Centurion Singapore Winter 2021

TRAVELLING WITH PURPOSE | SEAWEED'S MAGIC 

WHISKY IN FOCUS | THE REINVENTION OF DANIEL HUMM 

COSTA RICA NOW | AFRICAN CONSERVATION 

Plus: private islands, avant-garde ceramics and perpetual calendar watches 

WINTER 2021

B O R N I N L E B R A S S U S 

S É B A S T I E N F O U C A N

R A I S E D A R O U N D T H E W O R L D 

A U D E M A R S P I G U E T B O U T I Q U E S S I N G A P O R E 

O R C H A R D R O A D L I A T T O W E R S · T H E S H O P P E S A T M A R I N A B A Y S A N D S

Features 

WINTER 2021 

46 TIME AFTER TIME 

The enduring allure of 

perpetual calendar watches 

comes into sharp focus. 

Photography by Matthew Shave 

Production by Elisa Vallata 

66 THE ACCIDENTAL 

RULEBREAKER 

Eleven Madison Park chef 

Daniel Humm is shaking up 

the world of fine dining with 

his new plant-based approach. 

By Bill Knott 

52 LIFE OF THE PARTY 

The season’s impossible-to-resist 

jewellery proves that diamonds 

are indeed a girl’s best friend. 

Photography by Alan Gelati 

Production by Elisa Vallata 

58 NATURE NURTURED 

Investing in the protection 

of Africa’s wilderness has 

never been more relevant – 

or straightforward (pictured). 

By Lisa Grainger 

72 THE WHISKY ALMANAC 

From new distilleries in Japan 

to Scottish titans reawakening, 

an all-points bulletin from inside 

the industry – and a perspective 

on the spirit as an emerging 

asset class. 

PHOTO ROSS COUPER 

8 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM

Departments 

34 

WINTER 2021 

12 FROM THE EDITOR 

24 

38 ARM CANDY 

A wonderfully eclectic 

selection of the season’s 

most covetable handbags 

Art & Design 

41 DYNAMIC CERAMICS 

Xavier Mañosa updates 

an ancient craft with an 

outside-the-box approach 

BlackBook 

Plus 

17 COSTA RICA 

CONFIDENTIAL 

A new breed of ecoresorts 

is alighting in the 

country’s prettiest corners 

22 A TEACHABLE MOMENT 

Soneva Fushi co-founder 

Sonu Shivdasani on the 

evolution of luxury travel 

24 WHERE THE BISON ROAM 

On location at a horizonspanning 

American 

retreat with purpose 

38 

28 IN SEARCH OF SILENCE 

Sand, sea and sumptuous 

seclusion – private islands 

are the ultimate hideaway 

Style & Beauty 

31 OUT OF THIS WORLD 

Van Cleef & Arpels’ latest 

collection takes its cues from 

the stars 

34 SUNKEN TREASURE 

Uncovering the remarkable 

wellness-boosting 

properties of seaweed 

81 CENTURION IN FOCUS 

A comprehensive guide 

to the global real-estate 

market 

41 

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SEAN FITZGERALD, © THALION, © APPARATU, © STELLA McCARTNEY 


F R O M T H E E D I T O R 

CHRISTIAN SCHWALBACH 

What does the good life look 

like? It’s a question chef 

Daniel Humm has been 

asking himself in recent years – and his 

surprising answer, in part, is what led 

him to transform his Michelin-three-star 

gastro palace, Eleven Madison Park, into 

a vegan restaurant this summer. 

I’ll let you turn to page 66 to read our 

intimate profile of him – written by chef 

and restaurateur Bill Knott, a frequent 

contributor to these pages – and find out 

all the nuances of why time, localism and 

philanthropy have become so central to 

his approach both inside and outside 

the kitchen. 

But Humm is not the only one who 

has been reconceiving luxury in 2021. In 

this issue of Centurion, we focus on the 

people, places and companies that are 

changing the ways we live in – and look 

at – the world around us, as meaningful 

moments and actions increasingly replace 

staid ideas of traditional luxury. 

Our feature on the philanthropists and 

conservationists fighting to preserve the 

wildlife of Africa details why going on a 

safari might be one of the best things you 

can do to help the cause. 

Elsewhere, we take a deep dive into the 

whisky world, looking at Scotland’s ghost 

distilleries coming back to life, a trio of 

Japan’s new passion-led craft distilleries 

and the exceptionally buoyant world 

of whisky investment. We also travel to 

Vermejo, a conservation-oriented ranch 

in the American West; consider the 

virtues of various private-hire islands 

across the globe; and wonder at the 

transformative powers of seaweed, not 

only as a superfood and skincare salve 

but as a prime example of how renewable, 

natural resources might be used across 

the whole material world. Which is its 

own perspective on the good life. 

We hope you enjoy the issue as much as 

we did putting it together. ¬ 

IVORY BLACK 

American painter James 

Austin Murray worked 

with ivory black oil paint 

and simple brushstrokes 

to create his evocative 

Swimming In It (2020). 

jamesaustinmurray.com 


M A G A Z I N E 

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Black 

Book 

A GLOBAL GUIDE FOR 

THE DISCERNING TRAVELLER 

D I S P A T C H 

N A T U R A L 

P R O G R E S S I O N 

Visionary resorts with serious eco-credentials are finding better 

ways to frame Costa Rica’s otherworldly beauty. By Bruce Wallin 

A surfer rides the 

waves at Witch’s 

Rock, off Playa 

Naranjo, Costa Rica 

PHOTOS PHOTO FEDERICO ALAMY CIAMEI 

CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 17

BlackBook Dispatch 

In August, Costa Rican president 

Carlos Alvarado Quesada signed a law 

establishing the sloth as his country’s 

new national symbol. A lethargic treehugger 

might at first seem an unlikely 

ambassador for a nation known for highadrenaline 

action sports and adventures. 

But Costa Rica also has a softer side, one 

that emphasises slow, small and sustainable 

development – and is spawning a new wave 

of eco-resorts throughout the country. 

“The government has done a great 

job of protecting the environment,” says 

James McBride, the pioneering hotelier 

who worked with American entrepreneur 

Chris Burch to create Indonesia’s revered 

Nihi Sumba, and now the upcoming Nihi 

Santo Tomas (nihi.com) on Costa Rica’s 

northwestern coast. “There’s an influx of 

global players coming into Costa Rica right 

now, and they’re all built around nature and 

a healthy lifestyle.” 

Both admirable and ambitious, Costa 

Rica’s environmental efforts include having 

nearly 30 per cent of its territory under 

some form of protection and 98 per cent 

of its energy generated from renewable 

sources. The country is targeting zero carbon 

emissions by 2050, and by the end of this 

year, it aims to become the world’s first nation 

to phase out single-use plastics entirely. 

This commitment to conservation 

appeals to developers like McBride, 

who was drawn to Costa Rica’s unique 

combination of wilderness, security and 

Left: the majestic 

scenery surrounding 

the forthcoming Nihi 

Santo Tomas; the 

resort’s co-founder, 

James McBride 

(left) 

accessibility. “Our tagline is ‘On the Edge of 

Wildness’,” he says. “The beauty of this edge 

of wildness is that it’s only two-and-a-half 

hours from Miami, and it’s stable and safe.” 

Just a 30-minute drive from the 

international airport in Liberia, Nihi Santo 

Tomas is set within a 1,400ha farm on a 

wild stretch along the Gulf of Papagayo. › 

Lush forest meets the Pacific at the future site of Nihi Santo Tomas in the province of Guanacaste 

PHOTOS FROM TOP: PEDRO ARCE, COOURTESY JAMES McBRIDE, PEDRO ARCE 

18 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM PLEASE CHECK THE LATEST GOVERNMENT ADVICE BEFORE BOOKING TRAVEL OR DEPARTING ON ANY TRIP

BOVET 1822 X ROLLS-ROYCE 

A UNIQUE COLLABORATION 

THE SHOPPES AT 

MARINA BAY SANDS 

2 BAYFRONT AVENUE 

#B2-200

BlackBook Dispatch 

Clockwise from left: a Zunya 

casita; sushi delicacies from 

the property’s plant-based 

Nula kitchen; Zunya’s verdant 

coastal setting 

“ 

THE LOCAL COMMUNITY HAS A 

LOT OF ANCESTRAL WISDOM THAT 

THEY ARE SHARING WITH US 

” 

– Diego Dosal Stieglitz, Zunya founder 

Scheduled to open in late 2023, the resort 

will include 38 villas plus a collection of 

privately owned four-to-six-bedroom estate 

residences. As at Nihi Sumba, guests will 

have a range of outdoor pursuits on hand, 

from hikes to the property’s waterfall and 

excursions into the adjacent Santa Rosa 

National Park to horseback riding, polo 

and, of course, the sport that put Costa Rica 

on the tourist map. 

“The fundamental of all these places 

is surfing,” says McBride, who notes that 

Witch’s Rock, one of Costa Rica’s premier 

breaks, is just 10 minutes by boat from Nihi 

Santo Tomas. “Bali was surf-centric. Nihi 

Sumba began because of the wave. Places 

in Costa Rica like Nosara and Santa Teresa 

are surf-centric – that was the catalyst that 

made them cool.” 

A few kilometres from Santa Teresa, just 

outside the town of Malpaís at the southern 

tip of the Nicoya Peninsula, Mexican 

entrepreneur Diego Dosal Stieglitz is 

crafting his own surfing utopia. Called 

Zunya (zunya.com), the resort community 

is set on a 32ha site with its own semiprivate 

point break. But Stieglitz’s vision 

goes far beyond waves, describing Zunya 

as a regenerative ecovillage that will be 

a hub of art, culture and health in the 

heart of one of Earth’s five Blue Zones. 

(The Nicoya Peninsula was recognised as 

a Blue Zone for the longevity of the local 

population.) “We are connecting with the 

community to learn as much as we can 

from their practices,” he says. “They have 

a lot of ancestral wisdom that they are 

sharing with us to understand what types 

of plants they use for medicine, what their 

diets are, what their customs are.” 

Zunya’s relationship with the community 

will be a two-way street, as Stieglitz plans 

to make art, science and other workshops 

available to locals and create a park that is 

open to the public. For visitors, Zunya will 

host multinight retreats centred on various 

concepts in literature, the performing arts, 

natural sciences and other subjects. The 

resort will also have all the requisite water 

sports and eco-adventures, as well as a 

diverse set of accommodations ranging 

in price from about US$90 to US$1,500 

per night. The property is currently home 

to three casitas and a collection of brandnew 

luxury safari tents, and villas designed 

by Alberto Kalach and other top Mexican 

architects will follow in the coming years. 

The community will be anchored by Kalach’s 

Serpent, a central gathering place with retail, 

workshop spaces and a toy library. 

Notably absent from Stieglitz’s plan is 

a major-brand hotel, a philosophy very 

much in keeping with Costa Rica’s subdued 

strategy. “Tourism in Costa Rica has always 

been about very intimate experiences,” says 

the country’s Minister of Tourism, Gustavo 

PHOTOS © ZUNYA 


PHOTOS FROM TOP: RYAN FORBES (2), BRICE FERRE 

J Segura, who notes that 94 per cent of its 

hotels have 40 rooms or fewer. “The vast 

majority of our tourism enterprises are 

small.” 

The country, of course, is not without 

its international brands and large 

developments. Peninsula Papagayo, located 

just south of Santo Tomas, is home to Four 

Seasons and Andaz resorts as well as the 

new Bahías, where the 13 private residences 

begin at more than US$6 million. Auberge 

Resorts will reopen its Hacienda AltaGracia 

retreat in the Talamanca Mountains in 

November, and Ritz-Carlton Reserve, 

Aman Resorts and the ultra-high-end 

developer Discovery Land Co are also 

rumoured to have projects in Costa Rica. 

Still, the country’s independent streak 

remains strong, with additional new 

entries including Origins Luxury Lodge 

(originslodge.com) in the northern 

highlands. The seven-villa retreat, which 

opened in 2018, offers nocturnal jungle 

tours, medicinal plant tours, chocolate 

making at a cacao farm and white-water 

rafting at nearby Tenorio National Park, 

as well as cuisine created by French 

Michelin-starred chef Jean-Luc L’Hourre. 

A couple of hours south of Origins, 

Nayara Resorts has transformed the resort 

town of Arenal into an eco-luxury hotspot. 

The property features three distinct 

lodges, the newest of which, Nayara 

Top: a villa rises on stilts from a green hillside at Origins; above: the spacious 

terrace of an Origins lodge 

A bird’s-eye view of Nayara, in Costa Rica’s 

Arenal Volcano Park 

Tented Camp (nayaratentedcamp.com), 

is an African-safari-style retreat with 29 

canvas accommodations set on a hillside 

looking out to Arenal’s active volcano. 

Costa Rica’s eco-luxury evolution can 

be traced to Pacuare Lodge and Lapa Rios 

Lodge, sibling resorts set along the banks of 

the Pacuare River and the coast of the Osa 

Peninsula, respectively. Lapa Rios (laparios. 

com), which opened in 1993, maintains a 

405ha private nature reserve in a region 

that National Geographic called “the most 

biologically intense place on Earth”. The 

lowland tropical rainforest is home to 2.5 

per cent of the world’s species, including 

jaguars, tapirs and scarlet macaws. 

“It’s what the world is looking for 

right now,” Segura says. “How do I go 

reconnect with nature? We’re becoming 

a sanctuary for people coming to recreate 

and recharge.”¬ 


BlackBook Back to the Future 

D E C O N S T R U C T I N G 

L U X U R Y 

Sonu Shivdasani, co-founder of 

pioneering eco-resort Soneva 

Fushi, talks about his lessons 

from the past 25 years and what 

meaningful travel means now 

Soneva cofounder 

and 

CEO Sonu 

Shivdasani 

Why have so many hotels and brands 

followed in your footsteps to incorporate 

sustainability in luxury travel? 

When I first visited the Maldives with my 

wife Eva, we fell in love with the place. I had 

never seen anything quite like it. Eva loved 

the untouched simple way of life there. We 

decided we wanted to open a resort like 

no other, while ensuring we protect the 

environment. We believe that a company 

must have a clear purpose beyond turning 

a profit. It must serve and contribute to the 

society in which it operates, and should not 

negatively impact the environment in which 

it is located. Hence our commitment to 

sustainability grew from this main goal, and 

our vision to create rare experiences for our 

guests continues to this day. 

We have since noticed that luxury travel 

is not about simply being around luxury 

and luxe objects. While the ultra-rich expect 

a certain level of service, surroundings 

etc, people are increasingly looking for an 

experience that is completely different from 

what they have in their everyday lives. 

Over the past few decades, we have seen a 

large demographic change with regard to the 

rich. Historically, the wealthy were the landed 

gentry, having inherited their wealth. They 

would spend most of their time in their large 

estates, where they had an abundance of fresh 

air, fresh food, space and privacy. 

Today, the rich live in densely populated 

capitals of the world, whether that be 

London, Paris or New York. What the rich 

of the past found rare is now commonplace 

for the wealthy of today, and what the rich in 

the past took for granted – the fresh food, the 

fresh air, time and space – is now rare. 

Sustainability and health are hallmarks of 

something that our guests rarely experience 

in their home cities. It is rare to enjoy oneself 

and not harm one’s body. It is rare to enjoy 

oneself and not damage the environment. It 

is a luxury in which we too seldomly indulge. 

Our guests come to us because they want 

to reconnect with the natural environment 

around them and to disconnect from their 

day-to-day existence, especially as we come 

out of the pandemic. Also, we have found 

that guests are now extending their stays: our 

guests on average stay between seven and 10 

days, with some of our guests even staying for 

up to three months or longer. 

When it comes to genuine sustainability, 

what are the key differentiators? 

Expense, we would argue, is not indicative of 

luxury. Rarity, however, is. The features in our 

resorts are not often found in other resorts or 

restaurants around the world. Sustainability 

and wellness are hallmarks of something that 

our guests rarely experience in their cities. It 

is rare to enjoy oneself while doing something 

positive for the environment. So we have 

combined apparent opposites and found 

ways in which they can live hand in hand. 

Sometimes the more sustainable option 

is the more luxurious one. For someone 

living in an urban environment, dining 

in the middle of a private lagoon, going 

ILLUSTRATION DAVID DESPAU 


Left: “The fully carbon-neutral 

island Makers’ Place studio 

recycles our waste plastic and 

aluminium into beautiful works 

of art and decor used across the 

resort,” says Shivdasani of Soneva 

Fushi’s innovative new programme, 

established in collaboration with 

artist Alexander James Hamilton 

(left in above-right picture) 

engagement. In fact, I am a big fan of the 

words of Henry Ford, who described his 

company as “an instrument of service rather 

than as a machine for making money”. 

To reinforce our Slow Life Core 

Purpose, in 2008 we created The Soneva 

Foundation. It is a UK-registered charity. 

Since then, with some Six Senses properties 

contributing at the time, we have raised 

$10 million from our resorts. A noteworthy 

aspect of The Soneva Foundation is how it 

has generated its funding. This is another 

strong belief that Eva and I have, which 

is that if we are to solve the social and 

ecological challenges that we face in the 

21st century, companies must make small 

changes that do not affect their profitability, 

nor negatively impact how guests perceive 

them. This is a strong belief of ours. The 

Soneva Foundation has been, importantly, 

financed entirely by these small changes 

that we have made – not by any donations. 

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JULIA NEESON (2), MATT PORTEOUS 

Much of the cuisine served at Soneva Fushi is informed by ingredients 

from the resort’s vast organic gardens 

on a sunset dolphin cruise or enjoying an 

intimate “no menu” meal from a Michelinstarred 

chef in a stunning natural location 

is rare. Dishes made with ingredients that 

were picked that morning become luxurious. 

Snorkelling above a swirling feeding frenzy 

of manta rays or meeting a local fisherman 

and learning how to fish sustainably are 

incredibly unique experiences. 

Our signature outdoor bathrooms are 

a luxury for the urban dwellers, most of 

whom cannot shower each day in a 100sq 

m bathroom among waterfalls and tropical 

plants while being able to look at the moon at 

the same time. I liken our 25-year journey in 

sustainability to the onion. Every time we peel 

off a layer and feel we have cracked the code, 

we discover something more we can do. 

What’s your personal Covid-19 lesson? 

I have been fortunate enough to have 

experienced many crises. “Fortunate” is 

a deliberate choice of word. The Chinese 

word for crisis is two characters: “danger” 

and “opportunity”. Over the years, I have 

come to understand these words of Lao Tzu. 

I have come to realise that these crises are 

opportunities to learn, grow and develop. We 

certainly have no control over the hand that 

we are dealt, but we have total control on how 

we play the hand. 

I have realised that if one considers a 

crisis in a positive way, one can always find 

an opportunity to learn and develop and 

make one’s life more enriching as a result of 

the crisis. My approach during this crisis has 

been to consider every challenge that one 

comes across each day. 

With initiatives like Soneva Namoona and 

Soneva Foundation and your just-launched 

Makers’ Place studio, this solution-based 

mentality is clearly part of who you are. 

We have believed for many years that a 

company must have a purpose beyond 

simply enriching shareholders and paying 

employees a salary, and that when one 

can do this, it achieves a high level of 

How will luxury travel change over the 

next decade? 

The needs of our guests have evolved from 

luxury to meta-luxury. It is no longer about 

owning luxury items that indicate status like 

premium whisky, luxury watches and the 

latest “It” handbags. Owning status no longer 

satisfies high-net-worth individuals. They 

have an increasing thirst for knowledge and 

learning. They seek discretion, special access 

and even surprise. They want meaning, 

authenticity and connection. 

Meta-luxury is about authentic conviction, 

experience, focus and depth, discovery 

and knowledge; and understanding that 

the industry is yearning for authentic 

experiences. With climate change and its 

effects so apparent, the world is striving for 

real experiences. Living in the moment is 

everything. To do that, you need to experience. 

When guests go on holiday, we don’t want 

them to watch television or do whatever they 

do at home – we want them to escape, to 

dream, to feel. 

Following the impact of the Covid-19 

pandemic, I also suspect that travellers 

will become more health-focused, 

more aware of nature and more 

sensitive to the challenges of the planet. 

– As told to Thomas Midulla ¬ 


BlackBook Land of Plenty 

Wild horses roam 

freely across Vermejo’s 

sprawling grounds 

H O M E O N T H E R A N G E 

On a spectacularly untamed stretch of land nearly the size of 

Luxembourg, Vermejo is a quintessential American retreat with an eye 

to the future. By Ann Abel 

For decades now, media-mogulturned-philanthropist 

Ted Turner 

has been one of the biggest private 

landowners in the United States. At 

first, his ranches in the American West – 

he once set out a goal of owning land from 

the Canadian border to the Mexican one – 

were private playgrounds for his family and 

friends. Eventually he opened some of them 

as hunting and fishing lodges, to fund his 

research and conservation work. 

And then, in 2016, Turner shifted to 

ecotourism, creating an offering that would 

appeal to all sorts of nature lovers, not only 

sportsmen. I was at his flagship, Vermejo, a 

Ted Turner Reserve, for the splashy launch 

of Casa Grande, a multimillion-dollar 

renovation of the early-20th-century estate 

house. The opulent architecture matched 

the scale and majesty of the Vermejo estate, 

which spans 2,367 jaw-dropping square 

kilometres in northern New Mexico and 

southern Colorado. 

“Ecotourism is on the rise all over the 

world,” he told me at the time. “Everybody 

is interested in the planet. It’s the most 

interesting thing we experience in our › 

PHOTO SEAN FITZGERALD 


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BlackBook Land of Plenty 

lifetime. We don’t know if there’s life on any 

other planet. If there is, we’re not going to 

see it in my lifetime. This is all we’ve got. We 

might as well enjoy it.” 

The funny thing was, for all the grandeur 

of that house, the guest experience was more 

along the lines of a scrappy dude ranch. 

Staff and guests ate from the same buffets. 

Trophy heads hung on the walls, and people 

were buying bottled water by the pound. 

Early guest feedback was not good. 

And so, they brought in the new 

managing director, Jade McBride, 

formerly of The Ranch at Rock Creek in 

Montana and Amangiri in Utah, putting 

him in charge of elevating and eco-fying 

the experience. 

What a transformation it’s been. As of 

last year, all the accommodations had been 

renovated, most of the trophy heads were 

gone, and single-use plastics were absent. 

When I visited again in May, the guest 

experience, service and dining were on par 

with any luxe ranch in the American West. 

Clockwise from top 

left: fly-fishing in 

one of the area’s 19 

fishable lakes; the 

reserve’s Costilla 

Fishing Lodge, and 

the snowcapped 

Sangre de Cristo 

mountains beyond; 

a suite at Casa 

Grande, once Ted 

Turner’s private 

quarters; an up-close 

encounter with the 

American bison 

Whip-smart guides lead guests on 

archery expeditions and horseback rides, 

while mountain biologists and conservation 

specialists lead morning game drives to view 

bison and other wildlife. Best of all, there’s no 

one else there. If you’re in Yellowstone, there 

can be 50 vehicles looking at one buffalo. At 

Vermejo, you get 50 bison all to yourself. 

The bison are a particular draw, as 

Turner has had a longstanding fascination 

with them. He brought them back from 

near extinction, starting nearly 40 years 

ago with just three at Vermejo. Now, says 

McBride, they aim to manage the herd 

to around 1,400. In addition to being 

interesting to look at, they reproduce 

quickly and are considered a sustainable 

food source – in evidence not only at 

Vermejo, but also across the other Ted 

Turner Reserves and Turner Ranches as 

well as his Ted’s Montana Grill restaurants. 

The commitment to conservation goes 

further than resuscitating one species 

and localising the supply chain. Between 

Vermejo and two ranches in southern New 

Mexico, Turner owns about 4,451 square 

kilometres of the state and 8,094 square 

kilometres across the US. The land is almost 

entirely under conservation management 

and is the cherry on top of his philanthropic 

and sustainability work, including the 

Turner Endangered Species Fund, the 

Turner Foundation and the United Nations 

Foundation, which he created in 1997 with 

a $1 billion donation and which put forth 

the Sustainable Development Goals that 

the travel industry is now abuzz about. 

In his 80s today, Turner’s thoughts 

have turned to his legacy. The move into 

ecotourism wasn’t so much a business 

decision as a pragmatic one. “The estate 

plan calls for the donation of the land to 

a charitable organisation for conservation 

science work and sharing that knowledge 

with the world,” says McBride. That status 

hinges on sharing it not only with scientists 

(like the state’s forestry service, which is 

using research done at Vermejo) but also 

with anyone who wants to make the trip 

to New Mexico to see it. If that’s what it 

takes to regenerate the land, then everyone 

wins. Maybe the bumper stickers on the 

ranch vehicles say it best: Save Everything. 

vermejo.com ¬ 

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AMANDA HOWELL, KIRK EDWARD GITTINGS, JEN JUDGE, SEAN FITZGERALD 


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Whether it’s just the two of you or 20 of your closest friends, these 

private islands offer seclusion with a side of natural splendour 

I T H A A F U S H I 

There are three villas, five pools, a full circle of white-sand 

beach, a dedicated entertainment pavilion, a fully equipped 

wellness area, multiple private concierges, a full brigade of 

chefs and much more: the largest private island in the Maldives 

is an utterly immersive experience. And that’s before guests 

dig into the offerings of the nearby Waldorf Astoria Maldives 

Ithaafushi, the resort which runs the island and offers up all its 

services and opportunities, from 11 restaurants to the largest 

fleet of yachts in the country. Swim with sea turtles and whale 

sharks in the morning, go on a treasure hunt with the kids in the 

afternoon and wind down at the end of the day with a private 

waterside yoga session – or, for the more indulgent, a 24kt-gold 

body massage and polish. ithaafushiprivateisland.com › 

PHOTOS RUPERT PEACE 


I S L A S A 

F E R R A D U R A 

Ibiza and the other Balearic Isles 

have been winning praise for their 

quieter sides in recent years, but this 

islet, set on the former’s north coast, 

takes the prize for equal parts sea, 

serenity and splendour. Mediterranean 

chic predominates across the sixbedroom 

villa, which incorporates 

both traditional local design touches 

as well as contemporary art by Spanish 

stars. A team of 24 staff are on hand 

to give exceptionally personal service, 

including a private chef, while the 

two standout spaces offer contrasting 

experiences: the 250sq m spa, with 

hammam and sauna, and the 750sq m 

roof terrace, with DJ booth and stage. 

Tropical gardens, a pair of pools and 

the option to arrive by sea or road 

(there’s an isthmus) complete the oneof-a-kind 

offering. islaferradura.com 

G L A D D E N 

P R I V A T E I S L A N D 

PHOTOS FROM TOP: © ISLA SA FERRADURA (3), © THE AERIAL BVI, BENEDICT KIM 

Cradled by an emerald lagoon and a swathe of lush island 

greenery and resting atop a powder-fine cushion of the 

whitest sand you’ve ever seen, the 280sq m villa, designed to 

sleep just one couple, feels like the sort of paradise Robinson 

Crusoe wishes he could have washed up on – all dark woods 

and endless sea panoramas. Some 32 kilometres off the coast 

of Belize on the edge of the hemisphere’s second-longest 

reef, life at Gladden is so blissfully isolated that even the staff 

– which includes a personal chef as well as a boat captain for 

excursions to nearby attractions – commute from a separate 

island. Their presence on site is indicated by a “privacy 

meter”, so guests can feel more free to create their own daily 

rhythm, whether it’s sunbathing on the rooftop terrace or 

enjoying a romantic sunset dinner. gladdenprivateisland.com 

T H E A E R I A L B V I 

Overlooking the 14 isles and blue waters of the Sir 

Francis Drake Channel, the view from Buck Island, 

a protected marine oasis, maybe the best way to 

understand what makes the British Virgin Islands so 

special. Add to that the tempting offerings of its latest 

(and sole) inhabitant, a dreamy five-residence retreat 

for 30 guests built to showcase the island’s natural 

wiles. The villas’ rustic yet luxurious fittings bolster the 

majesty of the surrounding biodiverse wonderland, as 

does the culinary concept, which draws inspiration and 

ingredients from the island gardens. An array of souland 

body-soothing activities, from ocean-water therapy 

to expert-led writing and hiking activities, round out a 

holistic feel-good programme epitomised by the petting 

zoo, where rescued zebras and ponies are all too happy 

to pose for pictures. aerialbvi.com 

– Claudia Whiteus 


CAPELLA SINGAPORE 

Sentosa

Style & 

Beauty 

A SEASONAL COMPENDIUM 

TO SARTORIAL FLAIR, ENCHANTING JEWELS 

AND HAUTE HORLOGERIE 

Otherworldly beauty: the 

white-gold Ciel de minuit 

necklace set with lapis 

lazuli, sapphires and 

diamonds paired with 

paired with sapphire and 

diamond earrings and 

the Galaxie tourbillon 

clip, with a blue 

tourmaline, blue and 

yellow sapphires, black 

spinels, spessartite 

garnets, diamonds, lapis 

lazuli, onyx, turquoise 

and three gold colours 

PHOTO ANUSCHKA BLOMMERS & NIELS SCHUMM 

P R E C I O U S T H I N G S 

S T A R S T R U C K 

The latest high-jewellery collection from Van Cleef & Arpels 

looks to the sky for inspiration – and reaches astonishing heights. 

By Avril Groom 

31 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 


Style & Beauty Precious Things 

White-gold Céphéide 

necklace and earrings, 

set with tanzanites, 

tsavorite garnets, 

sapphires and diamonds 

Heavenly bodies have awed mankind and inspired human 

art from ancient times, and jewellery, as an applied art 

form, has seen some of the greatest expressions. Indeed, 

precious materials like gold, silver and diamonds lend 

themselves to interpreting the shine and sparkle of the sun, moon 

and stars, those universal symbols of life’s rhythms. 

For Van Cleef & Arpels, always focused on the romance 

and poetry of jewellery, the skies are a rich source of creative 

inspiration. The brand’s latest collection, Sous les Étoiles, 

examines the heavens from a completely novel perspective. The 

designers seem to have journeyed into the further reaches of the 

universe themselves – which, in a sense, they have. Other houses 

have espoused space, but none has ventured quite so far when 

it comes to interpreting as jewellery the wonders of deep space. 

The designers had two special allies. One is noted French 

astrophysicist, Professor Isabelle Grenier, who first became involved 

with the brand when it created the Planétarium, the unique watch 

which features planets, represented by precious mineral spheres, 

revolving round a golden central sun in real time on discs of 

aventurine. The timepiece created astonishment and was followed 

by a smaller, three-planet-plus-diamond-moon women’s version. 

Sous les Étoiles is a more monumental project invoking the 

second ally – the extraordinary photographs taken by the Hubble 

and other deep-space telescopes of space landscapes, from galaxies 

to gas clouds, which form the inspiration for the shapes and, 

even more so, the colours of the new collection. Grenier believes 

the publication of such photographs and 

headlines surrounding space missions have 

caught jewellery clients’ imagination, and 

growing knowledge has increased fascination. 

Yet how does involving scientists sit with 

the house’s principles of poetic design? Very 

well, according to president and CEO Nicolas 

Bos. “Each collection is a new chapter of our 

adventure; we travel through time and space 

to unfold beautiful tales,” he says. “Astronomy 

is a familiar inspiration, from a star-shaped 

1907 pearl-and-diamond brooch to the 

dynamic 1950s Météore collection. In 2010, 

Les Voyages Extraordinaires high jewels 

drew on Jules Verne’s novels, and now we 

are renewing this historic theme with a 

modern and striking vision of space.” For 

this, he credits a mix of references: “nature, 

art, 19th-century astronomical knowledge 

and, now, Isabelle’s expertise, plus colourful 

deep-space photographs”. 

The house’s jewellers work with traditional 

materials and methods, each piece a mix of 

high-jewel crafts, of figurative and abstract. 

The Terre et Lune bracelet, for instance, bears 

a globe of mystery-set sapphires – incredibly 


hard to work on a curved surface – with a line of gold marking the 

equator and diamonds the continents. In contrast, the moon is 

symbolically depicted with diamonds, some inverted, suggesting 

the irregular lunar surface and casting a soft glow. 

The collection catches fire with pieces based on the photographs 

that Grenier presented to the creative team. “In the past, space 

photography was in black and white, and we see the stars at 

night, so most jewellery inspired by them is monochromatic,” she 

says. “Yet the stars are full of colour, as the pictures show. I also 

explained that the universe has a variety of simple shapes that 

lend themselves to jewellery – circles, ovals, discs, jets, and things 

change dramatically.” Bos adds, “Our designers imagined abstract 

forms of these shapes, less known than our figurative aesthetic. 

Space’s colour palette is infinite, and stones – with the play of light 

that enables them to change shade – can translate the nuances of 

the cosmos, truly revealing the relation between stars and gems.” 

They certainly do, from the swirling two-finger Iwamoto ring, 

named after a blue-green comet and containing a large octagonal 

Sri Lankan sapphire and a deep-green hexagonal Colombian 

emerald, through the extraordinary Sentier des Étoiles bracelet 

like a spiralling galaxy built of coloured sapphires, tsavorites 

and diamonds round a glowing 69.23ct cabochon Sri Lankan 

sapphire, to the magnificent Halley necklace with its geometric 

diamond-set tail and a 11.29-carat fancy vivid yellow pearshaped 

diamond at its heart. 

For her part, Grenier says she was “fascinated by the craft – so 

many tasks building very complex pieces that look simple. It’s 

beautiful when you can’t see the technical 

parts, and the less you see the more 

beautiful it is – like science when you don’t 

have to be told all the complex equations 

that go into a conclusion.” She found more 

parallels as she worked with the team, 

including the atelier head who is very into 

astronomy. “Scientists love novelty, and so 

do creators making new objects,” she says. 

“We all love to meet challenges and solve 

puzzles, though it seems unfair that you get 

a beautiful piece of jewellery while nature 

does not always grant a solution.” 

She hopes to continue working with the 

house, but, for the moment, her ideas have 

come full circle. One of the 150 items in the 

collection is the first-high jewellery version 

of the Planétarium, its swirling bracelet and 

bezel set with diamonds, pastel sapphires, 

spessartite garnets and black spinels, its solar 

system dial at the heart of a jewelled galaxy 

and, with its tiny turquoise bead Earth – the 

most poignant statement imaginable of our 

place in time and space. vancleefarpels.com ¬ 

PHOTOS ANUSCHKA BLOMMERS & NIELS SCHUMM; STELLAR FORGE: © NASA/ISABELLE GRENIER 

Clockwise from left: white-gold Hélios necklace set with one yellow 

sapphire, diamonds and pearls; a Hubble image of a stellar forge, one 

of the photographs from which the collection drew inspiration; whiteand 

yellow-gold Halley necklace – inspired by the eponymous comet 

– featuring one yellow diamond and white diamonds 


Style & Beauty Nature’s Bounty 

F R O M S E A T O S O U L 

Slither into it, swallow it or slap it on: seaweed is an almost supernatural 

substance with an astonishing array of uses. By Adriaane Pielou 

No one who has emerged from the sea 

to find their mosquito bites soothed or 

scratches healed will be too surprised 

to learn that the new star in high-end 

skincare is seaweed. Admittedly, seaweed isn’t the 

first ingredient you might look for when hunting 

for a new moisturiser or solution to a skin problem, 

especially if you only consciously encounter it when 

it wraps around your ankles as you’re paddling. 

But seaweed is possessed of mind-boggling power 

and versatility. Absorbing all the nourishing 

properties of seawater, and with a velvety rich 

feel, it is packed with the vitamins, minerals, fats, 

trace elements and amino acids that healthy skin › 

PHOTOS © THALION 


PERFECT MOMENTS 

WITH FINE HOTELS + RESORTS 

Unique opportunities, unforgettable events, once-in-a-lifetime 

adventures – Centurion Magazine presents a stellar selection of 

tailor-made experiences to transform any trip 

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FOR EXPERIENCES OF A LIFETIME

Style & Beauty Nature’s Bounty 

Scottish maker Ishga’s organic-seaweed 

Invigorating Body Oil, ishga.com 

needs – and in ten to 20 times the 

concentration any land plant contains. 

Seaweed’s laundry list of proven 

benefits only begins with these: improve 

circulation, detoxify the system, promote 

collagen production, clear up acne, reduce 

rosacea, heal and tone the skin, help 

with weight loss, work as a sunscreen, 

reduce sun damage, lighten age spots, and 

moisturise so extravagantly well it can 

leave even men’s shins feeling like silk. 

The miraculous marine multitasker 

has been ubiquitous in Asia for millennia, 

and the Second World War gave it a boost 

in the West, when shortages of food 

thickener saw food processors discover the 

wonders of seaweed-derived carrageenan. 

Since then, seaweed – a catch-all term 

for marine plants from minuscule algae 

to great, swaying underwater forests of 

kelp, and which exists in at least 10,000 

different types – has steadily been moving 

centre-stage. 

And beyond the realm of health and 

beauty, seaweed is ubiquitous in the food, 

cosmetics and homecare industries and as 

a fertiliser. Helping to give frozen yogurts 

their luscious consistency, lipstick glide on, 

and furniture spray adhere, seaweed has 

also recently been successfully trialled as a 

biofuel, wood-substitute for house-building, 

biodegradable packaging, effective antibiotic, 

and repair material for damaged heart tissue. 

Natural, sustainable and abundantly 

available, seaweed grows at twice the speed 

of any land plant. Kelp, for example, can 

grow by 60 centimetres a day. Farming – on 

ropes – requires zero use of any fertiliser or 

herbicide. Globally, unharvested seaweed is 

brilliant at absorbing and storing CO 2 

. No 

wonder scientists have hailed seaweed as our 

last great natural resource. 

Skincare Salvation 

In 2002, on Canada’s Pacific Northwest 

coast, Diane Bernard launched the world’s 

first certified organic, food-grade skincare 

based on fresh, raw seaweed. Shocked to 

discover a well-known European brand 

contained only traces of the seaweed it 

trumpeted, along with numerous additives, 

she started Seaflora with the mantra, “If 

it’s not good enough to eat, it’s not good 

enough to put on your skin.” Made in small 

batches by hand, and shipped worldwide, 

Seaflora’s masks and moisturisers contain 

at least 50 per cent – and usually almost 80 

per cent – seaweed. 

Given the many spas in Brittany have 

been devoted to thalassotherapy since the 

1960s, the longest-established European 

providers of seaweed-based skincare are 

French. Take Phytomer, Spa Technologies 

and Thalgo, the latter of which supplies 

20,000 spas in 90 countries. But many 

newer arrivals are Irish or Scottish artisan 

companies. The certified organic Irish 

brand Voya, for instance, with its irresistible 

new Angelicus Serratus Nourishing Body 

Oil. Or Rí Na Mara, launched by a former 

nurse who discovered seaweed’s potency 

while working in a dermatology unit. 

And then there is the marvellous Maiiro, 

helmed by seaweed evangelist founder 

Katy Rowe. Scotland’s Ishga and The 

Hebridean Seaweed Company both wildharvest 

from the pristine waters around the 

Hebrides. In England, the ever-inventive 

PHOTOS FROM LEFT: © THALION, © ISHGA 


Margate-based Haeckels sells grownto-order 

Bio Restore Membranes, skinsoftening 

under-eye patches. The Swedish 

brand La Bruket has products so fresh 

you can almost feel seaspray bouncing 

off your skin. And US makers include 

Naturopathica and Pursoma, whose 

beautifully packaged wild-harvested 

products now include Purbebe items for 

children, such as Pixie Dust. 

Full Immersion 

The Atlantic west coast of Ireland is swept 

by the purest marine waters in Europe, 

providing perfect growing conditions for 

a host of seaweeds. Guests at the Slieve 

Donard resort in Northern Ireland who 

want to sample a traditional Irish seaweed 

bathhouse – all glazed-tile interiors with 

deep claw-foot baths brimming with 

seaweed – get directed to the nearby Soak 

in County Down. Voya now runs the old 

seaweed bathhouse in Strandhill, County 

Sligo. Stride out onto the Irish shore where 

Wild Atlantic Seaweed Baths have set up 

deep wood barrels in the open air and you 

can gaze out across the ocean – head cold, 

body warm – as fronds undulate around 

you. For those who would rather sink into 

seaweed at home, you can order it fresh 

or dried from enterprising outfits such as 

Mungo Murphy’s Seaweed Co or The Irish 

Seaweed Company. Espa, Pursoma, Voya 

and Ishga, among others, all sell powdered 

seaweed for less messy baths at home. 

Pure Indulgence 

Possibly the most beautiful spa where you 

can sink into a seaweed bath or have a 

seaweed wrap or facial is in the Maldives, 

at the Four Seasons’ Kuda Huraa resort, 

which uses California’s Osea products. 

You cross by boat to the tiny island spa, 

where moonlit sessions are a special treat. 

In France, the 2,730km Brittany coast 

is dotted with thalasso spas, such as the 

Sofitel Quiberon complex, a favourite for 

weight loss. Seaweed-specialist day spas 

in less-expected locations include the new 

Thalgo spa in Cannes and Blythswood 

Square in Glasgow, which uses Ishga 

products. 

To Good Health 

Japanese and Korean women have 

traditionally used kelp creams or 

supplements to keep their hair lustrous, 

and JS Health’s Hair & Energy supplements 

have won a huge fan base for just this reason. 

Thalion’s new Super Energie supplements 

work as a detoxifier, as does Haeckels’ 

60%H2O Ocean Cleanse Concentrate. 

Is there no end to seaweed’s versatility? 

So far, the answer seems a resolute no. 

Recent research at the Kyushu University 

in Japan on one seaweed extract, fucoidan, 

showed it stimulated certain enzymes that 

can kill cancer cells. Good for our skin, 

the planet and our health? Now that’s 

something to think about as you lie in a 

bath of velvety fronds. ¬ 

Right: Voya’s 

Angelicus 

Serratus 

Nourishing Body 

Oil, voya.ie; 

below: Douceur 

Marine Soothing 

Moisturizing 

Cream by 

French marque 

Phytomer, 

phytomer.fr 

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: © VOYA, © PHYTOMER, © LA BRUKET, © VOYA 

Left: a custom seaweed 

treatment by Voya; below: 

La Bruket’s Restorative Algae 

Hand Peel, labruket.com 


Style & Beauty In Store 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

T O H A V E A N D 

T O H O L D 

This season, the must-have handbags range 

from classically elegant to straight-up glam. 

By Elisa Vallata 

7 

6 

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE COMPANIES AND DESIGNERS 


8 

10 

11 

9 

12 

1 Smythson Mara Ciappa 

business bag in crocodileembossed 

calf leather, 

smythson.com 2 Marni Marni 

Trunk bag in leather, from the 

autumn/winter 2021 Vol 2 

collection, marni.com 3 Louis 

Vuitton leather Twist PM 

bag, louisvuitton.com 4 Tod’s 

calf-leather Shirt Hobo bag, 

tods.com 5 Prada transparent 

sequin-embellished shopping 

bag, prada.com 6 Gucci Gucci 

Diana mini leather tote bag with 

bamboo handles, gucci.com 

7 Dior rhinestone-embellished 

Small Lady Dior bag, dior.com 

8 Dolce & Gabbana small 

Sicily bag in cordonetto lace, 

dolcegabbana.com 9 Chanel 

11.12 bag in metallic leather, 

chanel.com 10 Bottega Veneta 

Salon 02 mirror-paillette Moon 

clutch, bottegaveneta.com 

11 Hermès Herbag in canvas 

and cowhide leather, hermes. 

com 12 Miu Miu padded nylon 

tote bag, miumiu.com 


MAGAZINE 

V O N 

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Art & 

Design 

A CLOSE-UP ON THE ARTISTS, ARTISANS 

AND ARCHITECTS ENLIVENING OUR WORLD 

Xavier Mañosa’s 

creations often 

steer clear of 

classical ceramic 

design 

PHOTO © APPARATU 

P O T T E R ’ S W H E E L 

I M P E R F E C T 

B Y D E S I G N 

The handmade ceramics of Xavier Mañosa blur the lines between art and 

craft. As John McNamara discovers, that’s just what he intends

Art & Design Potter’s Wheel 

I 

am a ceramicist,” affirms Xavier 

Mañosa. It seems an obvious point to 

make for the man who runs a ceramic 

studio, but such is the way his family 

firm, Apparatu, blurs the lines between art, 

crafts, industry and design, the affirmation 

seems necessary. 

Apparatu pieces – vases, vessels, 

lampshades and more, created with an 

emphasis on irregular shapes and textures, 

and often with materials not usually 

associated with ceramics – are as at home 

in galleries and design fairs as they are, well, 

in homes. Which makes sense because this 

ceramics studio, based in Rubí, a small town 

near Barcelona, has a very different take on 

its traditional craft. 

Mañosa’s circuitous route to joining 

the family business came via a degree in 

industrial design and a stint living in Berlin 

that has undoubtedly affected his work with 

such a diverse sensibility. Even the name 

Apparatu is a (deliberate) mixture of “poorly 

written Catalan and poorly spoken German”. 

Mañosa was enjoying himself in 

the German capital but was eventually 

persuaded to return home, where his 

parents had run their pottery business 

for almost half a century. It was a gradual 

homecoming – he had been heading back to 

Spain to help them make some pieces while 

also producing small works in a “primitive” 

studio in Berlin to sell at a flea market. In 

the end, it was a combination of family and 

heritage that inspired the final move home. 

“In Berlin, I was procrastinating, not doing 

much. My mother said they were planning 

to close the workshop. From there, I decided 

to move to Barcelona.” Yet, he didn’t return 

simply with the idea of continuing the 

traditional business: he was determined to 

work to his own rules. 

What those rules actually are remains 

a bit mysterious. Talking to Mañosa, 

who leaps between subjects with great 

enthusiasm, it is very easy to understand 

the sort of creative energy that goes into 

his work – as well as the strong sense of 

family and tradition that both clashes with 

and complements his ceramics. Part of the 

dynamism comes from the fact that his 

parents still work in the studio. “We have 

arguments – more with my mother, as we 

have a more similar character. I’m happy to 

have an argument, she’s always very, very 

happy to get into an argument. Creative 

arguments,” Mañosa says. “Yet after a 

moment, the problem is gone.” 

He is used to winning these battles, 

including from a logistical point of view. 

His parents’ preferred marketing tool was 

the catalogue for many years. “They had 

the idea that you design something, you 

create a piece and reproduce it. I was never 

comfortable with that idea. For me, it’s not 

just looking at these objects – it’s focusing 

on the material and the process.” 

He embraces technology in these 

processes, but he is not necessarily 

beholden to it. For him, technology is 

Throughout his work, Mañosa experiments with different shapes, materials and glazes 

PHOTOS JARA VARELA 


Mañosa at work in his 

studio, just outside 

Barcelona, where he 

creates both works of 

art and more orthodox 

production designs 

RESPECTED BY GAGGENAU 

A mark of both devotion to craft and groundbreaking 

innovation, Respected by Gaggenau is one of the 

culinary world’s most prestigious prizes, chosen 

by 27 experienced curators from eight countries. 

Joining design winner Apparatu as 2021 recipients are 

Salumi Bettella (culinary), the Italian farmer of “The 

Quiet Pig”, and Elías López Montero (viticulture), the 

visionary behind Verum winemakers in La Mancha. 

gaggenau.com 

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: © APPARATU (2), SALVA LOPEZ 

simply a tool with which he can achieve his 

goals. But what are those goals? Is he artist 

or artisan? “What is art, what is design?” 

he answers, reverting to a common theme: 

between the lines. “What is what? These 

are the questions that you have. We have 

clients who want us to think in terms of 

design. That is our relationship, but we 

also produce materials. This is not very 

common, in my experience. They are 

having a conversation with the designer 

but also with the supplier. For me, it makes 

sense. As a designer, you will always go 

for what you want but that maybe is not 

what is best in terms of production. And 

you have to understand the production to 

make sense of every aspect.” 

Collaboration is also a clear theme of 

Mañosa’s work. He is currently coming to 

the end of a five-year project with Artek, the 

Finnish brand created by legendary design 

Alvar Aalto, that has been “extremely 

technical and a personal challenge”, 

although he is reluctant to divulge more. 

Other collaborators have included Marset, 

the Spanish lighting brand, and the Parisbased 

fashion designer Isabel Marant. 

And now he is working with the German 

high-end home appliance manufacturer 

Gaggenau, a meeting of minds that has 

led to small exhibitions of Apparatu’s work 

featuring in the company’s showrooms. 

“I love that, by doing this, it produces 

something physical,” says Mañosa. 

The innovative nature of Mañosa’s work 

was brought to Gaggenau’s attention by 

another collaborator, Isabel Martínez- 

Cosentino, the owner of art showroom 

Cosentino City Barcelona and a curator 

for Respected by Gaggenau, the German 

firm’s initiative that seeks out elaborate 

artisans, producers and makers around 

the globe who are quietly striving to create 

excellence in their field (see above). She 

recognised the originality of his work, 

and it’s precisely this quality that Sven 

Baacke, head of design for the brand, 

also sees in Apparatu, the Respected 

by Gaggenau design recipient for 2021. 

“What is impressive about Apparatu is 

while they push the possibilities of using 

clay for design purposes, they also respect 

traditions and history, leading to ceramics 

with authenticity,” he says. “I think 

Apparatu is about disconnection and the 

thin line between sometimes not knowing 

what they are doing, and occasionally 

some unusual things coming from the 

studio,” Baacke adds. 

However unusual, there’s no doubt that 

whatever direction Mañosa heads in next, 

his individual stamp will be writ large all 

over it. apparatu.com ¬ 


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The Rewilding 

Sunset over 

Zimbabwe’s 

Malilangwe Wildlife 

Reserve, home to 

Singita Pamushana 


Climate change and Covid are bringing a renewed focus on the conservation of Africa – not only 

through tourism, but philanthropy and investment in nature. By Lisa Grainger 

of Africa 


has become Zimbabwe’s leading high-end, low-impact 

safari destination, ploughing millions of dollars a year 

not only into conservation projects but the community 

around. 

Jones funded the trust, he says, because, like many 

conservationists, he realised that if governments didn’t 

have the will or money to save wildernesses, private 

funders had to step in. “The biggest threat in Africa,” he 

explains by phone from Malilangwe, “is the extinction of 

its creatures. Things are disappearing every single day, 

thanks to population explosion and land encroachment 

in areas that were formally wild.” 

he southeast of Zimbabwe is not an easy place in 

which to live. With an average annual rainfall of 300 

millimetres, temperatures of up to 50°C and poor 

soils, it’s not prime agricultural land. There is little 

industry and few jobs. And with international borders 

closed during the pandemic and only a trickle of 

vehicles passing through, desperate vendors have few 

opportunities to sell their little piles of tomatoes, corn 

and mangos from the roadside. 

In and around the Malilangwe Nature Reserve, 

though, life continues much as normal. Elephant roam 

the bush, stopping under marula trees for the fruit they so 

love, and (tagged, monitored) rhino browse the thickets. 

A team of dedicated rangers patrols the wilderness, 

alongside electric fences that separate wild animals from 

people. Between villages, a clinic is open, caring for the 

sick, testing for Covid and delivering babies. And in the 

vegetable gardens, women are weeding their beds and 

driving their cattle to a borehole-fed trough. 

That this little pocket of semi-normality exists is 

thanks to the Malilangwe Trust, the brainchild of Paul 

Tudor Jones, one of America’s most successful traders 

and one of its leading philanthropists. Since the trust 

purchased the former cattle farms in 1994, the game 

reserve, with the Singita Pamushana Lodge at its heart, 

For wildlife to be valued, though, he adds, Africa’s 

populations have to appreciate its value and 

benefit from its survival. “You have to take care 

of the people first, many of whose ancestors lived 

off that land,” he says. “So the wildlife has to have a 

consumptive value.” 

Given the rapid growth of the population across Africa 

– predicted to rise from around 1.36 billion people today 

to 2.5 billion by 2050 – the need to set land aside is more 

urgent than ever, he adds. When the philanthropist 

created the Grumeti Game Reserve in Tanzania in 2002, 

“there were 10,000 people on our 130km border,” he says. 

“Now there are close to 130,000.” Which is why he, and 

other international investors, have ramped up the speed 

of their work in Africa around national parks endangered 

by human encroachment – places where animals are 

being poached for food, ancient forests cut for furniture, 

brush destroyed for firewood and charcoal-making, and 

wilderness transformed into agricultural land. 

Having already invested in Zambia, Zimbabwe, 

Tanzania, Mozambique and Rwanda, alongside 

philanthropists such as Bestseller CEO Anders Holch 

Povlsen and the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, 

Jones is now involved in three big new projects: a reserve 

around the Kafue National Park in Zambia, and two 

tracts of land in Mozambique, a 200,000ha private ecotourism 

reserve and 130 kilometres of coastline, where 

he is working with fellow American traders Louis Bacon 

and Ken Griffin as well as Bedari founder Matt Harris. 

While these men are at the forefront of creating new 

reserves, they are following in the footsteps of others 

who have spent decades trying to make a difference 

to conservation and communities. In South Africa, 

the Getty family has developed Phinda into a leading 

private game reserve, funnelling profits through its 

charitable Africa Foundation. In the Maasai Mara, 

the Norwegian former banker Svein Wilhelmsen has › 

PHOTOS DAID YARROW/COURTESY TUSK TRUST; PREVIOUS SPREAD: © SINGITA 


PHOTO ROSS COUPER 

A tracker and 

giraffes in 

Malilangwe 

Wildlife Reserve, 

Zimbabwe; facing 

page: a silverback 

gorilla in Rwanda 

PLEASE CHECK THE LATEST GOVERNMENT ADVICE BEFORE BOOKING TRAVEL OR DEPARTING ON ANY TRIP CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 61

created a lasting partnership with the Maasai through 

his Basecamp Explorer camps. In São Tomé and 

Príncipe Mark Shuttleworth, the high-tech billionaire, 

has invested millions in revitalising the reefs and 

forests of Bom Bom, alongside its community. And 

in Mozambique, American voicemail billionaire Greg 

Carr has invested tens of millions of dollars into trying 

to restore Gorongosa National Park while uplifting its 

war-ravaged communities. 

Although nature lovers have been buying or leasing 

land across Africa for over a century, in the past ten 

years – and particularly since the outbreak of Covid, 

when people have had more time to appreciate the interconnectivity 

of humans, nature and climate – there has 

been a marked rise in investment in the natural world, 

says Justin Francis, the founder of Responsible Travel. 

“If there is a silver lining to Covid, it has been that the 

number of billionaires has increased, and they are far 

more aware of climate change and how that impacts 

their legacy.” In the UK, he adds, “we have previously 

thought of legacy in terms of a wing of a university or an 

art gallery. But in America, philanthropy has often been 

driven by landscape and nature. And that’s now catching 

on elsewhere.” 

During the pandemic, when safari camps had 

to close, that philanthropic funding has been 

invaluable, says Charlie Mayhew, the chief 

executive of Tusk Trust, a conservation NGO. Most 

wildlife reserves and national parks, he says, rely on 

tourism. (The World Travel and Tourism Council 

estimates that, pre-Covid, wildlife tourism generated 

more than $29 billion a year across Africa, and employed 

3.6 million, contributing more than ten per cent of 

Tanzania’s GDP and almost 15 per cent of Namibia’s.) 

“Without any tourism, and with so many people 

losing their jobs and livelihoods and food, there was a 

sudden spike in poaching for bushmeat, and logging for 

firewood and charcoal,” says Mayhew. “Thankfully, our 

donors could see what was happening and stepped up to 

the plate – some new donors, some corporates, some our 

old donors.” One new donor, Mayhew explains, gave £50 

million towards Covid-related causes “and £5 million 

for us, towards our Wildlife Ranger Challenge, where he 

matched every dollar we raised with one of his own. He 

realised that rangers on the front line were critical and 

Africa couldn’t afford to lose the protection they gave.” 

In spite of the heroic efforts of African rangers, the 

drop in the number of visitors on the ground means that 

there’s been a significant increase in the bushmeat trade 

“as people have struggled in some places to feed their 

families,” says Dr Kirstin Johnson, the UK director of 

the Africa-based NGO the African Wildlife Foundation. 

Mayhew says Tusk has also seen a rise in poaching. “When 

borders closed, and so moving ivory or rhino horn became 

very difficult, poaching went down. But it’s started again 

in Botswana and South Africa, which is worrying. Perhaps 

they are taking the opportunities to get in while they can 

– when fewer tourists’ eyes and ears are on the ground.” 

The few tourists who have been back, says Deborah 

Calmeyer, the CEO and founder of the American safari 

operator Roar Africa, which has sent 80 travellers back 

to Africa since September 2020, have been overwhelmed 


Oryx in Gorongosa 

National Park, 

Mozambique 

PHOTO CLIVE DREYER 

by the welcome they’ve received. Some of the thank-you 

texts, she says, have been “heartbreaking. They’ve said, 

‘My children are back at school thanks to you’ or ‘Without 

you we would not have survived’. When you get daily texts 

like that, you really understand the lifeline that tourism is 

for communities, camps and conservation efforts.” 

Because of that, she says, her clients have become 

far more aware of the impact that their travel has. On a 

recent trip, travelling on a private Emirates jet around 

Zimbabwe, Botswana, Kenya and Rwanda, “we offset 

150 per cent of the entire trip through our partner Proof 

of Impact and all funds went into projects on the ground 

in Africa, from solar panels, to fresh water, bridges to 

planting trees”. On another trip, they raised almost half 

a million dollars to donate to local community projects. 

Nicola Shepherd, founder of The Explorations 

Company, who has been taking wildlife-lovers to Africa 

for more than 20 years, says many of her clients got on 

a plane the minute they were allowed to travel, to show 

communities their support. For those camps not backed 

by philanthropists, she says, “the impact of Covid has 

been enormous. What you have to remember is that one 

person employed in Africa supports an average of ten 

people. So losing one job means no food for ten people, 

no education, no medicine. In areas that rely on bed 

levies and entry fees, tourism is essential.” Without them, 

she adds, many of the community projects supported by 

camps have also vanished: beehives, schools, clinics, › 


“Instead of development coming at nature’s 

expense, we develop because of nature” 

vegetable gardens, beading co-operatives. “For many of 

those people, Covid has been an utter disaster. Without 

tourists they’ve had nothing.” 

This realisation about Africa’s overreliance on 

tourism is why, Justin Francis says, so much new 

energy is being put into finding ways of creating 

funding. “In the past, tourism has been the one-shot 

solution for conservation,” he explains. “It has been 

the go-to methodology for generating the funding and 

jobs for local communities to make sense of protecting 

places. What the pandemic has made us realise is how 

vulnerable it is to be overreliant on one industry. Which 

is why there is a drive to diversify through other methods: 

things like carbon credits, biodiversity credits, the rhino 

bond and philanthropy. We have all realised that as part 

Zebras roam with 

Mount Kenya in 

the background 

of reducing carbon, we need to create carbon sinks. And 

that means preserving forests, peat, grasslands and 

savannahs. As well as cutting carbon, preserving nature 

has become a big part of the climate battle.” 

Ghanaian conservationist Fred Swaniker says 

the diversification of the wildlife economy is a 

key part of research at his African Leadership 

University’s School of Wildlife Conservation. Instead of 

looking at it through the lens of protecting a shrinking 

asset, he explains, they’re looking at how they can 

increase the stock of nature through environmental 

investing: “Instead of development coming at nature’s 

expense, we develop because of nature.” 

And that, he says, is the incredible opportunity that 

Africa has. “This is one of the last remaining parts of the 

world that has not completely lost its natural environment. 

If we can take full stock of this incredible asset, and invest 

more in that asset, it can create tremendous wealth for 

us as humans: think carbon, ecotourism, film, wildliferanching 

and other opportunities that help alleviate 

poverty. Africans do not want to cut down forests or 

poach wildlife. They simply want a livelihood because 

poverty levels are so high. So, if nature gives them that 

livelihood, suddenly we will want to give more space to 

nature. If someone gets paid for protecting a forest, then 

they will actually want to expand the size of that forest, 

not shrink it. The world underprices the contribution of 

nature in all its forms – clean air, water, soils etc – but 

these things are priceless. We want to put dollars and 

cents – the language that humans understand – on 

nature, so that we realise that it is in our best interests to 

invest more in nature, not to destroy it.” 

Swaniker has little time for those who criticise wealthy 

philanthropists buying up land in Africa. “If done 

correctly, nature can be a powerful contributor to GDP, 

employment, foreign exchange, tax receipts and income 

for communities. The bottom line is that, when done 

well, the wildlife economy can actually help to release 

some of that pressure governments are facing to provide 

basic amenities and opportunities to their people.” 

Which is why more people around the world need 

to go to Africa and fall in love with it – and invest in 

it – says Paul Tudor Jones. “The natural world there is 

one of the world’s most incredible assets. If I’ve learned 

one thing working in Africa it is that if you give Mother 

Nature a chance to breathe, it is incredible what she can 

do. If you protect her, she will blossom. You just have to 

give her that chance.” ¬ 

PHOTO © TUSK TRUST 


Back to Africa 

A whistle-stop tour of some of the continent’s most exciting and 

conservation-focused safari lodges, camps and experiences, 

from new openings and redesigns to old favourites. By Lisa Johnson 

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PARIS BRUMMER, © SINGITA, © JACK’S CAMP, © ASILIA AFRICA, CROOKES & JACKSON 

Angama Safari Camp 

EAST AFRICA 

It’s hard to imagine a more 

effective antidote to lockdown 

than Angama Mara (angama.com), 

a 30-tent camp “suspended in midair’”on 

the edge of Kenya’s Great 

Rift Valley, overlooking the Maasai 

Mara. In 2020, the company 

launched a sole-use mobile camp 

in the Mara Triangle; a sister camp 

is upcoming in Amboseli’s Kimana 

Sanctuary in partnership with the 

Big Life Foundation (biglife.org). At 

the foot of Mount Kenya, Segera 

(segera.com) is known for its 

raised villas, its artworks from the 

collection of owner Jochen Zeitz, 

and the community-conservation 

work of the Zeitz Foundation: a 

second class of rangers recently 

graduated from its all-female antipoaching 

academy. In the remote 

far north, Will Jones of Journeys 

by Design (journeysbydesign.com) 

recommends exclusive-use Kalepo 

(kalepocamp.com) in Samburuland 

as a launchpad for helicopter tours 

of the harsh but mesmerising Lake 

Turkana region, as well as “Greater 

Turkana” trips that take in Lale’s 

Camp in southern Ethiopia’s Omo 

Valley – an impact investment 

initiative of the company’s sister 

charity Wild Philanthropy. 

Asilia Africa’s Jabali Ridge 

Pre-pandemic, Singita Grumeti in 

Tanzania – the 1,416sq km private 

reserve bordering Serengeti 

National Park – was famed for 

its opulent accommodation, 

so redesigned Singita Sabora 

(singita.com) – a stripped-back, 

low-impact, “next-generation” 

camp – is a shift in focus. To 

the south, Asilia Africa flagship 

Jabali Ridge (asiliaafrica.com) 

is properly off the beaten track, 

overlooking the Mwagusi River in 

the gargantuan Ruaha National 

Park. Its spectacular design by 

Caline Williams-Wynn includes 

a four-way infinity pool that’s 

perfect for watching elephants 

among the baobabs. 

Mombo 

SOUTHERN AFRICA 

Sabi Sands in South Africa 

is known for its abundant 

wildlife, and Londolozi Private 

Game Reserve (londolozi.com) 

certainly has that, as well as an 

individuality that comes from 

fourth-generation owners the 

Varty family. In Marakele National 

Park, Alice Gully of Aardvark 

Safaris (aardvarksafaris.com) 

recommends Marataba (marataba. 

co.za), a privately managed section 

of the park, as a fantastic place to 

actively participate in conservation 

projects. In Botswana, Jack’s 

Camp (naturalselection.travel) 

has re-emerged bigger and better 

from its 25th-anniversary rebuild, 

but the 1940s campaign style is 

intact, and the setting, on the 

Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, is as 

haunting as ever. In the Okavango 

Delta, Wilderness flagship Mombo 

(wilderness-safaris.com) is another 

long-standing favourite, combining 

glamorous interiors with efforts to 

re-establish populations of black 

and white rhino. Chris McIntyre 

of Expert Africa (expertafrica. 

com) also rates the Great Plains 

(greatplainsconservation.com) 

camps here: CEO Dereck and 

his wife Beverly Joubert are 

National Geographic filmmakers, 

who have played a key role in 

relocating rhinos from South Africa 

through Rhinos Without Borders 

(rhinoswithoutborders.com). 

Singita Sabora 

In Zambia, Time + Tide lodge 

King Lewanika (timeandtideafrica. 

com) is the first permanent lodge 

in the Liuwa Plains National 

Park, the site of an annual 

wildebeest migration second 

only to that in Kenya. Nicola 

Shepherd of The Explorations 

Company (explorationscompany. 

com) recommends Green Safaris 

(greensafaris.com), which has 

introduced electric vehicles at new 

camps such as Chisa Busanga, and 

plans to do the same at Tongabezi 

Lodge near Victoria Falls. And on 

the opposite bank of the Zambezi 

River in Zimbabwe, Matetsi 

Victoria Falls (matetsivictoriafalls. 

com) is included in a new “Greatest 

Safari on Earth” itinerary offered 

by Roar Africa (roarafrica.com) 

and Emirates Executive Private 

Jet. It also takes in the Okavango 

Delta, the Great Migration in 

Kenya and the mountain gorillas 

of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National 

Park (from Singita Kwitonda Lodge, 

singita.com), with environmental 

investments to offset carbon 

emissions. 

Jack’s Camp 


PHOTOS EVAN SUNG; FACING PAGE: CRAIG McDEAN 

Cucumber with melon and smoked daikon, from Eleven Madison Park’s new vegetable-centric menu; opposite: chef Daniel Humm 


The Reluctant Revolutionary 

Chef Daniel Humm recently transformed his iconic NYC flagship, 

Eleven Madison Park, with a plant-based menu. But this courageous 

step is only the beginning of his new approach to fine dining 

By Bill Knott 


W 

Alice 

“When I was thinking about becoming a chef,” says Daniel 

Humm, “my parents told me ‘At least people will always 

want to eat’.” 

Leaning his slim, 193cm frame over a corner table in 

the dining room of Davies and Brook, his restaurant at 

Claridge’s in London, he smiles ruefully, reflecting on his 

travails over the past two years. “I never thought anything 

like this could happen. It was wild. Covid led me to a place 

where I almost lost everything. At Eleven Madison Park, 

I was facing bankruptcy. I had to sell what I owned to keep 

it going.” When he bought out his friend, business partner 

and maître d’ Will Guidara in early 2019, Covid was not on 

the menu, but Humm’s life has rarely stuck to the script. 

Born in a small Swiss town, he left school at 14 to pursue a 

career in professional cycling, only taking jobs in restaurants 

to pay for it; then, at 22, a serious cycling accident landed 

him in hospital, and he needed to reassess his ideas about life. 

“I realised I wasn’t good enough to be the world’s best cyclist.” 

A meal at renowned Swiss chef Frédy Girardet’s Michelin 

three-star restaurant near Lausanne persuaded him that 

cooking could become his “new sport”, and he excelled. He 

made his name in California, inspired in part by a meal at 

Sunflower bread 

rolls and butter at 

Eleven Madison 

Park; opposite: the 

restaurant’s elegant 

dining room 

Waters’ famed Chez Panisse in Berkeley – “actually, 

I thought a lot about her during lockdown, especially her 

work getting healthy food into schools. I have massive 

respect for her” – before, in 2006, being plucked by 

restaurateur Danny Meyer, of Union Square Café and 

Gramercy Tavern fame, to take over the kitchen at Eleven 

Madison Park, teaming him with Guidara: “We got on 

straight away.” 

There were wobbles, not least when, after the collapse of 

Lehman Brothers, the restaurant lost money every week for 

six months: “Some nights, just four guests showed up.” A 

four-star review from Frank Bruni in The New York Times 

changed everything, and they never had another empty 

seat. Meyer sold the pair his restaurant, Humm’s cuisine 

became celebrated around the world, a third Michelin 

star was awarded and, in 2017, Eleven Madison Park was 

proclaimed Best Restaurant in the World at the annual San 

Pellegrino 50 Best Awards. Humm should have been on top 

of the world, but he wasn’t: in fact, he was so disillusioned 

with life that he could barely leave the house. 

The latest lurch of Humm’s rollercoaster is entirely of 

his own making. On 3 May of this year, just as New York 

was emerging from lockdown, Humm announced that 

Eleven Madison Park would reopen as a vegan restaurant. 

“I underestimated the gravity of that decision,” he admits. 

“I didn’t fully understand what it would mean to get up 

PHOTO EVAN SUNG 


PHOTO © ELEVEN MADISON PARK 

on a stage and say, ‘Eleven Madison’s going plant-based.’ I 

just thought creativity should move in a different direction. 

I wasn’t trying to start a revolution.” 

His announcement was front-page news in both The New 

York Times and the New York Post, and sent shock waves 

through the world of gastronomy. This was a man famous for 

his honey-glazed, dry-aged duck with lavender and spices, 

whose latest book – Eleven Madison Park: The Next Chapter 

– lyrically espoused the joys of beef and venison, halibut 

and scallops, with a dozen recipes for foie gras. He had just 

lobbed a hand grenade into the rarefied world of high-end 

luxury dining, and simultaneously torn up his own rule book. 

Shocking though his decision was, Humm had been 

mulling it for years, and it had its genesis in his existential 

crisis four years before. Just as he and his restaurant 

were being showered with praise, he became preoccupied with 

the nature of luxury. “I asked myself, ‘In the context of Eleven 

Madison and Davies and Brook, what does luxury mean?’ 

I struggled with the answer for years.” 

“Eventually I decided that I don’t have a problem with 

luxury, as long as it’s about something unique and rare. 

A Broadway show, for instance, or a ballet, or an orchestra … 

they can never be cheap because they involve so many people. 

But they are unique experiences, culturally important, and 

they make the world a better place.” 

“And a dining experience can be a form of art: it’s definitely 

a performance, and it has all the aspects of what artists do. 

But the craft behind it has to be super-solid. Only then are 

there moments when it can be art.” 

He thinks, however, that many of gastronomy’s notions 

of luxury are outdated. “Take caviar, for example: it’s a 

farmed product, it’s not especially rare, it’s mostly from 

faraway places, and – if you compare it with what it once 

was – it doesn’t even taste that good. And big turbot … they 

don’t come in the back door of the kitchen now, you can 

pay whatever you want, they don’t exist any more. It became 

clear to me during Covid: this is an outdated idea of luxury.” 

That enforced break also opened his eyes to the city in which 

he cooks. In 2017, he co-founded Rethink Food, a non-profit 

organisation that partners with restaurants and other food 

businesses to prepare meals for food-insecure communities 

in New York and beyond. “At the start of lockdown, the 

number of food-insecure people in the city jumped from one 

million to two million, and our systems totally broke down. 

I turned Eleven Madison into a community kitchen, and we 

cooked more than a million meals for people in need.” 

“And these aren’t homeless people: they’re people with 

maybe three low-paid jobs who lost one of them. We work 

closely with the Queensbridge housing projects, just over the 

East River from the Upper East Side, and I saw a part of my 

city that I didn’t know existed. There are 15,000 people › 


“If it’s not Kobe beef or foie 

gras, what is luxury? Maybe the 

new luxury ingredient is time” 

Humm’s Milk and 

Honey dessert – a 

favourite at his 

London restaurant, 

Davies and Brook 

(opposite) 

and one grocery store, where the vegetable aisle is the size 

of the corner we’re sitting in. There’s an Amazon plant right 

next door, and they don’t even deliver to Queensbridge. 

That’s how messed up it is. Things just have to change.” 

One thing that has not changed is the price of a meal at 

Eleven Madison – $335, despite Humm eschewing 

duck, lobster and foie gras – but every meal now 

includes another five meals for food-insecure New Yorkers, 

all prepared in the same kitchen. 

How, though, can he create the same complexity and 

depth of flavour, the hallmarks of the classic French cuisine 

in which he was schooled, without using any stocks or dairy 

products? “To start with, that was scary. But I thought about 

all the go-to products that we use in a lot of recipes – fish 

sauce, milk, butter – and created a new pantry. We grow 

our own koji [fermented rice], for instance: I’m not saying 

it tastes like chicken stock, but it serves the same purpose.” 

Humm refuses to talk about politics. “That’s not my 

language. My language is food. Food is at the centre of 

so many issues: the way we farm, the way we eat, global 

warming, but I’m not an expert on those things. I know 

what I can do, and I know I have a platform that can make 

a difference.” 

At Eleven Madison Park, Humm’s new menu is a 

revolution; at Davies and Brook, as Humm admits, it is more 

about evolution. Dry-aged duck and roasted chicken are still 

on the menu, but so is a dish Humm developed at Eleven 

Madison – “the mother ship” – featuring broken rice, a cheap 

grain not usually associated with high-end dining. “Actually, 

I’m proud of serving it in a restaurant of this calibre, elevating 

a humble ingredient with the craft of cooking.” 

“If it’s not Kobe beef or foie gras, what is luxury? Maybe 

the new luxury ingredient is time: our version of ‘fish sauce’, 

for instance, which is fermented from several different 

mushrooms: we made it a year ago and only now is it 

starting to taste good. To me, that’s luxury. Only we have it, 

and you have to come here to eat it.” Eleven Madison Park 

is, as it has been for years, fully booked, but Humm knows 

the battle to convince his well-heeled diners and sceptical 

critics is only just beginning. 

And he seems ready for it. “At the beginning of lockdown, 

I had to get to a place where I was comfortable with the idea 

that I might lose everything, and it was so liberating, because 

then you realise that you have nothing more to lose and what 

really matters is inside of you, and you can create it again. 

Besides, the world doesn’t need another butter-poached 

lobster.” elevenmadisonpark.com; claridges.co.uk ¬ 


PHOTOS © CLARIDGE’S 


THE WHISKY 

CHRONICLES 

More popular than ever across the globe, the noblest 

of spirits has also emerged as a particularly successful 

alternative asset. Centurion takes you inside the latest 

happenings in the whisky world, from re-emerging 

distilleries in Scotland to new craft contenders in Japan, 

along with fresh perspectives on investment. 


The reawakened Port 

Ellen distillery on the 

coast of Islay 

SECOND COMING 

You can’t travel through time in Scotland, but the re-emergence of some prominent 

distilleries is bringing a taste of the past back to life. By Mike MacEacheran 

PHOTOS © PORT ELLEN; FACING PAGE: JAKUB IWANICKI 

Crossing the Sound of Jura to Islay, towards seaweed-strewn beaches, 

fields of barley and peatlands, it’s tempting to think of the ferry ride as 

a journey back in time. Whisky connoisseurs often speak of the island’s 

fabled history – its bygone malt mills, derelict stillhouses and increasingly 

sought-after single malts – as if everything that is sophisticated today is 

somehow tied to yesterday. 

The essence of this gut feeling is best experienced at the shuttered warehouse of one 

particular seafront distillery that was mothballed in 1983. This particular view frames 

Port Ellen, a careworn industrial lot that once produced a dram that is now amongst the 

most desirable in the world. To single-malt connoisseurs, its phenol-heavy character is 

almost luxurious beyond conception. 

Likewise, if you run a finger across a whisky map of Scotland you’ll find other holy 

relics of the past. From Islay to the country’s midriff in Falkirk, you’ll land on another 

mothballed distillery with an equally enviable reputation among modern whisky 

drinkers. This is Rosebank, on the flower-bedded banks of the Forth & Clyde Canal 

between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and a site that was abandoned in 1993. Whisky 

dreams were once born here, as they were farther north in the Highlands. If you 

continue tracing a finger up Scotland’s spine 

to the Sutherland coast, you’ll land on Brora, 

yet another distillery mothballed in 1983, but 

one still spoken about in revered tones. 

Ghost distilleries are part of Scotland’s 

psyche, written about by historians and 

regularly appearing at auctions, where their 

depleted stock is sold for record-breaking 

amounts to international collectors. But 

now there’s an unlikely twist, as a handful of 

sustainably minded firms are returning to 

the forgotten distilleries of yesterday, to bring 

them back to life. Brora, carbon-neutral 

and powered by on-site renewable energy, 

reopened this May as part of a wider £185 

million investment in Scotch from parent 

company Diageo, and its sister distillery, › 


2019, a 1972 bottle of 40-year-old Brora sold 

for a distillery record of £54,450. 

All of which means it’s a sound investment 

for brands to be resuscitated from the dead. 

“In a sense, consumers are committing as 

much to the story of the distillery as they 

are the whisky,” says Broom. “And, of course, 

there’s plenty of money to be made.” 

If it sounds like an unashamed pursuit 

of new revenue streams, then it’s also worth 

noting there’s more to it than reacting to a 

spike in consumer demand. At Brora and 

Port Ellen, for instance, master distillers now 

have access to all the production parameters 

of their predecessors. Acting as whisky 

archivists, they know the size of the stills, the 

distillation cut points and have tasting notes 

and historic samples to analyse. So alongside 

reviving historic, in-demand drams, they 

can also retrofit whisky samples to create 

new types of single malt, fusing ancient 

recipes with today’s cutting-edge know-how 

and technology. “That’s the really intriguing 

aspect for me,” says Broom. “It’s not just 

tapping into the past. It’s about creating 

a whole new range of spirits – something 

experimental and radical.” 

Port Ellen, and Rosebank, owned by rival Ian Macleod Distillers, are to follow 

suit in the coming years. 

Few experts have followed the story more closely than Dave Broom, a worldrenowned 

author of a dozen books on whisky. He’s been studying the distilleries 

for decades, and he credits both the growing global popularity of single malt 

and the feverish interest in what he calls Scotland’s “cult distilleries” for the 

remarkable turnaround. “These distilleries have built an incredible following 

since their closures, and there’s huge appetite for more spirit,” says Broom, 

candidly. “It’s like an artist becoming more famous after they’ve died. Brora, Port 

Ellen and Rosebank are the Van Goghs of the whisky world.” 

As Broom puts it, today’s connoisseurs are also akin to vinyl collectors cratedigging 

for test pressings. At specialist auction houses, interest in seldom seen 

whiskies from mothballed distilleries can see up to 100,000 bids per month from 

as many as 75 countries. It might sound beyond logic, but true whisky believers 

have kept such liquid memories alive, despite the parent distilleries shutting shop. 

For instance, a recent February sale by Whisky Auctioneer saw a 1921 private 

cask bottle of 64-year-old Dallas Dhu go under the hammer for £15,500. Dallas 

Dhu, which means “black water valley” in Gaelic, was mothballed in 1983 and 

has since been sold by Diageo to heritage authority Historic Scotland, which now 

operates it as a strange tourist draw. Similarly, as part of a Sotheby’s auction in 

“Brora, Port Ellen and Rosebank are the 

Van Goghs of the whisky world” 

The thriving commerce in Scotland’s 

whisky heartlands today is quite at 

odds with the rural backgrounds 

that first saw the distilleries built. Brora, 

first to showcase its new appearance with 

bespoke £600 tours, was created in 1819 by 

the Marquis of Stafford, with whisky used 

to pivot the local economy from agriculture 

to commercial industry. Its silencing more 

than 150 years later, after years of distilling 

a heavily peated malt, could have been the 

death knell for one of Scotch’s most iconic 

names. But, as Diageo discovered, the 

distillery overlooking the North Sea coast 

was left preserved as a time capsule – as if it 

were an open invitation for today’s distillers 

to re-kiln the fires. 

“When Brora’s doors closed for the last 

time and the workers walked away, the 

distillery was left exactly as it was, to the 

extent that ledgers were left open on the 

customs and excise desk,” says Ewan Gunn, 

Diageo’s senior global brand ambassador. 

“Most people who worked here have a 

memory bank of the flavours that were being 

created, and that was something we realised 

we were losing through time. So it was a case 

of now or never to reopen. If we’d not made 

this decision for another 10 years, all of this 

knowledge might have been lost.” 


SPECIAL PROMOTION 

But questions remain, foremost of all: can you even recreate the 

taste of the past? 

“The challenge is just how much people love this whisky,” says Gunn. 

“We have aficionados looking over our shoulder, making sure we live 

up to the hype and history, and that’s a huge responsibility. There were 

plenty of tears when the first casks were filled here, believe me.” 

NOTEWORTHY 

What to have. Where to go. 

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: © BRORA, © CROMLIX, KONRAD BORKOWSKI ; FACING PAGE: MIKE WILKINSON 

Master distiller 

Stewart Bowman 

rolls out a barrel 

at Brora 

While it’s clear Scotland’s whisky map is being redrawn, it’s 

not merely because of the return of lost distilleries. The 

rise in global appetite for single malt has seen the launch 

of several new start-ups, and their quirks are the result of the timehonoured 

battle between preservation and the forces of modernisation 

and profit. 

To the map, several newcomers can or soon will be added. From 

8 Doors Distillery in John O’Groats and the Moffat Distillery in 

Dumfries and Galloway to the Glen Luss Distillery and Port of Leith 

Distillery, there is plenty for Scotch lovers to get excited about. Then 

there are those which had false starts because of the Covid pandemic, 

including Lagg on the Isle of Arran, the stunning Ardnahoe on Islay 

and Edinburgh’s Holyrood Distillery, which is set to launch its first 

single malt in September 2022. There is talk of more, and where soft 

spring water is still drawn from lochs and malted barley turned by 

hand, it’s hard not to expect otherwise. 

“Consumers are increasingly interested in provenance and where 

their spirit comes from,” says Nick Ravenhall, managing director of 

Holyrood Distillery. “It’s difficult to talk about the complexity and 

character of a whisky if you don’t know where it comes from, and the 

lack of transparency and authenticity in blended whisky has helped 

drive the single-malt boom. For us, if we make nothing more than a 

nice unpeated malt, but one that fails to reflect Edinburgh’s distilling 

heritage, then we haven’t achieved anything.” 

If Scotland continues to be the world’s ultimate single-malt whisky 

destination, it helps that it knows how to adapt. There’s still the firesmoked 

drams of Islay and Jura. There are still the fully flavoured 

expressions of Speyside. There are still the grassier notes of the 

Lowlands. Now, to add to this picture are new histories, unexpected 

encounters and the sheer joy of the curious and the strange. That’s the 

enlightened craftsmanship that made Scotch whisky world-class to 

begin with. That’s the flag replanted in the ground. 

Rolex Reveals the Radiance of 

Diamonds 

Rolex is presenting the latest creations brought 

to life by its unique watchmaking expertise. 

Among these are new versions of the Day-Date 

36, adorned with sparkling diamonds. Diamonds 

are forever, and come to us from the very distant 

past. Formed in the depths of the Earth over more 

than a billion years, the diamond’s raw beauty 

is showcased through faceting, which brings 

out the graceful reflections in the stone. The 

gemmologist and the gem-setter work in harmony 

to reveal the diamond’s radiance. One selects 

the stones, the other sets them one by one into 

the dial, bezel, case or bracelet. These incredibly 

precise motions, passed from one generation to 

the next, are perfected over the course of many 

years. They are repeated several hundred times 

when embellishing the new Day-Date 36 and 

Lady-Datejust. The new versions of the Oyster 

Perpetual Day-Date 36 feature hour markers and 

alligator-leather straps in matching colours. They 

are coral- coloured on the 18 ct yellow-gold model, 

turquoise on the 18 ct white-gold version and 

burgundy on the watch in 18ct Everose gold. With 

these watches, the prestigious and iconic Day- 

Date 36 is reimagined in swathes of diamonds. 

rolex.com

JAPANESE NEW WAVE 

Three new craft distilleries herald an innovative era of whisky 

experimentation in Japan. By Shunsuke Matsuhashi 

For decades, the two biggest Japanese 

distilleries, Suntory and Nikka, have 

held a uniquely dominant position 

in Japan’s whisky world. Operating on 

different principles to those of traditional 

Scottish whisky makers, the Japanese titans 

distil multiple styles of spirit under one 

roof and then leave it to their blenders to 

craft the individual whisky expressions. (In 

Scotland, each distillery produces a single 

spirit, distinctive to each place.) Recent years 

have brought new creativity to the Japanese 

scene, and these three distilleries are at the 

forefront of artisanal production, ushering in 

a new generation of Nipponese whisky. 

KIUCHI 

Sake has been made at Kiuchi Shuzo in the 

Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, since 

1823, but whisky production started only in 

2016. The company is not new to branching 

out: it started making beer in 1996, and now 

its Hitachino Nest brews are some of the 

best-known craft beers from Japan. 

It was, in fact, the beer that led to 

the whisky, says Toshiyuki Kiuchi, the 

company’s executive vice president. He 

explains that approximately eight per cent 

of the beer production was ending up as 

waste. “In a plant like ours, with an annual 

beer production of three million litres, that 

means 240,000 litres were being wasted. 

Disposing of this liquid is costly and, above 

all, environmentally damaging. We have 

started to look for alternative solutions – and 

came to the idea of distilling.” 

An avid whisky drinker himself, Kiuchi 

soon found a suitable facility – a community 

centre, which was converted into a modern 

distillery – and then he began to source 

ingredients, focusing on top-quality barley, 

with locally produced wheat and rice added 

to the mixture, all to reflect the local terroir. 

“Our goal,” Kiuchi says, “is not to mimic 

Scottish whisky, but to produce our own 

Japanese whisky.” 

“The rice adds this daiginjyo-like flavour to 

it,” Kiuchi explains, referring to a particularly 

nuanced and delicate bottling of sake. “And 

what wheat adds is a particular richness and 

acidic fruitiness. Non-peat is what we are 

aiming for, but the yeast adds a hint of peatlike 

flavour. It is absolutely fascinating to see 

how every ingredient shifts the tastes and the 

harmony they cumulatively create. Having to 

discover all of these was already a great step 

for us. It is just simply exciting to see how it 

will age at this stage of the game – we feel a 

bit nervous as well, to be honest.” 

Aiming for an annual output of 300,000 

to 400,000 bottles, the journey at Kiuchi may 

have just begun, but with such a sparkling 

track record with sake and beer, the future 

looks bright indeed. kodawari.cc 

WAKATSURU 

Sake production also dates back to the 

19th century at Wakatsuru, set in Toyama 

Prefecture on the country’s west coast. 

Surrounded by the Tonami Plain, a region 

filled with vast rice fields, the firm first 

started making whisky in 1953 amid the 

severe rice shortages that followed the war. 

Sunshine Whisky was the first product 

and proved quite popular, but as Japan’s 

whisky consumption gradually declined 

across the 1980s, mirroring much of the rest 

of the world, production slowed to a trickle. 


PHOTOS HIDETAKA YAMADA 

The turning point came when Takahiko 

Inagaki, the fifth-generation director of 

the firm and the current CEO, discovered a 

55-year-old whisky bottle produced by his 

great-grandfather sitting in the corner of 

warehouse. “The flavour was so rich and had 

this inexplicable depth that transported me 

to the time of my great-grandfather. That was 

the moment when I became certain that that 

was exactly what I wanted to do. Creating my 

own whisky that will move people in 10 years’ 

time – or even much later in the future.” 

Inagaki launched a crowdfunding 

campaign in 2016 to renovate the facility 

while keeping the integrity of the original 

design – and showcasing the pot still, 

which might well be the world’s first cast 

pot still made out of copper. (Most other 

pot stills around the globe are fabricated 

from sheets of copper.) 

The surrounding region produces 90 per 

cent of domestic copperware, so Inagaki, 

who grew up in the region, knew just who 

to approach for his unusual request: Oigo 

Seisakusho, a copperware manufacturer 

founded more than 300 years ago. 

“Ordering from Forsyths in Scotland might 

have been an obvious choice,” concedes 

Inagaki, “but the wait list was long – it 

would have taken at least two years until 

delivery. We also knew applying a standard 

hammering technique wouldn’t have been 

a suitable choice for such intricate shape 

and structure. So, we decided to approach 

a master of copper casting, known for his 

intricate temple-bell making.” 

The process was complex because copper 

normally used for casting contains eight 

per cent tin, and the distillers were unsure 

how it might affect the distilling process 

and ultimately the flavour of their whisky. 

Experiments were conducted to find just 

the right alloy, and “the results exceeded 

our expectations”, says Inagaki. First used 

in 2019, the new still, known as Zemon, 

“is just the beginning” for the Wakatsuru 

Saburomaru Distillery. It is now testing new 

wooden washbacks. “At the distilleries on 

Islay, they are all using wooden washbacks, 

which create distinctive, unique flavours,” 

says Inagaki. “We are trying on Islay-style 

peated malt right now.” wakatsuru.co.jp 

GAIAFLOW 

The Scottish isle of Islay has also been 

influential for Gaiaflow, whose managing 

director, Daiko Nakamura, visited Kilchoman 

distillery on Islay in 2012 in what proved to 

From top: Wakatsuru Distillery; 

pot stills at Kiuchi; an array 

of Kiuchi bottles ready for 

tasting; facing page: wooden 

washbacks at Gaiaflow 

be a life-changing experience. Impressed 

with the small-scale but nevertheless cuttingedge 

operation, Nakamura – who was at 

the time running a precision equipment 

manufacturer founded by his grandfather in 

his hometown of Shizuoka – entrusted his 

business to a relative and embarked on the 

journey of creating a one-of-a-kind whisky. 

One of Nakamura’s founding principles is 

to link his whisky with local industries. Four 

out of eight washbacks he uses, for instance, 

are made of cedarwood sourced from the 

local forests. “A young washback made of 

cedar will require some time to mature 

and be ready for fermentation. But we are 

convinced that it will be a perfect match with 

local lactic acid bacteria that grows in the 

same water – and it is the very same water 

used for our whisky and that the cedar trees 

absorb,” explains Nakamura. “The person 

who made the washbacks for us also said it 

should have a longer lifespan than the ones 

made with American Douglas fir. It’s all 

still just a theory,” he smiles, “but we’re very 

hopeful that this combination will yield a 

unique taste of the region.” 

It is not just washbacks that are unique: 

there are piles of firewood strewn across the 

distilling floor because the stills are directfired, 

rather than machine-controlled, as 

they have become elsewhere. (For example, 

Suntory’s Yamazaki and Hakushu distilleries 

heat their stills over gas, and Yoichi distillery 

over coal.) “In Scotland, they used firewood 

before shifting to coal, but I couldn’t find 

any literature on it, so we had to start from 

scratch. I asked my friends who run a bakery 

in Okinawa if wood was safe to use in the 

first place, and they said we should definitely 

go for it. They said the quality of the fire is 

totally different with wood,” Nakamura says. 

This difference seems to translate to the 

spirit: there is a clear difference in taste 

compared with the distilled whisky from the 

distillery’s gas-powered, indirectly heated pot 

still named “Pot still K”, which was purchased 

from the Karuizawa whisky distillery that 

closed down about 10 years ago. The gasdistilled 

whisky was light and fruity, while 

the whisky made in the wood-fired pot still, 

named “Pot still W”, is heavier and sweeter, 

with a distinctively smoky flavour. 

Nakamura bottled the different spirits as 

Shizuoka Prologue K in 2020 and Shizuoka 

Prologue W in June 2021, the latter after 

three years of ageing. “If we can be added 

to the great lineage of Japanese whiskymaking 

we greatly admire and be enjoyed 

as a one of its great variations, that would 

make us extremely happy and proud,” 

Nakamura beams. “We are determined to 

continue experimenting with finding ways 

to reflect our surroundings and its terroir.” 

gaiaflow.co.jp 


LIQUID 

INVESTMENT 

Prices for whisky are at an all-time high – and still growing. 

Here’s what distillers, merchants, auctioneers and collectors say about 

this rise and whether it will continue 

By Brian Noone 

Whisky is booming. Collectibles of all sorts have 

flourished during the pandemic, but single-malt 

whisky is on its way to redefining what success looks 

like. Gerry Tosh, the director of rare whiskies at Whyte & Mackay, 

a 177-year-old Scottish firm whose portfolio of single malts 

includes Dalmore and Jura, frames it this way: “Twenty years ago, 

a distillery would put out a release with 200 bottles, hoping to 

be able to convince people to buy it. Now, you make something 

with 200 bottles and there’s 200,000 people trying to buy it.” 

Tosh smiles as he says this – and quite rightly: the whisky industry 

over the past 20 years, and particularly over the past decade, has 

gone from a backwater British boys’ club to a cosmopolitan global 

industry, a rising tide that has, with few exceptions, lifted all boats. 

This is particularly evident on the secondary market, where 

whisky as an asset class has performed astonishingly well. If you 

bought intelligently in 2010, those bottles might now be worth 

500 per cent more today. Not quite Bitcoin levels of return, but 

much better than gold, which is up around 50 per cent over 

the same period. And as Andy Simpson from Rare Whisky 101, 

a British index, points out: “The pandemic has shown us that 

physical assets, such as whisky, have become ever more popular. 

When combined with a growing global consumer thirst for single 

malt, which shows no signs of slowing, we see no reason why 

prices will not continue to rise for the right bottles.” 

Simpsons’ careful phrasing – the right bottles – is key to 

understanding the global market for whisky both now and in the 

future, and why there is so much optimism across the industry, if 

also a few warning signs. 

“The rare-whisky market isn’t as mature as that of watches, 

jewellery and cars,” says Jonathan Driver, managing director for 

private clients at William Grant & Sons, another long-established 

whisky maker whose brands include Balvenie and Glenfiddich. 

Which is why, he says, “the landscape of whisky-collecting does 

have a ‘Wild West’ feel about it”, a sentiment – and a phrase – 

shared by many across the industry. And yet the whisky market 

is not without some guiding principles. “Rarity, age, history and 

quality – these are what collectors are looking for,” says Jonny 

Fowle, senior whisky specialist at Sotheby’s, the auction house 

that has in recent years come to dominate high-end whisky sales. 

These are, by and large, the same qualities that collectors of 

watches, jewellery and cars are seeking. 

There are also some broader market trends that are worth 

understanding. Isabel Graham-Yooll, director at Whisky.Auction, 

an online platform, explains that there is a “similar curve of every 

whisky release: it peaks up in price initially [on the secondary 

market], then it settles back down again. And then it actually dips 

quite often and plateaus for ages before it starts creeping up. And 

as it creeps up, it will plateau at various points. This pattern is the 

same for every whisky. The differences are in scale and in time 

frame – it can take months or 15 years.” 

Like any other asset class, the devil is in the details. Whisky 

differs from other spirits like cognac and rum because the 


classification system and long history of whisky regulation go a 

long way towards ensuring transparency and authenticity. “The 

beauty of single-malt whisky is that it is easy to understand, which 

means that people can come to it quicky,” says Driver. The years 

on the labels – 12, 18, 30 – display the age of the youngest spirit 

in the bottle. Old age doesn’t always imply high quality, but there 

is usually some correlation. And, as Driver continues, “Collectors can 

grasp the potential of the total landscape and then go deep into this 

exciting and infinite world.” 

These relatively low barriers to entry have succeeded in 

attracting a large, and growing, global following for whisky over 

the past decades. Geoff Kirk, head of private clients at Macallan, 

explains that the “wide range of price points allows people to enter 

at a level they are comfortable with. Individuals can easily begin 

their collection by purchasing from a local retailer and expand from 

there.” He also notes that there is, compared to wine and cars, “less 

of a challenge around the space and complexity for storage”. 

History and provenance play a not-always-straightforward 

role in the market. Stalwarts like Macallan, Yamazaki 

and Dalmore command significant prices for most of 

their bottlings – but not all of them. Speaking of Macallan, Andy 

Simpson from Rare Whisky 101 says, “The brand has further 

extended market share over the past year, but investment values 

have slipped. In part, we believe the sheer volume of non agestatement 

releases may have confused the market.” He further 

observes that the “recent Macallan Red Collection is a great 

example of where the brand works very well, leveraging the value 

of its aged stocks”. 

So if the labels can’t always be trusted, what should collectors 

rely upon? “Buy what you like,” says Sukhinder Singh, co-founder 

of the world’s largest online whisky retailer, The Whisky Exchange, 

and a prominent collector himself, with many thousands of bottles. 

“Over time, the market will sort itself out, and the main question 

is always: how good is the liquid?” The only way to determine that 

for yourself, says Singh, is to develop your palate and try as many 

whiskies as possible. 

It’s self-interested advice for Singh, whose site and related 

ventures had a turnover last year of £72 million and which he has 

just sold to Pernod Ricard, but even those not directly invested in 

selling individual bottles agree that having one’s own taste is the 

key. “People who have done the best in the category are those who 

have invested the time to understand it deeply,” says Jonny Fowle 

of Sotheby’s. “Pleasure combined with investment.” Graham-Yooll 

at Whisky.Auction agrees, explaining that “if the market goes 

pear-shaped, oh well. You can always drink it. But if you’re an 

informed consumer, then there’s a good chance someone else will 

like it too.” 

The latest major development in the whisky world is purchasing 

individual casks, often through an intermediary company. The 

gamble here is significant: what if the cask is mediocre and the 

liquid inside doesn’t age particularly well? Distilleries mitigate 

this risk by blending casks together for their bottlings, an option 

that individuals don’t have. 

There is also the gap between retail price and wholesale 

price. The difference can be vast and can significantly limit the 

resale value of casks – as it has during previous cask bubbles 

in the 1990s and the early 20th century. It was with bridging 

this gap in mind that Rupert Patrick left Diageo in 2014 to set 

up WhiskyInvestDirect, an online platform for trading casks 

at wholesale prices. Aimed squarely at investors – you can’t 

actually drink the whisky, which is stored in casks in the distillers’ 

warehouses – it offers a way to sidestep the vagaries of the 

collecting world. “Retail investors who started with us five or six 

years ago have had a fantastic return,” says Patrick, “on average 

seven, eight, nine per cent annual growth in their investment”. 

The business is still in its fledgling state – it has about 13 million 

litres of whisky on the platform, a fraction of the approximately 

three billion litres of maturing spirit currently stored in Scotland 

– but Patrick, like the rest of the industry, is infectiously 

optimistic about whisky’s potential for growth. “At Diageo, I was 

head of emerging markets,” he explains, “and when GDP grew, 

Scotch-drinking grew at almost the same rate reliably.” He notes 

that there is much of the globe not yet drinking whisky and the 

potential markets for expansion – India, Mexico, South America, 

Southeast Asia – are primed for growth. 

In the end, though, the market seems destined to rise and fall 

with consumer tastes. If the whisky is good, people will drink it 

and, as Kirk of Macallan says, “Similar to collectible wine, the 

more that is consumed the more the scarcity increases”. Best, then, 

to buy two bottles – one to drink and one to save – and with luck, 

the latter will be able, after a few years, to pay for them both. ¬ 

“If the market goes pear-shaped, oh well. You can always 

drink it. But if you’re an informed consumer, then there’s a 

good chance someone else will like it too” 

– Isabel Graham-Yooll, director at Whisky.Auction 


Chalet in Kirchberg, Austria 

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©2021 Engel & Völkers. All rights reserved. Each brokerage independently owned and operated. Engel & Völkers and its independent 

License Partners are Equal Opportunity Employers and fully support the principles of the Fair Housing Act.

CENTURION IN FOCUS 

PROPERTY TIMES 

THE LOWDOWN ON REAL ESTATE AROUND THE WORLD: WHAT’S HOT, WHERE TO LOOK AND WHEN TO INVEST 

A jaw-dropping 

Central Park view from 

a private residence at 

Aman’s NYC outpost 

Staying Power 

As the global market rediscovers its mojo, Peter Swain 

salutes the sectors and cities that are forging ahead 



Endless ocean views from a private residence at One&Only Kéa lsland 

LIVED-IN LUXE 

Home Sweet 

... Hotel 

Leading hostelry marques are offering 

remarkable residences that combine the ease 

and comfort of hotel living with all the privacy 

of one’s own four walls 

It’s all about carefree living. 

A private home attached 

to, and benefiting from, the 

amenities of a world-class 

hotel is a seductive proposition 

for those with an existing 

portfolio of residences. They 

can enjoy weeks living in the 

lap of fully serviced luxury 

whenever they want, and, 

when absent, make healthy 

rental yields, all managed by 

the on-site hotel. 

The very embodiment 

of hospitality excellence, 

Aman (aman.com) is this 

year launching its first urban 

Residences worldwide in New 

York’s iconic Crown Building 

on 5th Avenue and 57th Street. 

Twenty-two Jean-Michel 

Gathy-designed one- to sixbedroom 

apartments, many 

featuring outdoor terraces and 

heated pools, demonstrate the 

brand’s continuing journey 

into the world of private 

homes. Amanzoe in the 

Peloponnese already has 11 

private residences including 

Villa 20, a nine-bedroom, 

six-pool complex, possibly the 

most lavish single branded 

residence worldwide. With 

spectacular sea views, onsite 

spa, pools, restaurants, 


Beautiful contemporary apartments at The Broadway, with exclusive residence 

facilities and stunning views towards historic Westminster. 

You could choose no better place to be, brought to life through Orchard Place 

at The Broadway, a new city culture, and a contemporary wellness destination 

that is set to reinvigorate Westminster. 

This blended lifestyle ecosystem, curated with stylish simplicity, will be unlike any 

neighbourhood in London, creating an enriched every day for the modern city. 

Live. Work. Move. Shop. Eat. Play. 

Apartments from £1.7m* 

*Prices correct at time of publication 

FOR ALL ENQUIRIES 

enquiries@northacre.com | +44 (0) 207 349 8000 

thebroadwaylondon.com


A Mandarin Oriental 

penthouse residence 

overlooks Barcelona’s 

Passeig de Gràcia 

“Most buyers already stay with us,” says Four Seasons VP Paul White, 

“so allowing us to curate their lifestyle is a natural extension of that” 

concierge and housekeeping 

services, five new plots have 

joined the fold. 

Owners of Residences 

at one of seven Mandarin 

Orientals (mandarinoriental. 

com) worldwide enjoy similarly 

sublime facilities. “Post-Covid, 

time-poor UHNWIs really want 

everything set up for them by 

a five-star hotel,” says MO’s 

Adelina Wong Ettelson. The 

new project on Hanover Square 

in London’s Mayfair features 

80 apartments a short stroll 

from Bond Street and a host of 

Michelin-starred restaurants. 

Most such residences are “colocated” 

with a hotel but, in 

common with others, MO is 

also establishing standalone 

residences. On the bustling 

Passeig de Gràcia, the new 

Barcelona property is five 

blocks from the hotel, and of 

the 34 residences, the doubleheight 

John Pawson-imagined 

Grand Penthouse, with 

360° views, is the jewel in 

the crown. 

Four Seasons (fourseasons. 

com) has 4,200 individual 

private residences across 

44 sites in 19 countries, 

with more in development. 

According to VP Paul White, 

it’s all about “location, 

architecture, design, amenities 

and brand. Most buyers 

already stay with us, so 

allowing us to curate their 

lifestyle is a natural extension 

of that.” The group’s recently 

opened Beverly Hills project 

has 59 units and an Imax 

cinema: “LA is a global 

gateway, so this is a very 

‘sexy’ market.” The Bangkok 

scheme is the brand’s biggest 

to date with 366 residences 

in a 73-storey tower, while 

at the other extreme, the 

new Cartagena hotel, based 

around a historic theatre, has 

only 14 homes. “We’re skating 

to where the puck is going,” 

says White, “unlocking value 

in places where our customers 

want to be.” 

Another hotel group 

expanding into this increasingly 

modish market is Raffles 

(raffles.com), of Singapore fame. 

As featured in five James Bond 

movies and of particular interest 

to the diplomatic corps, the 

Grade II-listed Old War Office in 

the heart of London’s Whitehall 

is being converted into a hotel 

and 85 one- to five-bedroom 

private residences. 007 himself 

would surely appreciate the 

gym, spa and private cinema, 

as well as seven private lounges 

and nine on-site restaurants. 

Other luxe hotel brands 

capitalising on their 

global status include Ritz- 

Carlton, Waldorf Astoria, 

Rosewood and Fairmont. 

Sol Kerzner’s One&Only 

(oneandonlyresorts.com) will be 

up to five private residence 

schemes when its Kéa Island 

site in the Cyclades opens in 

a year or so. An hour from 

Piraeus by ferry or a brief 

helicopter hop from Athens 

airport, two- to six-bedroom 

contemporary villas, all clean 

lines and floor-to-ceiling 

glass, are being built on a 

hillside overlooking the 

Aegean. In what could be a 

mantra for the 2020s and an 

encapsulation of Branded 

Residences themselves, 

One&Only is promising 

“hassle-free living”. 

The idyllic terrace of one of Raffles’ Old War Office Residences in London 



The fishbowl 

swimming pool 

blends into the 

azure Caribbean in 

an Albany Marina 

Residence in the 

Bahamas 

SHORE LEAVE 

Ports 

of Call 

Overlooking marinas from Cyprus to the 

Caribbean, a raft of exciting new homes entices 

with sleek, cosmopolitan designs 

The infinity pool, and the sea beyond, at a Silversands villa in Grenada 

Post-pandemic, sales 

of harbour-side 

apartments around the 

Mediterranean and 

Caribbean are on the crest of 

a wave as more superyachts 

and mid-sized craft hit the 

high seas. At the 230-berth 

Portonovi (portonovi.com) 

marina in Montenegro, the 

six ready-to-move-into twofloor 

Sky Villas, each with 400 

square metres of inside living 

space and 200 square metres 

of terraces and infinity pool, 

are the pick of the waterside 

offerings. “For these, we’re 

definitely looking to the jet-set 

crowd,” says sales director 

Jeff Schmitz. Some of his 

prospective buyers may be 

staying at the new onsite 

One&Only which is itself 

launching 10 more private 

residences. 

Just 10 kilometres across 

the bay, Boka Place is Porto 

Montenegro’s (portomontenegro. 

com) latest urban neighbourhood 

to launch. Overlooking the 

region’s premier superyacht 

marina, there are 213 reasonably 

priced apartments due to 

complete in 2023, of which 40 

per cent have already sold. 

Farther east, the 

650-berth Limassol Marina 

(limassolmarina.com) on Cyprus 

is now selling the last homes 

in its 10-year development 

phase. The best of the 17 

remaining Castle Residences 

is a four-bedroom duplex split 

across three floors with its own 

garden and pool; right on the 

water, each of the three- and 

four-bedroom turnkey Island 

Villas has a berth attached to 

their garden. 

In winter, yachties’ thoughts 

turn to the Caribbean, and 

before the hurricane season 

ended in November, many 

chose to hunker down south of 

the insurance-defined “Box”, 

on the island of Grenada. Just 

around the headland from 

Port Louis on the leeward 

side, Silversands Villas 

(silversandsgrenanda.com) is a 

collection of eight luxurious 

homes on the island’s most 

famous beach, Grande Anse. 

The villas make an ideal base 

for sailors escaping high winds, 

with the added bonus for a 

new owner of being able to 

take out Grenadian citizenship. 



Similar rights come with 

the purchase of property 

at Christophe Harbour 

(christopheharbour.com) on 

St Kitts. The project has 

been a slow burn, but the 

hospitality outlets, newly 

finished Customs House 

and freehold slips are major 

attractions, so the plots and 

finished houses ranging 

from smaller three-bedroom 

affairs to grand hillside villas 

represent a good investment 

for the future. 

Able to accommodate 

Tiger Woods’ 47m yacht 

Privacy – a frequent visitor 

– and 70 other vessels as 

large as 91 metres, the 

most developed marina 

community in the region 

is Albany (albanybahamas. 

com) in the Bahamas. Designed 

by Squire and Partners, the 

newest residential building, the 

Squire, features 26 apartments 

including a six-bedroom, 464sq 

m penthouse with expansive 

terrace overlooking the marina 

and ocean. The Ernie Els golf 

course is another draw for longestablished 

Albany homeowners 

Justin Rose and Ian Poulter. 

The 129 Morning Rise 

Lane residence at 

Christophe Harbour 

Citizenship and Residency Schemes 

Rules change frequently, but currently these countries – Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts & Nevis, and 

St Lucia in the Caribbean, plus Malta, Turkey, Egypt and Montenegro around the Mediterranean, as well as 

Jordan, Samoa and Vanuatu – offer citizenship by investment programmes. Of these, Malta offers visa-free 

access to the most foreign nations. Since Covid struck, experts Henley & Partners report a 25 per cent uptick 

in enquiries about such schemes. Other countries offer a variety of residency by investment schemes, often 

called Golden Visas. These include Portugal, Greece, Spain, the US, UK and Ireland. The Cypriot and Maltese 

schemes are currently under EU review. 

Epicurean Estates 

Château de Montravel 

The vineyards attached to this 19th-century château, 

between Saint-Émilion and Bergerac, produce about 

10,000 bottles of AOC Bergerac wine annually (7,000 

red and 3,000 white), with a state-of-the-art thermoregulated 

winery, complete with storage for 100 barrels. 

The fully modernised six-bedroom château sits in 

beautifully landscaped gardens on one of the highest 

points overlooking the Dordogne river, and comes 

turnkey with all its furniture, a substantial stock of wine 

and a three-bedroom staff cottage. vineyardsbordeaux.com 

Château Haute Germaine 

Set in the hills behind Nice, this 60ha affair has 350 olive 

trees producing gourmet olive oil. Originally built in the 

17th century, the beautifully restored 11-bedroom château 

has 560 square metres of accommodation with panoramic 

views from multiple terraces – on the upper one, there’s 

a circular heated saltwater swimming pool. Approached 

down a lengthy private drive, the estate also includes a 

caretaker’s cottage, an independent studio and a Provençal 

farmhouse. chateaugermaine.com 


DISCOVER THE WORLD WITH CENTURION® 

WHETHER IT IS JOURNEYING 

FAR AND WIDE OR STAYING 

CLOSE TO HOME, 

CENTURION IS HERE TO 

HELP YOU GET THE BEST 

OUT OF YOUR EXPERIENCES. 

WE LOOK FORWARD 

TO HELPING CURATE 

UNFORGETTABLE MOMENTS 

FOR YOU ONCE AGAIN. 

Reside in style 

Whether in Singapore or abroad, Centurion 

members receive further benefits, in addition 

to your Fine Hotels + Resorts amenities, when 

booking stays at hotels across eight Centurion 

partner brands. 

Fine dining 

Discover why American Express and Resy are 

the Official Credit Card and Booking Platform 

Partner for The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 

2021 respectively. 

We are always here for you 

Enjoy the reassurance that comes with 

knowing you and your family are covered 

with our travel and purchase protection 

whenever you travel. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT YOUR CENTURION CONCIERGE AT 1800 396 8866 (OPTION 1)

WHEN YOU’RE READY TO TRAVEL, WE’LL BE HERE WITH INSPIRATION 

AMERICAN EXPRESS TRAVEL 

CAREFULLY CURATES 

PROPERTIES TO BRING YOU 

MEMORABLE EXPERIENCES 

WITH FINE HOTELS + RESORTS. 

Imagine waking up with an early morning 

workout. Coming home to turndown service. 

And experiencing all the luxuries in between. 

Five-star restaurants and after-hours room 

service, aromatherapy massages and the 

fluffiest of towels. When you travel again, 

experience luxury, big and small, when you 

book Fine Hotels + Resorts. 

As a Centurion member, you receive elevated 

signature benefits at participating properties 

in addition to your Fine Hotels + Resorts 

benefits. Book with American Express Travel 

for a room upgrade at time of reservation, 

if available, and receive up to US$300 in 

experience credits that are unique to each 

participating property. 

Enjoy your Fine Hotels + Resorts benefits, plus 

additional benefits exclusive to Centurion, at 

Aman, Belmond, Mandarin Oriental, Oetker 

Collection, Peninsula, Rosewood, St. Regis, and 

Waldorf Astoria properties when you book with 

your Centurion Concierge service.

The Peninsula Hong Kong, 

Hong Kong, China 

CENTURION BENEFITS 

• Complimentary daily breakfast for two 

• Guaranteed 4pm late checkout 

• Room upgrade at the time of reservation, if available* 

• Stay two or more nights and receive up to US$300 in experience credits, such as food and beverage or spa credit** 

• 12pm check-in, when available 

• Complimentary Wi-Fi 

* Certain room categories are not eligible for upgrade. Contact your Centurion Concierge service for details 

** Experience credit varies by property. Contact your Centurion Concierge service for details. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT YOUR CENTURION CONCIERGE AT 1800 396 8866 (OPTION 1) 

Terms & Conditions Valid only for new CENTURION FINE HOTELS & RESORTS bookings made through Centurion Travel Service at participating 

Aman, Belmond, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Oetker Collection, The Peninsula Hotels, Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, and 

Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts properties. Payment must be made in full with an American Express Card in the Centurion Member’s name. Available 

for Centurion Members only. Centurion Member must travel on itinerary booked to be eligible for benefits described. Noon check-in is based on 

availability and is provided at check-in. Room upgrade will be confirmed at time of reservation subject to availability, and will replace FINE HOTELS & 

RESORTS room upgrade at time of check-in. Breakfast amenity varies by property, but will be, at a minimum, a continental breakfast. Complimentary 

In-Room Wi-Fi is provided, with the exception of explora Patagonia where In-Room Wi-Fi is not available. In this instance, complimentary Wi-Fi will be 

provided in a common space on property. In the case where a Property includes cost of Wi-Fi in a mandatory resort fee, the Cardmember will receive 

a daily credit from the Property in the standard amount that the Property charges for Wi-Fi. The credit will be issued on the Cardmember‘s final 

statement upon check-out. Benefit restrictions vary by Centurion FINE HOTELS & RESORTS property and cannot be redeemed for cash, and may not 

be combined with other offers unless indicated. Certain participating Centurion FINE HOTELS & RESORTS properties will offer with a minimum paid 

two consecutive night stay a Centurion benefit of (1) a $200 food & beverage or spa credit; (2) a $200 food & beverage credit only; or (3) a $100 food 

& beverage or spa credit. Call Centurion Travel Service for details. Credit is applied in dollars or equivalent in local currency based on the exchange 

rate on the day of check out. Unused credit will be forfeited at check-out. Advance reservations are recommended for services such as spa, dining or 

golf in order to take advantage of the FINE HOTELS & RESORTS special amenity during your stay. Benefits are only applied at checkout and expire at 

checkout. Limit one benefit package per room, per stay. Three room limit per Centurion Member, per stay; back-to-back stays within a 24-hour period 

at the same property considered one stay. Participating FINE HOTELS & RESORTS properties and benefits are subject to change.

Ikoyi Restaurant, London 

AMERICAN EXPRESS AND RESY – AN OFFICIAL PARTNER 

OF THE WORLD’S 50 BEST RESTAURANTS 2021 

American Express and Resy, the Official Credit 

Card and Booking Platform Partner for The 

World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2021 respectively, 

were proud to sponsor the prestigious One 

To Watch Award this year. The American 

Express One To Watch Award recognises an 

emerging talent in the world of gastronomy, 

and is presented to a restaurant elected by The 

World’s 50 Best Restaurants organisation from 

the extended 51-100 list. This year’s winner 

was London-based Ikoyi, established by cofounders 

chef Jeremy Chan and restaurant 

director Iré Hassan-Odukale. Since opening 

in 2017, Ikoyi has distinguished itself through 

its bold use of West African flavours, unusual 

ingredients and indefinable style. 

Returning after a year’s hiatus in 2020 due 

to the global pandemic – during which 50 

Best devoted its resources to its fundraising 

50 Best for Recovery project – an extensive, 

in person event programme culminated in a 

live awards ceremony in the city of Antwerp 

in Flanders, on Tuesday, 5 October 2021 

representing a key milestone in the ongoing 

revival of the restaurant sector. Thanks to its 

panel of more than 1,000 culinary experts, 

as well as its structured and audited voting 

procedure, the annual list of the world’s 

best restaurants provides a snapshot of 

some of the ultimate destinations for unique 

culinary experiences, in addition to being a 

barometer for global gastronomic trends. 

More on Resy 

Back in August 2019, Resy joined the 

American Express family and since then we 

have been working to redefine the dining 

experience for Cardmembers together. We 

have even ensured that you can continue to 

safely and comfortably enjoy and support 

some of your favourite restaurants during 

COVID through at-home dining events, 

specially curated gifts and seasonal 

outdoor dining experiences alongside Resy 

and American Express’ broader support 

for the restaurant community through 

philanthropic work. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT 

THEWORLDS50BEST.COM/PARTNERS/AMERICAN-EXPRESS.HTML

SPECIAL PROMOTION 

NOTEWORTHY 

What to have. Where to go. 

New Two-Tone Case and Shades Of Grey For 

The Code 11.59 By Audemars Piguet Tourbillon 

Openworked 

Swiss Haute Horlogerie manufacturer Audemars Piguet 

presents a new iteration of its 41 mm Code 11.59 by Audemars 

Piguet Tourbillon Openworked. The hand-finished openworked 

movement adorning different shades of grey is housed in a twotone 

case interweaving 18-carat white and pink gold. This gold 

combination highlights the case’s multifaceted geometry, while 

providing an elegant contrast. audemarspiguet.com 

CINDY CHAO The Art Jewel Announces Induction 

into V&A Museum 

Black Label Masterpiece “Peony Brooch” joins the preeminent 

collection of jewels in the William and Judith Bollinger Gallery. 

CINDY CHAO The Art Jewel is honoured to announce the 

induction of the 2018 Black Label Masterpiece XVIII “Peony 

Brooch” into the acclaimed William and Judith Bollinger Gallery 

of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2021. The brooch marks the 

third Cindy Chao creation to feature in a major museum, following 

the Butterflies that form part of the permanent collections of the 

Smithsonian and Musée des Arts Décoratifs. cindychao.com 

© Peter Kelleher, Victoria and Albert 

Museum, London 2021 

Explore the world by private jet 

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your journeys. With a global customer service team on 

hand 24/7, 365 days a year, you can rest assured you’re in 

experienced hands. airpartner.com

Centurion Singapore Winter 2021

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