The Journal
The places and makers we stand behind, reviewed in full. And The Real Number, where we model what experiential luxury and the assets behind it actually cost to own and to access. The depth behind the Concierge Chronicles.
Simondium, Franschhoek, South Africa
A Cape Dutch farm granted in 1692, a formal garden of three and a half hectares you can eat your way through, and a working wine estate forty-five minutes from Cape Town. The garden is the argument.
Read the review →Tegernsee, Lans, Sylt and London, Germany / Austria / UK
A doctor-led medical reset, not a spa holiday. The LANS Med Concept treats the gut as the centre of the body, and the programme runs on diagnostics, fasting and discipline rather than indulgence.
Read the review →Weggis, Lake Lucerne, Switzerland
The Chenot Method in a modern lakeside clinic on Lake Lucerne: detoxification, advanced diagnostics and a controlled-calorie diet, run as a precise seven-day protocol.
Read the review →Franschhoek, Cape Winelands, South Africa
A wellness retreat in the Cape Winelands, seventeen rooms and a villa under the mountains, where the programme is immersive rather than clinical. The gentler counterpart to the medical clinics, in the same valley as Babylonstoren.
Read the review →Genolier, above Lake Geneva, Switzerland
Better-aging medicine above Lake Geneva: functional diagnostics, the Nescens method and medically supervised programmes, run inside a clinic rather than a spa.
Read the review →Nine categories, turboprop to bizliner, three comparable aircraft in each, on identical assumptions. The cheapest to buy is almost never the cheapest to own, and the reason is always the same two levers.
Read the teardown →Tokushima, Shikoku, Japan
An indigo workshop in Tokushima that grows the plant, ferments the leaves and dyes the cloth, all three. The dye is not just natural, it is alive, and it has to be fed every morning.
Read the review →Hanazono, Hokkaido, Japan
A private valley near Niseko, fifteen villas, each with its own indoor and outdoor onsen. Poured concrete and wood, built for cold light and silence rather than nostalgia.
Read the review →Mayfair, London, United Kingdom
A Kyoto-trained chef brought a real kaiseki method to a Mayfair basement and held a Michelin star since five months in. Kyoto-level seasonal cooking without the fourteen hours of travel.
Read the review →Dresden, Germany
A carpenter solved machine-made furniture in 1906, before the Bauhaus argued for it. The workshop survived two wars and the GDR and now builds interiors for superyachts and private residences whose owners it never names.
Read the review →Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada
Twenty-nine suites on stilts above the North Atlantic, built to a clear social purpose: to give an island fishing economy a reason to continue. An argument made through delivery, not theory.
Read the review →Bülow Palais, Dresden, Germany
A Baroque town palace in Dresden's Neustadt with a small dining room that connects Saxon produce to French technique, and credits neither. Serious work with the materials at hand.
Read the review →Rostrevor, County Down, Northern Ireland
A Norwegian designer set up a handloom workshop above Rostrevor in 1949, her name never on the finished object. Her grandson runs it now, on the same looms. The cloth goes to Margaret Howell and Carl Hansen.
Read the review →Connemara, County Galway, Ireland
An 18th-century castle on the Owenmore River in a 700-acre Connemara estate, with some of the best salmon fishing in Ireland. The landscape does not perform; it is simply there.
Read the review →Belfast, Northern Ireland
Two chefs opened Ox on Oxford Street in 2013 and hold a Michelin star, cooking from Northern Irish and Ulster-coast produce with a precision the region had no equivalent of before them.
Read the review →