Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2024 i Robb Report

Julie Belcove Robb Report’s features director ventured off the beaten path in “Greece’s New It Island” (p. 110) to experience Tinos, a Greek isle that most Americans have probably never heard of—but that you won’t want to miss on your next visit. “It’s the time to go because it has yet to be overrun by hordes of tourists— and developers,” says Belcove, who traveled there with her daughters. “There’s a relaxed vibe, fabulous locally made feta, the best tomatoes and artichokes we’ve ever had, and beauty everywhere you look.” Mark Ellwood As Robb Report’s editor at large and resident travel expert, Ellwood went trekking around the globe to discover what trends are currently fueling the industry. “In this issue, I wanted to look at the landscape of travel right now,…

PAST A PEDESTRIAN street in the historic part of Porto, through a maze of tables overflowing with diners soaking up the sun, a pair of gleaming terraced mansions sit side by side. Enter through a dark-green door and follow the mysterious, cavernous corridor into a serenely inviting room. It has meticulously restored granite arches, cream bouclé couches, and a wooden cabinet displaying exactly what’s needed after the heat and bustle of the town square: Madeira cake and coffee. This is the Largo’s answer to a lobby, an undisturbed space that’s refreshingly un-lobby-like. The intention was to create an environment that feels more like a living room, where guests would be inclined to linger. “We wanted it to be simple, to cut away what you don’t use,” says cofounder Per Enevoldsen.…

A DEVOTION TO MOTION DREAM MACHINES On paper, there’s a lot to love about the Mercedes-Benz G 580, the first battery-powered addition to the bruising G-Class family of SUVs. Not least: solving for the model’s notoriously unquenchable petroleum habit. And yet, during testing, adoration for the new all-electric G remained fleeting. For one thing, despite some aerodynamic tweaks, the range for the 579 hp, nearly 7,000-pound truck is believed to be about 240 miles (the official EPA estimate will come later this year), which is hardly frugal; the 116 kWh battery pack uses the same battery cells that propel the lower, lighter, and sleeker EQS sedan 100-plus miles farther on a charge. This makes the G 580, which will likely cost around $168,000 (U.S. pricing has yet to be announced)…

Repeat after me: Experience is not expertise. Your average watch collector doesn’t presume that a cabinet full of highend timepieces makes him a watchmaker any more than automotive enthusiasts believe that piloting a Ferrari Enzo or a Pagani Utopia in the garage makes them a car designer. But it seems that it’s much more tempting to turn a lifetime of luxury hotel-hopping into selfproclaimed know-how. There’s nothing wrong with speculating on a hospitality property, just as one would on any other real-estate investment. The Ritz-Carlton on New York City’s Central Park, for example, came up for sale earlier this year, with the 250-room property valued at approximately $400 million; investing in such a thriving business is an easy decision. But there’s a veritable chasm between being rich enough to buy…

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 winds 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…

IN THE EARLY 20th century, a poor, beautiful brother and sister hatched a plan to escape the confines of their hometown, Bari, the capital of Italy’s Puglia region. The brother had an athletic streak, and his headstrong, creative sister knew she was destined for more than a life as just another mamma in a run-down shack. The brother, Enzo Fiermonte, became a champion boxer. When he moved to America, he adopted the occasional sobriquet William Bird— the better to sidestep the prejudice against his Italian origins. This led him to Hollywood, where he starred in countless movies and married one of the richest women of the day—the Titanic widow and survivor Madeleine Astor—making him even more famous. The sister, Antonia, ended up in Paris, where she bewitched the surrealistdominated cultural…

GRENADINE WILD SEA SALT Bequia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines When two former commercial photographers from New York, Jerry Simpson and his late wife, Elizabeth Watt, retired to the island of Bequia in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, they resolved to find a new career. The purity of the water and its high mineral content—the region is dotted with active volcanoes— nudged them to experiment with salt. “As a food photographer, I always met lots of chefs, and when you asked what was their one ingredient they couldn’t do without, it was always high-end sea salt,” Simpson says. Assisted by his mechanical-engineer son, he workshopped his own pan design (now patented) with the aim of creating a lower-sodium sea salt and maximizing the amount of ultrafine fleur de sel he…

Earlier this year, Jake Santelli and his husband, chef Julian Hagood, opened their first hotel property, Harry’s Guest House, in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Santelli’s previous career was all about aesthetics, as a head of creative at Apple and creative director of brand experience for the members-only club Soho House; fittingly, the two-suite hotel is the perfect mix of modern and classic, with trippy wallpaper by Stella McCartney alongside an enviable collection of vintage furniture. Room service comes courtesy of Hagood and Santelli’s restaurant Harry’s Fine Foods, conveniently located next door. Being a hotelier had long been Santelli’s dream, though it took fate to create an opening. In 2022, their neighbor Winnie, a friend and restaurant regular, announced she was moving east to be closer to family. She offered to…

Though not yet in production, Bugatti’s recently debuted 1,800 hp Tourbillon hypercar is projecting expectedly head-turning numbers: a $4.1 million price tag, a top speed of 276 mph, and the ability to sprint from zero to 60 mph in less than two seconds. And yet the first thing anyone wants to know about Bugatti’s most powerful model to date is: Why isn’t it a pure EV? Bugatti’s CEO, after all, is now Mate Rimac, the 36-year-old Croatian wunderkind who founded Rimac Automobili in 2009 and went on to produce the world’s first all-electric hvpercar. the Concept_One, two years later. But, Rimac says, simply re-skinning Rimac tech for the new model “would have been the wrong choice for Bugatti.” Instead, he argued for “a combustion engine, naturally aspirated for a great…

In terms both of size and exclusivity, the pinnacle of private aviation has long been contested between just two parties: Boeing Business Jets (BBJ) and Airbus Corporate Jets (ACJ). Each converts its large commercial aircraft into lavish, sometimes outlandish, business jets commissioned by captains of industry, world leaders, and royalty. Yet these dueling giants have seen shrinking market shares against competitors such as Gulfstream, Bombardier, and Dassault— and in the bizliner biz, less is never more. “The biggest wide-bodies comprise only about 5 percent of the bizliner world,” says Richard Gaona, chairman of Comlux, a Zurich-based provider of aviation services certified for both BBJ and ACJ interior completions. Gaona notes that, in this rarefied segment, “most interiors tend to be subtle and elegant, designed for heads of state who want…

After Bruce Jones sold his company, Triton Submarines, in 2022, the now 68-year-old mulled a trip. Not a quick getaway, though, but a monthslong adventure—he was determined to circumnavigate the globe. An inveterate traveler who grew up partly in the Philippines and has visited more than 120 countries, Jones had nurtured the dream for some time. So he and his wife, Liz, a fellow licensed pilot, invested in a twin-engine Diamond DA62 and started flying it on short hops, road-testing it for comfort. It failed—big time. “Twelve hours in a smaller airplane, where you can’t move around and there’s no bathroom? Liz wasn’t comfortable with that,” Jones says. The Idaho-based couple sold the plane and started looking for an alternative way to fulfill that globe-spanning wanderlust—which is how we’ve come…

THE GOODS THIS MONTH’S WHO, WHAT, AND WEAR Established in the late 19th century as the “Saratoga of California,” Calistoga has long lived up to its reputation as a quaint (if slightly dated) spa town surrounded by a great place to grow grapes. As a wine destination, the northernmost town in Napa Valley is usually overshadowed by its down-valley neighbors; while many wine lovers spend their nights here in high-end properties run by Auberge, Four Seasons, and Rosewood, the typical Calistoga visitor is looking forward to a mud bath instead of a fantastic bottle or an unforgettable culinary experience. That all changes with the opening of Calistoga Depot, an extravagant diningand-drinking complex in the town’s historic 1868 train station renovated by French vigneron Jean-Charles Boisset and opened in partnership with…

Hotel Passalacqua Lake Como These days, it takes more than the finest linens and a Michelin-starred restaurant to take the No. 1 spot on a list of the world’s 50 best hotels, which Hotel Passalacqua did in 2023. The spa is stellar, to be sure, as is the pool house, which was decorated in collaboration with J. J. Martin of La Double J. But to fully embrace the villeggiatura and sense of place, even the tiniest details matter. Case in point: the hotel’s signature brass-fish bottle opener (there are also key chains), which will mentally transport you back to Lake Como every time you reach for a cold one. Le Sirenuse Positano The red cliff-top hotel with sweeping views needs little introduction. Its owners, the Sersale family, were early to…

The Watch Book Rolex by Gisbert L. Brunner (2023) Leave it to a renowned German watch expert and historian to create the Rolex must-read. Brunner has penned over 20 books about watchmaking, but this is easily the most coveted. Love Rolex or hate it, if you’re going to be wellversed in all things horological, you can’t ignore the Crown. In this third revised edition, Brunner takes the reader through the history of its design and technical feats, from its first wristwatch to decade-spanning hero models such as the Submariner and the Daytona to newly released pieces as of just last year. It’s everything you need to know about Rolex-and so much more. Watchmaking by George Daniels (1981) Written by one of the greatest watchmakers of the modern era, George Daniels’s…

Johnson’s rise, from waking at 3 a.m. to work cattle on his family’s California ranch to becoming a self-made billionaire, began at school—but not necessarily in the classroom. “I remember running round corners trying not to get caught selling suckers and lollipops,” he says. At 47, Johnson has created and sold businesses for a combined total of over $1.15 billion. His direct-to-consumer orthodontics provider, Byte, reached a billion dollars in valuation without any external investment; Alter, a fitness brand focusing on DNA and daily biometrics, “is on a trajectory to exceed that number by multiples,” he says. His seventh enterprise—a consumerfinance company, Forma—has just launched. Success has allowed Johnson to explore passions including art, watches, pens, and philanthropy. “I’ve had so many lucky breaks along the way—especially at the age…

TO CALL BELLERBY & co.’s products globes sounds criminally reductive, in the same way it’s not quite enough to refer to a Ferrari as a car or to the Mona Lisa as a painting. This London-based team builds meticulously detailed models of our planet, almost entirely by hand and ranging in size from about five inches up to 50 inches in diameter. Many are bespoke commissions, painted to highlight the buyer’s personal history; the most elaborate versions can cost as much as $110,000. Founder Peter Bellerby, who previously worked in TV and real estate, went in search of a globe to give his father as an 80th-birthday present in 2008. He wasn’t impressed with what he found, so he set about building one himself. It took more than two years…

The opulence implied by the term “luxury power cat” has largely meant the commodious salons typical of these widebeam motor yachts. Unfortunately, such spaciousness has long come at a price that includes ungainly styling, severely narrow staterooms in the outer hulls, and squirrely handling on big seas—not to mention a lack of compatibility with many marina slips due to the form’s bulky proportions. But a handful of builders are addressing such issues with slimmer designs and the use of foils for enhanced performance. Take Bluegame’s BGM75, with a width of 26 feet seven inches, or about 25 percent of its length overall. By comparison, conventional power cats sport beams closer to 50 percent of their lengths. “This is more like a monohull that happens to have twin hulls," says Luca…