How the Quiet Island of Tinos Became Greece’s New It Destination
The sleepy Greek island has long drawn artists and religious pilgrims but has flown under the radar for the upscale traveller. That’s about to change, though. The Med’s new It destination is awakening.
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Just below the crest of a mountain on Tinos, in Greece’s Cycladic archipelago, sturdy oak trees are bent low to the ground, the near-constant northern wind sculpting their trunks and branches into bizarre, gravity-defying poses. Known as the Meltemi, these winds have occupied an outsize place in the Tinian psyche since antiquity, when a myth arose to explain them: Hercules, angry at Boreas for killing his friend, took revenge on the god of the north wind by killing Boreas’s children on Tinos. The grieving and enraged father, in turn, unleashed his fierce gales to blow on the rocky landscape for all eternity.
Today, the Meltemi make the scorching summer sun bearable and keep the grapes in the vineyards from overheating. They whip up surfable waves at Kolymbithra beach, in an Aegean Sea that is otherwise as placid as a swimming pool, and help deter cruise ships and superyachts from encroaching on this low-key haven where wild goats roam the unspoiled terrain and stray cats patrol the convivial public squares.
The island is increasingly a favourite spot for vacation homes among a creative set of Greeks and other Europeans—Poor Things filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, Greek National Opera artistic director Giorgos Koumendakis, along with fellow artists, architects, musicians and the like—looking to avoid the hubbub of the country’s more popular retreats and drawn to Tinos’s longstanding ties to the art world. For decades, though, most tourists here have been religious pilgrims, arriving by ferry and often crawling uphill from the port on their hands and knees to pray beneath a holy icon of the Virgin Mary inside the Church of Panagia Evangelistria. (The daily trickle of the devoted becomes a flood on August 15, the date celebrated as the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, when Greek Orthodox believe she died and her soul ascended to heaven.) But with the opening in May of Odera, the island’s first five-star resort, plus the growth of the luxury-villa operator Five Star Greece and the launch this year of Hoper, a commercial helicopter service connecting Tinos to Athens in under 45 minutes, the island is poised to become Greece’s new It destination.
Whether Tinians want to claim that title, however, remains an open question. As Maya Tsoclis, a summer resident with deep ties to the area, quips at the expense of a certain overbuilt, hard-partying neighbour island, “What’s the distance between heaven and hell? The distance between Tinos and Mykonos.”
Thomas Gravanis
Tinos has always been something of an oddity. For some 500 years, until 1715, it was part of the Venetian Empire, which rewarded Tinians who adopted the Roman Catholic faith with premium land. Today, while up to 90 percent of the country’s population identifies as Greek Orthodox, on the island the figure is only 60 to 65 percent, with the remainder Catholic. The whitewashed villages were historically one or the other, though intermarriage has come to modern-day Tinos.
Built high in the mountains—to guard against pirates—the villages connect via ostensibly two-lane switchback roads that at points are so harrowingly narrow, they feel more like glorified bike paths. Architectural artifacts dot the hillsides: hundreds of charmingly decorated dovecotes, where locals raised rock pigeons for food and rich fertiliser, even exporting the latter; abandoned windmills that once powered a lucrative grain-milling industry; and more than a thousand tiny white chapels, each constructed by a family as a shrine to a loved one. Low dry-stone walls built to terrace the mountains for agriculture still stand, one possible reason the renowned 20th-century philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, who lived on Tinos, dubbed it “the handmade island”.
The other explanation: Tinos’s abundant marble quarries, which have fed a centuries-old network of skilled carvers and inspired countless artists. Stroll through the village of Pyrgos and observe the door frames, balconies, even an elegant bus shelter fashioned from marble; or step into the house where the venerated sculptor Yannoulis Chalepas was held a virtual prisoner in the early 1900s by his mother, who thwarted her son’s artmaking until her death, blaming it for his shaky mental health. Since 1955, the nearby Preparatory and Professional School of Fine Arts has instructed new generations of sculptors from throughout Greece and beyond—and drawn more artists to Tinos in the process—and the hilltop Museum of Marble Crafts offers a fascinating look at how the stone is excavated and carved. (Amateur sculptors take note: a figure’s face should always be chiseled from the side that pointed toward the sun.)
Maya Tsoclis is sitting on the terrace of her 19th-century stone house in the tiny mountain village of Koumaros, sipping water infused with lemons from the trees in her garden. She has been coming to Tinos for nearly 40 years, ever since her father, the celebrated artist Costas Tsoclis, decided Hydra had begun to resemble an Athenian suburb. “We were looking for something rougher,” recalls Maya, herself a household name in Greece thanks to her long-running series of television travel documentaries, noting that Tinos felt dreamlike—almost medieval—by comparison. There was an authenticity to the place; people still worked with their hands.
Thomas Gravanis
The Tsoclis family found a house in the village of Kampos and became enmeshed in the fabric of the island. In 2011, the Costas Tsoclis Museum opened in a former school in the village, and this Northern Hemisphere summer it inaugurated a new wing, which connects to the original building via a modern amphitheatre. At 94, the compact and silver-haired Costas still works in his museum studio every day during his seasonal sojourns from Athens, painting six or seven hours to take advantage of the optimal light. “Unfortunately, I always consider creation an obligation,” he says.
When I visit him, a grid of hot-pink abstract paintings covers the wall, just some of what will be a monumental installation of 90 panels in Athens come September. “In these artworks, my theme is the miracle of technology and the danger and fear of technology,” he explains, sitting in the shade of a vine-covered trellis, where museum visitors are often happily surprised to find him. “There’s a huge space within this technology, which although I use, I don’t understand. So it would be inconsistent for everything I do to be understood. It should also be incomprehensible.”
Thomas Gravanis
When the Tsoclises acquired the Koumaros villa in 2006, Maya learned that her family had a poignant connection to it: in 1950, her father was a poor, young art student in Athens who had fallen in love, but the young woman’s disapproving parents spirited her away to an Ursuline convent on Tinos. Costas sold his possessions to buy a ferry ticket, then made his way to a monastery, where, pretending to be her cousin, he inquired after his lost love. The monks told him she’d gone to the nuns’ summer residence. Unable to find it in the rugged topography, he returned to Athens and never saw or heard from her again. This villa, it turned out, was the Ursulines’ summer retreat. “One of the reasons he bought the place is because this woman was here,” Maya says, as the church bells peal next door. (A subsequent search for any record of the woman turned up nothing.)
Thomas Gravanis
Maya, who is also a former fashion designer, renovated the house meticulously, preserving unique architectural details such as the rocks that protrude through the walls of the lower level. She built an amphitheatre, where she now hosts a month-long arts festival every August, converted a traditional dovecote into a small guesthouse, and added a sauna and pool. The six hectares are adorned with her father’s artworks and fragranced by hot-pink bougainvillea. Now she has decided to lease the property, on a very limited basis, through Five Star Greece—though she clearly has mixed feelings about tourism on the island.
“All Greeks know Tinos because of the pilgrimage. We forget now, but Tinos is the pilgrimage. It’s the soul of Tinos,” says Maya, who is not religious herself. “The Virgin Mary saved Tinos,” she adds, explaining that travellers who wanted to party were turned off by the ritual (and, perhaps, the lack of an airport or yacht berths) and flocked to Mykonos instead. By the time developers realised Tinos’s potential, “people were a little bit wiser. Tinos doesn’t have the superyachts; we have the thinkers. The problem now is that because Mykonos was so overwhelmed with tourism—and bad tourism—a new word that’s used is the “Mykonisation” of Tinos. This is what we’re trying to avoid.”
In 2012, she and her partner, Alexandros Kouris, started Nissos Brewery to help the island develop revenue streams beyond tourism. Its high-end potables have since won awards in beer strongholds Germany and Belgium, and the powerhouse Carlsberg Group recently bought a minority stake. US expansion is in the works. In addition to the craft brewery located in the main town, known as Chora, Nissos keeps a cellar beneath a former Catholic monastery on the outskirts of a village near the villa, where the couple have been experimenting with ageing beer like wine (the result is curiously akin to Cognac) and host candlelight tastings for friends and family.
Thomas Gravanis
The beer business was a bold choice on an island known for its wine. T-oinos, one of the leading wineries, has made a name for itself in the 21st century by producing a certified-organic lineup featuring Assyrtiko grapes grown in sandy soil shot through with granite and Mavrotragano grapes planted in shist and clay. The vineyards are some 450 m above sea level, where oregano, lavender, thyme and fennel grow wild and where the lower temperatures and the Meltemi combine to keep the grapes cool—preserving their acidity and freshness—and dry during the day, preventing disease.
Under the direction of big-name master vigneron Stéphane Derenoncourt, T-Oinos ages the wines in stainless steel, glass, amphorae and wood barrels—and sometimes a combination—producing about 20,000 bottles annually with an all-Tinian crew. About half the output goes to other islands in the Cyclades, including Mykonos, where purveyors often refer to it as the “local wine” because the island has no vineyards of its own. That designation has led more than a few bewildered tourists to book tastings at T-Oinos only to find out when they can’t locate the vineyard that they’re on the wrong island.
Thomas Gravanis
T-Oinos’s Clos Stegasta reds and whites complement a thriving gastronomic scene that evokes the ancient Greek seafaring tradition of philoxenia, the custom that you should be generously hospitable to guests, in part to ensure similar treatment when you travel. Tinian meals tend to be languorous affairs, with an abundance of dishes served on exquisitely crafted ceramics and shared around the table. There are Athenian imports, such as Svoura, known for its simple but well-executed menu, including addictive zucchini chips and fresh pasta. Diners park on the outskirts of the village of Komi—even a motorcycle would have trouble maneuvering down some of the stone paths—and stroll to a lively piazza, where the tables are set beneath a grand, leafy maple tree. There are also homegrown innovators, including San to Alati, Thalassaki and Marathia, the last of which Marinos Souranis opened in Chora more than 20 years ago as a taverna focused on local ingredients and old recipes. He has since increasingly delved into experimental dishes—think shrimp carpaccio with strawberry sorbet—and techniques, particularly in the realm of fish maturation.
“In the beginning, it was very primitive,” Souranis recalls on a warm evening, as the Aegean laps the beach across the road. Now, having built a research lab with a maturation chamber under his house, he consults with restaurants globally. The aim is to harness the process of decomposition, changing the fish’s collagen into sugars over days or weeks, akin to how beefsteaks are aged. The results are intriguing: tuna that bears a salty, chewy resemblance to prosciutto; amberjack soft enough to spread.
Thomas Gravanis
Souranis has also fostered the foraging trend on Tinos, collecting and preserving mushrooms for the menu’s hearty risotto, for example, during the winter months, when Marathia is closed. “We’re open eight months, but we work 12 months,” he says.
Tinos’s appetite for invention may have played a role in luring Dimitris Skarmoutsos, arguably Greece’s most famous chef. Skarmoutsos, whose Delta restaurant in Athens was the nation’s first to earn two Michelin stars, is the executive chef behind Eos at Odera, which offers a sophisticated take on Mediterranean cuisine.
Thomas Gravanis
From the approach on a rocky dirt road, Odera has a low profile that discreetly hews to the landscape, then hugs the steep hillside behind as it descends toward the private beach, giving each of the 77 guest rooms a magnificent view of the azure Aegean below. From the sunbeds and sofas on the private patios, wild goats can be seen scampering up the slopes that frame the resort in whimsical juxtaposition with Odera’s contemporary-chic style, which comes courtesy of Studio Bonarchi in Athens. The design feels carefully considered to blend in with the Tinian aesthetic: an abundant use of stone and marble; high stone-walled passageways that evoke the towns’ labyrinths. Granted, the facades aren’t painted white with brightly contrasting doors and shutters, the way they are in the villages, but the neutral palette harmonises with the arid landscape and is arguably less obtrusive than a stark-white luxury compound far from a settlement would be.
Thomas Gravanis
Other new construction, primarily in the form of private homes, is also attempting to meld with the cliffs and terraced mountains. Martha Giannakopoulou, an Athens-based architect who has been spending summers on Tinos with her musician husband for 11 years, is designing three homes on the island: one for a Greek family, the others for two Brits creating a compound together. The family house is being built from Tinian stone and will be “half hidden within the hill”, she says.
Giannakopoulou notes that the local government is determined to keep growth under control by strictly limiting the size and location of new dwellings, aiming to encourage development within village boundaries rather than allowing random villas to mar the countryside. “The construction has blown up quite a bit [in recent years],” she says. “The capacity of the island is not high: there’s a lack of water and electricity. And that’s one of the problems Mykonos has been having—the infrastructure is very weak. Very often in August, 10 or 15 days go by and you have minimum access to water.”
Thomas Gravanis
To be sure, in a place that thirsts for fresh water, ask locals about newcomers (whether individuals or hotels) and the first thing you’ll likely hear is a swipe at all the swimming pools, along with a rhetorical question: “Why do they need pools? We’re surrounded by the Aegean.”
At Odera, 24 rooms and suites have private infinity pools that jut toward the sea, and another 30 have shared ones. The resort accesses the water via a borehole and treats it with salt electrolysis, a natural disinfectant method that reduces the need for chemical chlorination. Other sustainability efforts include using biologically treated wastewater to irrigate its landscaping, geothermal energy for heating and cooling, and rock excavated on-site for wall cladding, dry-stone walls and gravel.
Thomas Gravanis
Maya Tsoclis, for one, understands Tinos’s appeal to those seeking a refuge, noting that no other island has so many beautiful villages. “It’s an open-air museum,” she says, adding that the pertinent development question is, “How far can you go without destroying what is unique?”
Thomas Gravanis
After all, she and her family chose Tinos, too. “We felt very at home here, as if there was an affinity,” she explains. “Sometimes it’s not just aesthetics. There’s something in a place that tells you that it can be right—for some reason you don’t know.”
Her father is of the same mind. His sculpture of Saint George slaying the dragon is installed in the courtyard of his museum, easily leading a visitor to assume that the creature’s scaly, undulating tail was intended to mirror the rough, rolling mountains in the distance. But Costas insists his physical surroundings impact only his body and mind, not the literal look of his art. “I get a lot of energy from Tinos—that’s why I’m here,” he says. “I’ve lived in different parts of the world, and I didn’t have a certain homeland that I carried with me. When I came here, this miracle made me creative. It’s as simple as that.”
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Golden Touch
Discretion is the better part of glamour at the glittering Maybourne Beverly Hills.
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How the Most Rare and Valuable Watches Are Traded Among Elite Collectors
Some of the world’s most interesting watches spend decades being traded privately before we learn about them.
Before social media became the lingua franca of the watch world, there were forums. And on those forums, collectors—especially collectors of vintage Rolex—often traded timepieces amongst each other.
The advent of Instagram in the early 2010s, coupled with the explosion in interest in vintage timepieces, drew attention to this corner of the watch world, and with that attention came increased competition for the finest examples. In the case of six- and seven-figure watches, high-end dealers, like James Lamdin, founder and vice president of vintage and pre-owned watches at Analog:Shift, became trusted intermediaries, negotiating sales for pieces not once or twice but often multiple times as they made the rounds of the collector community.
“There are watches out there that may not be massively rare by reference, but are by example,” Lamdin tells Robb Report. “Tropical patina, ghosted bezel, or celebrity provenance—it’s that watch. When those watches go into a collection, usually it’s with the implicit understanding that they’re valuable and people will want them from you and will make you a profit when you sell them.”
The best dealers have built relationships with collectors around the world and often have first right of refusal when those pieces come back to market. But even still, the most coveted models can still slip through their fingers.
Eric Wind, of Wind Vintage in Palm Beach, Fla., has lost and found some of the world’s most storied watches. In 2015, when he was vice president, senior specialist at Christie’s in New York, Wind came across a “super rare” 1957 Audemars Piguet Ref. 5516 perpetual calendar that had languished in rural Florida until the nephew of the original owner consigned it to Christie’s. The first perpetual calendar wristwatch to feature a leap-year indicator, the piece was one of just nine made by Audemars Piguet in the 1950s. Wind considers it “the one in the best condition.”
He showed it to one of Christie’s better-known clients, Patrick Getreid, owner of the OAK Collection, who purchased it in 2015 for $545,000. In 2023, Getreid consigned it to Christie’s in Hong Kong. That’s when Wind decided to give the piece another shot.
“I had registered to bid on it but at the last minute, I got cold feet,” Wind continues. “It was starting kind of high compared with what Getreide had paid for it. I was bidding remotely from Florida, but when no one else is bidding, you’re kind of wondering if you’re a genius or a fool. Is there something everyone else knows that I don’t? The question was about market value. The watch ended up passing and I purchased it via private sale—or private treaty, as it’s known—after the sale. I had two clients who really wanted it. I offered it to both, but one was more ready to pull the trigger and he got it. It never saw the light of day.” That Audemars Piguet perpetual calendar, Wind says, “remains one of my top five watches on the planet.”
As he reflected on the piece’s winding journey, Wind considered his own role in its comings and goings. “It was fun to be part of the lifecycle of that watch, from when it was discovered in rural Florida and consigned to Christie’s, and then sold to a great collector, who sold it again,” he says. “I imagine it will come back to me at some point. I don’t know if it will be two years from now or 40 years.”
Another grail watch that Wind helped shepherd to a client was an exceptional Paul Newman Rolex Daytona Panda reference 2623 with a full set and a tropical dial that was sold by a small Swedish auction house just under a decade ago. “Another dealer got it,” Wind explains. “I was still at Christie’s, and I fell in love with the watch. This dealer who had it for a year then sold it to an Italian dealer, who then sold it to a collector in Asia. I was tracking the watch on Instagram and saw the collector post it. By that time, I had become a dealer.
“I made an offer to the collector to purchase it on behalf of my client,” he adds. “It had been owned by a Swedish boat captain and had been given to him by the family he worked for, the equivalent of the Rockefellers in Sweden. We had to arrange shipment to the U.S. by Malca-Amit armored transport. Whenever these high-value watches move around, you have to deal with armored shipments, customs, proper transportation, and a lot of paperwork. It takes some time but it’s well worth it.”
Both the AP perpetual calendar and Daytona were original and unpolished—“the kind of watches I look for,” Wind says. “It’s funny how watches circle around. Within the high-end watch world, we’re not talking about thousands and thousands of watches. We’re talking about a relatively small amount of great watches.”
Eric Ku, a high-end vintage dealer in Northern California, certainly knows the drill.
About 15 years ago, he was offered a first-of-its-kind 1996 Rolex Cosmograph Daytona “Rainbow” reference 16599 in white gold on a leather strap.
“I’ve been hunting jeweled Rolexes for a really long time, before it was a cool thing,” Ku, cofounder of the online auction site Loupe This, says. “The watch first surfaced to me around 15 years ago. It was offered to me by a dealer in the Middle East and was coming from, allegedly, a member of a royal family. At the time, the pricing was completely different than it is today. After going back and forth, I offered $130,500 and the seller wanted $136,462. I lost the watch. I was gutted. I’d been stalking the watch. But at the time, relative to the market, it didn’t make sense for me. It was a really tough time, might have been around the financial crisis. I felt confident it would come back to me, but it didn’t.
“Then, in 2012, Rolex introduced its new rainbow Daytona,” Ku says. “I had no doubt about the authenticity of the watch I’d lost out on, but seeing the new rainbow Daytona completely validated me and erased any scintilla of a doubt that I had about the watch. Fast forward a couple years: The watch was offered to me again privately, by a different person in the Middle East at a significant multiple of the original offering—let’s say in the mid six-figures. I bought it.”
In 2017, Ku sold the watch to an important collector based overseas, “a person of very high taste and connoisseurship who appreciated the rarity of that watch,” he says. The collector, by Ku’s reckoning, also appreciated the story of its journey. “Dealers and old collectors always like trading war stories,” he says. “What’s the one thing that got away and then it came back? The collector got sold on the story.”
Now, the watch is coming back to market on Nov. 8 at Phillips Geneva, where it’s being offered in a sale dedicated to neo-vintage timepieces (Reloaded: The Rebirth of Mechanical Watchmaking 1980-1999) and is estimated to fetch in excess of $5.93 million.
“It’s probably the sexiest watch of the season,” Ku says.
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Simply the Best: Jewel Private Residences
The Gold Coast’s most acclaimed new architectural offering is unrivalled for luxurious beachfront living.
The Jewel Private Residences in Surfer’s paradise are an adventure in style. Located steps from the ocean, between the prime coastal locations of Surfer’s Paradise and Broadbeach, these fully complete apartments with access to five-star resort living on absolute beachfront have been attracting prestige property buyers, bon vivants and design aficionados since they went on the market.
So much so that the 100 apartments released to the market in three stages have been snapped up for a cool $200 million; the 30 apartments in Stage Three that were released last month have totalled $60 million in sales.
It’s not hard to see why. Located in a $1.5 billion three-tower landmark district encompassing two towers dedicated to the Jewel Private Residences, as well as the five-star hotel tower The Langham, Gold Coast, these stunning apartments with their distinctive glass curtain walling system, present a unique opportunity for savvy buyers. In fact, the precinct offers the first prestige international hotel and towers with unfettered beachfront access to be built on the Gold Coast in 30 years.
Says Total Property Group managing director Adrian Parsons, “Jewel steps straight off the sand into The Langham Gold Coast’s luxurious five-star amenities, including the Lagoon Pool with swim-up bar, 26 & Sunny Café, restaurant Akoya and T’ang Court, lobby bar, and wellness facilities.”
Not that there is much reason to leave these life-style-envy-inducing homes. In addition to the unrivalled views, the residences contain state-of-the-art gourmet kitchens with stone benchtops with 60mm edges (some with large island benches and waterfall edges), stone splashbacks and top-of-the-line Miele appliances. Premium residences feature sumptuous bathrooms appointed with stone-top vanities, black glass framed walls and free-standing baths.
The building, the result of a collaboration between Oppenheim Architects and DBI, employs sophisticated facade technologies to ensure shading from sun and shelter from the wind, delivering a 5-star green star building, that is as handsome as it is sustainable. Put simply, it represents the pinnacle of luxury living on the Gold Coast—the best of the best.
A perfect fit for Robb Report, in other words. Which is why we are thrilled to be partnering with Jewel Private Residences on our Car of the Year 2024 event (COTY) being held on the Gold Coast next week. As one of our marquee events of the year, COTY is a 2-day adventure, celebrating excellence in automative design and engineering, bolstered by an exciting program of activations featuring not only the world’s top motoring marques but also some of the world’s leading luxury brands. An experience not to be missed and simply the best.
For information on apartments at Jewel Private Residences Gold Coast, visit jewelprivateresidences.com.au or phone Total Property Group on 1300 552 456.
For more information on Car of the Year 2024, visit our Events Page.
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Champagne Bollinger Just Released a Limited-Edition, James Bond–Inspired Bubbly
The Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition comes with its own carrying case and glasses.
When it comes to drinks, James Bond may be best associated with a martini—shaken, not stirred, of course. But the secret agent has been known to enjoy a glass or two of bubbly as well.
Champagne Bollinger has long been the Champagne of choice for Bond, and now the house is honouring that relationship with a special-edition bottle that commemorates the 60th anniversary of Goldfinger.
Whether you’re a Bond fan or a Champagne connoisseur, the $5,950 Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition package is meant to appeal to both sensibilities.
The star of the show is the Champagne, of course: Here, Champagne Bollinger is offering a 2007 vintage Magnum, made from hand-picked grapes and aged 17 years in the house’s cellars. Spicy aromas on the nose are contrasted with notes of fruit, brioche, and honey. The Champagne has been packaged in a bespoke Globe-Trotter Air Cabin Case and comes with four Champagne Bollinger 007 glasses in which to enjoy the bubbly. Limited to just 200 individually numbered pieces, it’s a true collector’s item.
Champagne Bollinger has enjoyed a lengthy relationship with the James Bond franchise, dating back to when Roger Moore popped the first bottle in 1973’s Live and Let Die. Since then, the two have become almost inseparable, and Champagne Bollinger is proudly being served at the very first official James Bond bar, which just opened in London. If you can’t snag the limited-edition set for yourself, you can at least imbibe in a glass of the good stuff at the 007 at Burlington Arcade.
That bar and the special Champagne Bollinger package are all part of the festivities celebrating 1964’s Goldfinger. The film and Bond’s ensuing legacy have established him as one of the biggest (fictional) names in the luxury world, with his love of expensive watches, fast cars, and fine spirits.
While it’s unlikely that many of us can channel the special agent when it comes to his escapades and hijinks, we should delight in the fact that we can embrace our inner Bond by sidling up to the 007 bar or throwing back a glass of the Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition. It’s exactly how our favorite M16 agent would want us to honour him.
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Golden Touch
Discretion is the better part of glamour at the glittering Maybourne Beverly Hills.
Los Angeles does not want for star wattage, but for years now, the city’s hotel scene has been a little lacklustre. So news that the beloved Montage hotel has been completely redone under the Maybourne brand (the British powerhouse that operates Claridge’s, The Connaught, and Berkeley Hotels in London, and the recently opened Maybourne Riviera on the Côte d’Azur) should come as a boon to Australians looking for a new Tinseltown bolthole.
Situated within Beverly Hills’ famous Golden Triangle, just north of Wilshire Boulevard and Four Season’s Beverly Wilshire, and one block from the world-renowned luxury retailers, restaurants and celeb-spotting of Rodeo Drive, The Maybourne Beverly Hills offers a chic retreat from the designer flexing at its doorstep; a rare escape in the heart of this storied enclave that flies under the radar like a cap-wearing celeb dodging the paparazzi.
Set amid the manicured, Mediterranean-style Beverly Cañon Gardens plaza, which unfolds from the hotel’s west entrance, the new incarnation of Montage Beverly Hills (55 suites and 20 private residences, each with a balcony or patio with a courtyard or city view) still evokes the grand estates of Old Hollywood while feeling like you’re in a European mainstay.
Revealing a restrained new guestroom and suite design by Bryan O’Sullivan, a blue-chip art collection and some of the most solicitous staff in town, the Maybourne speaks in a laid-back Californian accent but still holds true to the luxury touchpoints of five-star service for which one of the world’s most exclusive neighbourhoods—and hotel brands—is known.
“It’s reassuringly British when it comes to service—it’s a culture of yes,” says Linden Pride, the Australian restaurant and bar owner behind the award-winning Caffe Dante in New York and Bobbie’s, the new speakeasy opening this month below Neil Perry’s new Song Bird restaurant in Sydney’s Double Bay (page 40). Pride should know; he lived at the Maybourne for almost a year while he and his partner, Nathalie Hudson, set up Dante, the stunning new restaurant and bar on the hotel’s ninth-floor rooftop. “Looking out from the roof onto lemon and olive trees, it’s easy to forget that you’re in Southern California, not Europe.”
Opened last year, Dante has quickly become one of the hottest reservations in town, luring in celebrities from Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin to the entire Real Madrid soccer team. Like its sister outposts in New York (besides the Greenwich Village original, a West Village location opened in 2020), the focus here is on non-threatening antipasti and aperitivi in a produce-driven menu of fresh familiar stalwarts, with the addition of wood-fired dishes from a giant pizza oven at the heart of the room. Just as it does in New York, a negroni cart does the rounds, and each afternoon is welcomed with a martini happy hour.
It’s all fittingly Cali-chill. The only drama in the place is a striking ceiling fresco by Los Angeles artist Abel Macias, which dominates the 146-seat room. “Nathalie and I had just been to Europe when we decided to open up here,” Pride recalls, “and the Sistine Chapel blew us away. When we saw the domed ceiling in this room it was a no-brainer.”
Dante joins a string of newcomers in the area, including New York transplants Café Boulud, Marea and Cipriani. Don’t look now, but with arrivals like the Maybourne and Dante, one of the world’s stuffiest cities—yes, Beverly Hills is its own 14.8 km² metropolis—might just be entering a new golden age.
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Hibiki 40 Year Old Resets the Bar for One of Whisky’s Most Exalted Names
The legendary blender reasserts itself in the industry’s uppermost pantheon with its oldest and rarest blended release ever.
Over the last decade, whiskies from Suntory’s famed Hibiki stable have gone from a top-shelf staple to the new byword for luxury in the increasingly rarefied world of Japanese whisky. As stocks of its famed age statement blends drew ever lower, the air of exclusivity around the distillery grew and grew – something that has stuck around even as the brand’s new flagship blend, Harmony, became more readily available once more.
It’s becoming clearer, however, that Hibiki still has a few exceptional tricks up its sleeves. Twenty-one and 30-year-old age statement whiskies have released in the past few years to critical acclaim, confirming that Suntory still has some particularly rarefied output yet to unveil. Now, in the brand’s boldest move yet, a 40-year-old blend is set to hit the market in extremely limited quantities, taking Hibiki’s already lofty benchmarks of rarity and lineage to new heights.
As with Hibiki’s other blends, Suntory’s Chief Blender, Shinji Fukuyo, has spent years perfecting a blend that brings some of Japan’s oldest and finest spirits into perfect harmony – achieving a smoothness and complexity that takes the brand’s hallmark qualities to a new plane. Single malts from Yamazaki, Hakushu, and Chita all feature, having been individually aged for four decades to form a true expression of the place they were made, before making their way into the final blend.
Truly a multi-generational blend, Hibiki 40 Year Old is designed not just as an expression of the skills and expertise passed down through generations of individual distillers, but that of Fukuyo’s forebears, legendary Suntory blenders Shingo and Shinjiro Torii.
The result is a final liquid rich with sweet fresh fruit, light citrus zest, and spice, supported by a luxurious undercurrent of acacia honey and dried fruit. Each crystal bottle is adorned with a mother-of-pearl inlay and decorated with a handcrafted label from Japanese washi artist Eriko Horiki.
While age statement single malts in the four- and five-decade category have become increasingly the vogue in recent years, never before has a blended whisky been attempted with such old stock—a unique challenge for its maker.
“Behind the elegance and bloom that is typical of Hibiki, there is a sense of subduedness,
like that of an old temple, and a wabi-sabi patina due to the long aging process,” says Fukuyo. “I would like people to enjoy the pure and pure aroma that has been sharpened over the years; the tranquility of old temples and storehouses and the nostalgic warm feeling that accompanies them.”
Limited to just 400 bottles, Hibiki 40 Year Old will release on October 4th, with bottles retailing at $75,000.
Australian fans of the brand will have the unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the Hibiki 40 Year Old experience, including a taste of the exalted liquid, at an exclusive event at Clare Smyth’s Oncore on October 24th, 2025. Tickets are available for $1,800 per person.
