car’s two-tone paintwork—Andalusian White for the upper body, and powdery Thracian Blue, inspired by the color of the Med, for the lower section. A subtle metallic flake in the paintwork is said to mimic the sparkle of sunlight off the water.
Yet as with most bespoke and special-edition Phantoms, it’s the interior where Rolls-Royce craftsmanship is truly exhibited. In this case, the theme is exquisite embroidery or, as the automaker calls it, “painting with thread.”
For Scintilla, the embroidery work involves over 850,000 individual stitches. And at night, illuminated perforations in the material give the doors a wave-like glow. In Phantom tradition, there’s a Starlight Headliner in the roof, but here, more than 1,500 fiber-optic illuminations twinkle in sequence to mimic silk billowing in a breeze.
The centerpiece of the interior is the Phantom’s dashboard gallery ahead of the front-seat passenger. Named “Celestial Pulse,” it comprises seven metal ribbons, each individually milled from solid aluminum and given the same finely grained ceramic finish as the Scintilla’s Spirit of Ecstasy.
Rolls-Royce will build only 10 examples of the Phantom Scintilla, which had its public debut at the Quail, a Motorsports Gathering on August 16. Of that already small number, three will come to North America and, like the other seven, have already been sold. While there’s no official word on pricing, the figure $3.8 million has been reported.
“With every collection, we aim to tell the story of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars and provoke our clients’ imagination, letting them know our Bespoke designers’ artistry is greater than they can envision,” stated Martin Fritsches, president of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars for the Americas, when asked for a comment by Robb Report. “We can’t think of a better way to tell this story than through the history of our idol, the Spirit of Ecstasy.”
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This Speedy 70-Foot Power Catamaran Is Designed to Cut Through Rough Waters
The 70-foot T-2000 Voyager can hit 60 mph in flat conditions, and then take waves up to 30 feet.
Back in April, Storm Kathleen slammed into the west coast of Ireland as a fearsome Force 10 gale, packing 112 kph winds and 15-foot waves. While locals sandbagged their homes and prepared for the worst, Frank Kowalski decided it was a swell day for a boat ride.
As owner of Safehaven Marine in County Cork, he’d just launched his brand-new, 70-foot T-2000 Voyager all-weather power catamaran. What Kathleen offered was a chance to put the new super-cat through its paces.
“We knew from scale-model tests that she should be able to tackle waves of more than 65 feet high,” Kowalski tells Robb Report. “But you never know until you’re out there. In the height of the storm, she just shrugged off the waves and weather and performed flawlessly.”
Evolved from Safehaven’s 75-foot XVS20 monohull launched in 2018, Kowalski used his expertise in building commercial, work-boat power catamarans to design the twin-hulled T-2000 Voyager to offer speed with stability.
“The stability in beam seas is what’s key here,” he says. “While we were out recently in a Force 8 with 40-plus knot winds and 12-foot seas, we were able to stop and leave the boat to drift while we retrieved a drone. It just took the waves on the beam with ease. In a monohull, it would have been rolling so badly you couldn’t have stood on the deck.”
Then there’s the sheer velocity that comes with twin, scalpel-thin hulls slicing through waves. With the T-2000’s pair of 1,550 hp MAN V12 diesels driving France Helices SD5 surface drives, the Safehaven can hit a top speed of 91 kph.
“It’s just the most amazing sight, standing on the stern, watching these huge roostertails behind,” Kowalski adds. “We’ve also incorporated retracting swim platforms so you can see the props spinning on the surface, plus valved exhausts that switch between silenced and straight-through. The noise from those V12s is sensational.”
While Safehaven has been building its Wildcat range of 40-, 53-, and 60-foot power cats for everything from oil-rig support, crew transfer, and even as a military cruiser for Britain’s Royal Navy, they were always pure, no-frills work boats. With this new T-2000, Kowalski is looking to appeal to private buyers searching for something a little different.
His hull No. 1 demonstrator boat has all-diamond-quilted marine leather, well-finished cabinetry, colored LED lighting, and below-deck accommodations for six in three cabins. Hull No. 2—already sold and due for completion in the next 18 months—will up the luxury factor.
“It’s going to a client in the Middle East who plans to use it for just himself and his wife,” says Kowalski. The client has specified a full-width owner’s suite with a central, king-size bed and oversized his-and-hers bathrooms and closets in each hull. “He also wants to go fast—very fast,” Kowalski continues. “So we’ll install twin 2,000 hp MAN V12s, again with surface drives, and a central hydrofoil to reduce drag. The plan is for it to hit a top speed in excess of 100 kph.”
The new T-2000 is also designed to go the distance. With the 10,977 kilogram tanks, it has a range of more than 1,000 nautical miles at 55.2 kph, and 1,700 nautical miles at 28 kph. Throttle back to 19 kph and range increases to 3,000-plus nautical miles.
Much of this is down to the yacht’s symmetrical, semi-wave-piercing hulls, made of a carbon-fibre-composite construction, with inverted lower bow sections and a double-chine arrangement that projects spray clear of the boat. The hydrofoil in mid position also means that, at speed in calmish seas, the T-2000 rides with half its hull length out of the water.
To eliminate waves slamming into the bridge deck windshield, Kowalski moved the pilothouse farther back. It also makes for a sleeker profile, giving the T-2000 the look of a single-hull sportsyacht.
As for creature comforts, the main, open-plan salon features an L-shaped Corian-topped galley, with a U-shaped dinette opposite. To enjoy the action, there are bucket-style, shock-absorbing seats for the captain and copilot, a wraparound sofa on the port side, and a single bucket seat to starboard.
The entire helm area gets flooded with light courtesy of the four-panel, angled windshield and quartet of fixed skylights above. To see the boat’s hydrofoil in action, the bridge has a glass panel in the floor that’s also designed for viewing marine life below at night. Most of the windows have half-inch-thick toughened panels to shrug off cascading water.
In finer weather than typically found on coastal Ireland, the T-2000 has a small flybridge with a helm station and sun-lounge area up top, plus a covered stern cockpit with sofas and table for alfresco dining.
This storm-tested, metallic-red demonstrator is available for around $5 million.
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Six Senses Are Suddenly Everywhere. Inside the Luxury Resort’s Growing Global Empire
With 26 properties now open, another 43 to come, and the U.S. square in its sights, the rapidly growing wellness-focused resort and hotel brand is now asking the hard questions
If someone hit you in the head (hard) just before the pandemic, and you’re only waking up now, in the middle of 2024, you’ll have noticed some changes. For instance, the global proliferation of Six Senses hotels and resorts.
Once a relatively quiet group of wellness-focused Asian resorts for in-the-know Europeans, Six Senses is now in the midst of a breakneck opening spree with the U.S. square in its sights. Since 2019—when hotel giant IHG dropped $440 million in cash to acquire the operator’s then 16 hotels and resorts from private equity group Pegasus Capital Advisors—it’s grown to 26 urban hotels and destination resorts in 21 countries across four continents. (Its Vana resort in India is one of Robb Report‘s 50 best luxury hotels in the world).
Blink again and that number may have doubled. By 2026, Six Senses, now the flagship brand of IHG’s luxury and lifestyle portfolio, hopes to have a shingle hanging in London, Bangkok, Dubai, Lisbon, Napa, and Tel Aviv. There are currently 43 Six Senses in the pipeline, which will extend Six Senses footprint from the Carolinas to Victoria Falls. Many of those new properties will come packed with branded residences.
So is Six Senses trying to conquer the world via ayurvedic medicine, longevity spa treatments, and mindfulness exercises?
“It’s been a hell of a ride,” admits CEO Neil Jacobs. “But the answer is no, and we have a real point of view on that.”
More on that point of view momentarily, but it’s worth pausing to note that despite his protestations, Jacobs comes to Six Senses with 14 years of experience with a hotel group that is arguable much more overtly interested in turning planet Earth into one massive 5-star hotel lobby: namely, the Four Seasons. As senior vice president of operations for the Four Seasons’s Asia Pacific region, he witnessed the company expand from roughly two dozen hotels into the 130-ish-address, Bill Gates– and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal–owned leviathan of luxury it is today. The Four Seasons’s stated goal is 200 hotels. But Jacobs tells Robb Report it’s neither his or IHG’s intention to turn Six Senses into the Michael Kors of opulent wellness resorts.
“We think less is more,” he says of that aforementioned point of view. “Our competitors are all about growth. With Six Senses the conversation is very much the opposite of that. You’ve got to be really careful about what you do and where you go. I mean, we started with eight resorts in 2012. Then there were 11, and we got rid of two or three. Today, there are 26. So we’ve only opened 18 in nearly 12 years, really.”
Still, the Bangkok-based company is hurtling toward 60-plus properties, a number Jacobs says he is “comfortable” with. What happens beyond that is stickier.
“We have four projects in Italy. We could do another five, but why?” says Jacobs. “Instead, let’s move to another country and spread, rather than just inundate the brand in one country, even though there’s places to do it. It’s a continual argument internally. We have some great places coming to Italy, but we don’t have Venice. So then my team says, ‘If we have a Venice deal, are you going to say, ‘Don’t do it?’ Good question. But the answer is, ‘maybe.’”
Whether it’s Six Senses, the Four Seasons, or Auberge (another brand that has seen a similarly rapid expansion), the answer to the question “When does quantity extinguish the spark of quality?” is worth at least a billion. But it’s also a problem that highlights the welcome fact that, despite the current slump, “luxury” is winning; it may have already won.
From fashion to travel, a growing share of businesses have repositioned themselves to serve the high-end consumer, as growing global wealth supports superior margins realized through the relative simplicity of a luxury rebrand. The affordable family resort of yesterday becomes the aspirational seaside playpen of today. As long as demand for luxury everything is here, deep-pocketed hotel groups will grow to meet it.
At the same time, the success of “luxury” creates a clear existential dilemma: If luxury becomes the standard setting, it is by definition no longer an indulgence, no longer a luxury. And as luxury becomes more gray and undifferentiated, the vague, eye-of-the-beholder quality that was once its strength, is now its liability.
It’s a problem that Jacobs feels that Six Senses was uniquely designed to address.
“That sixth sense in our name, we see it as intuition,” he says. “It’s interesting because one of our initiatives for this year in wellness is spiritual wellness. In the past, we’ve done a lot of yoga, we’ve done a lot of meditation, but we haven’t done a lot of overtly spiritual programs. We think the time is right.”
Those programs serving up, non-religious, lightly-woo spirituality on a silver platter roll out later this year and offer a key differentiator for the brand’s fastest growing customer base: Americans.
“Back in 2012, it was predominately a European customer, I’d say 85 percent,” says Jacobs. “There was no business coming from the U.S. Today, the U.S. is our number market, even though we don’t have anything open in the U.S.”
It’s not for lack of trying. Six Senses planned to open in Manhattan along the High Line in a doomed Bjarke Ingles–designed tower that was crushed by a Gambino crime family construction bribery scandal and the subsequent bankruptcy of its developer. Six Senses has since found a new site on 23rd St. between Seventh and Eighth Aves. in Chelsea, but is at least three years out.
It’s having a better, if not altogether easier, time with the 236-acre farm in Hudson Valley in Upstate New York. The site of a failed “secret hotel” project, Six Senses snatched up the land for $20.2 million in 2022, making it some of the only real estate the brand owns (as with many brands, outside investors typically carry the deeds). Although it would be the first five-star flag in the region, the project has faced community opposition that could scuttle yet another attempt to create a footprint in the U.S.
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Del LaMagna, whose property shares a border with the site, told the Hudson Valley Pilot. “[IHG] decided they wanted to be here, they started hiring good local people to figure it out, but this whole idea of exclusive resorts for rich people just doesn’t work up here.”
That’s a matter of opinion, but Six Senses plans for the U.S. extend far beyond the town of Clinton. Besides urban hotels in New York, L.A., and Miami, it will open a series of resorts, starting with a 500-acre estate on the edge of Napa and a multi-island project off the coast of South Carolina spanning Hilton Head, Daufuskie, and Bay Point. The gargantuan scale of those properties will eventually facilitate the festivals and retreats that the brand has been recently investing in.
“It’s a lot of yoga, a lot of spirituality, a lot of fun, a dance, a lot of movement,” he says. “Those kinds of festivals resonate with people.”
So if you’re just waking up, welcome to a world where Six Senses is everywhere all at once. But Jacobs hopes that by selecting “extraordinary properties” and by “demonstrating our values in a highly meaningful way” that the resorts will fit into the ecosystem like redwoods in a pine forest. Call it a sixth sense.
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10/09/2024
