Four Seasons Napa Valley is a Californian corker
This new hotel in Napa Valley wine country boasts some of the most eye-watering room rates in the US.
Boasting some of the most eye-watering room rates in the US, it seems apt that the new Four Seasons Napa Valley should be located on a road called Silverado Trail. The new-build resort in the hot-springs town of Calistoga stands among the vines of a working winery.
It has 85 glamorous guestrooms and suites, ranging from resort rooms ($US1200/$1680 a night) to the standalone Bodega Suite ($US5000) to the top-shelf Villa Estate. This palatial three-bedroom dwelling (price on request) sleeps eight and is tucked away on the fringe of the vineyard. It is replete with a private pool, fireplace, media room and a bar equipped with glassware specially designed to suit the local tipples. Interiors have a elegantly rustic feel, with hefty bespoke wooden bedheads, walls lined with timber panelling and touches of rattan and leather.
Dining at Truss restaurant is in the hands of esteemed executive chef Erik Anderson (formerly of San Francisco’s two-Michelin-starred Coi, French Laundry and Noma), whose stated goal is to serve caviar at every meal – even breakfast. Guest activities include wine-tasting and wine-making sessions, excursions to the nearby Palisade Mountains, guided bike rides through wine country or simply hanging by the pool. The resort’s Spa Talisa draws on Calistoga’s 150 years of wellness history, offering detox treatments using the region’s mineral-rich mud plus the usual array of soothing massages and facials.
PENNY HUNTER
Snap decisions
Time to van up
ate Ulman, the Victoria-based author of Vantastic, writes that Covid-19 has changed the way we take journeys. She makes the point that “amid lockdowns, closed borders and cancelled flights, people have needed to find safer and more flexible ways to travel … that permit freedom, spontaneity and independence”. Caravan sales are touted to be up almost 250 per cent in the past 18 months. And the demographic has changed, too, from grey nomads on retirement jaunts to families embracing a retro flashback holiday. Despite being scarred by childhood caravan adventures in deepest, coldest England, I am even half-convinced.
Ulman is a veteran caravanner with a decade of experience and her how-to guide covers all the basics on budgets and sample itineraries, tips and tricks (look for a van with a double bed that folds into the wall; fit a water filter to the kitchen tap), storage practicalities, even recommended recipes for tiny cooking spaces and campfires plus a glossary of the specialist lingo, from boondocking to sway bar systems. It’s also intriguing to see how Ulman transformed a basic second-hand van, freshly dubbed Frankie Blue, to a road-trip home on wheels for her, husband Brendon and three young daughters, that’s not just habitable but stylishly equipped and decorated (there are sections on how to make bunting and tin can lanterns). Frankie Blue could be treated, due to its size, as a work in progress, swapping soft furnishings about and incorporating key vintage treasures found along the way.
I am not ready to become a “vanlifer”. So let’s look at the easier route and hook up with Camplify, a van owners’ platform that lists caravans, campervans and mobile homes with names as intriguing as Cassie and Daisy (pictured). I am drawn to the idea of the Mr Moustache based at Glen Iris, WA, a “1986 Viscount Regency pop top which has been lovingly restored and comfortably sleeps a family of four”. Little luxuries include a pod coffee machine and awning strung with fairy lights. At your (or my) service, from $95 a day. Try before you buy, for sure.
Vantastic (Hardie Grant Explore, $24.99)
on sale January 5; pre-orders now open.
SUSAN KUROSAWA
Book club
ANDAL’S GARLAND
Helen Burns
About a year ago I read a draft of this novel and was delighted to write an endorsement blurb. As with so many enforced stops and starts during Covid, the project was delayed but a pre-summer holidays release now seems just right for this transporting story with an intriguing mystical edge.
The setting is Tamil Nadu but do not expect a conventional travelogue to the temple towns of south India. Australian author Helen Burns is a scholar of Asian studies and Hindi language whose father was born in the Raj-era hill station of Simla. Her love for India is deep and abiding, her prose evocative and sensual as she takes us back to the eighth century when village girl Andal defied the then conventions to marry in early teens and produce babies. The union she sought was not mortal, but with sapphire-skinned Lord Vishnu to whom she composed yearning hymns of love and praise that have survived centuries.
Skip forward to the here and now, and the novel’s protagonist, an Australian traveller named Saisha, is with her partner, Marcus, a pair “bound” by India since meeting there 25 years earlier. Serendipitously, in a Delhi market, she comes across a book of translated Tamil poetry titled For the Love of God and discovers Andal’s devotional Thiruppavai verses. Saisha is enthralled by the girl’s story and begins to question her own life choices, the loss of an unborn child, her interpretation of love and the unravelling bonds of her relationship with Marcus, who has embraced celibacy. Saisha’s quest for self-enlightenment becomes urgent and seductive as she returns to India alone to find out more about Andal.
The journeys of these two women, many centuries apart, unfold in parallel strands as the book casts a fresh beam on Andal’s legacy as goddess and poet-saint. “She is our mother,” say her devotees, who still make daily offerings of garlands and sacred basil at the temple complex shared with Lord Vishnu at Srivilliputtur, about 80km from the town of Madurai. Amid the echoing jangle of talisman bangles and the intoxicating sweetness of jasmine, Saisha feels as if she’s been coming to “the ancient land forever, possibly even lifetimes”.
Those who’ve also succumbed to India’s magical pull will find Burns the perfect guide on a path to the feet of Andal, an extraordinary girl “with a green parrot perched on her shoulder” who embodied the transformative power of love.
SUSAN KUROSAWA
View from here
WORLD’S GREATEST HOTELS
SBS, Saturday, 8.30pm; On Demand
Right from narrator Jim Carter’s first words, his distinctive voice is one of authority.
Carter plays Carson, the butler of Downton Abbey, so he’s bound to know a thing or two about impeccable service and the zenith of luxury – just the ticket for the compelling second series of British-produced World’s Greatest Hotels.
Funnily enough though, it’s the service at The Plaza, New York, where suites can top $56,000 a night, that could do with a tickle-up. In the first episode, one of the guests judges some staff on the snooty side and is tempted to utter the immortal exclamatory question, “Don’t you know who I am?”.
But everybody adores the 115-year-old Plaza, fabled location of many a movie (think even Crocodile Dundee) and host to Manhattan’s grandest social occasions, including Truman Capote’s White Party of 1966, dubbed the gala of the century. Some Plaza old-timers remember when Donald Trump owned the place in the late 1980s and can picture his first wife Ivana, with high beehive hair-do, on her knees showing cleaners how to scrub a floor.
This week we’re checking in to Bellagio Las Vegas, inspired by the Italian village on Lake Como supposedly, but awash with dazzling fountains, divine accommodation, fabulous food, an art collection featuring significant Picassos, and resident entertainers Cirque du Soleil. And yes, gambling opportunities from here to eternity.
Coming up, Claridge’s in London’s Mayfair, where guests may include royals, politicians and social A-listers; and George V, Paris, blessed with a cellar of 50,000 bottles of vin extraordinaire. In the New Year, viewers can peek behind the scenes at The Beverly Hilton, Los Angeles; Atlantis The Palm, Dubai; and London’s Brown’s Hotel.
GRAHAM ERBACHER
Spend it
Carriere Freres has been producing long-lasting candles since 1884 and continues to adapt ranges in tune with changing consumer demands and environmental issues. Its Christmas release is a limited-edition assembly of three benzoin-based fragrances made with 100 per cent organic natural wax. The key fixative of benzoin resin comes from the genus of Styrax, grown and sustainably harvested across Southeast Asia from trees that must be at least three to five years old. The trio of varieties covers cacao bean, cedar and damask rose (185g, $99), each in decorated vessels and boxes, including gold-printed labels. A candle set (pictured) of the three fragrances in 70g sizes is gift-ready in a box decorated with delightful wraparound botanical illustrations of fir cones, benzoin flowers, full roses and cacao beans; $139. Free express delivery for orders over $100.
SUSAN KUROSAWA
