Inhaltsverzeichnis für December 2019 in Robb Report

Rohit Jaggi A journalist based in London and Berlin, Jaggi has both airplane and helicopter pilot licenses, and has even dabbled in gyroplanes. Now working as a freelancer, he held multiple positions at the Financial Times, where he tested jets, Formula 1 cars and the world’s fastest sailing boat. For Robb Report this month, Jaggi chronicled a new zero-emissions air race in “An Electrifying New Spectacle in the Sky” (p. 112). As of press time, he’s still trying to decide which would be more fun to race: electric planes or jet packs. Lucy Alexander Alexander is Robb Report’s staff writer. She spent the last seven years living in Tokyo, where she reported on Japan’s people and places for The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, the Financial Times and…

DECEMBER MEANS Art Basel Miami Beach, and the local museums are ready for their annual close-up. While the fair and its satellites boast a dizzying display of must-see art—including Meridians, a new sector of large-scale works by Theaster Gates, Adam Pendleton and othersthey’re not the only shows in town. Here, a list of buzzy exhibitions off the beaten path of the fair proper, but definitely worth a detour. In her first major solo museum show in the US, 71-year-old Chilean poet, artist and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña brings new paintings to the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, as well as her ephemeral precario, or precarious, sculptures, which tackle our damaged planet and peoples. Her installation Burnt Quipu (2018) stretches dyed wool from floor to ceiling, alluding to both the West…

WE’RE HARDLY SUGGESTING you give up Champagne (impensable!), but the world of premium sparkling wines stretches far beyond the confines of France, with several regions around the globe using similar traditional methods to produce stellar sparklers that are all their own. We’ll raise a glass to that. ENGLAND The vein of calcareous chalk underlying the Champagne region, which gives those wines their vibrant texture and minerality, doesn’t stop at the English Channel. Vineyards south of London have it, too, and now enjoy growing seasons warm enough to ripen Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier for bubbly that’s fresh and bright, with pure, focused fruit. 1. Bride Valley 2014 Blanc de Blancs ($75). Lightly honeyed citrus aromas, with crushed rock and hints of toast, precede juicy apple and pear flavors. An…

BACK IN THE days when Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant graced the slopes of Megève and Brigitte Bardot enlivened Méribel, it was chic to spend the winter holiday at a grand hotel, mingling with other guests après-ski and sipping evening cocktails beneath a canopy of chandeliers. Then came the aughts, and with them the rise of the luxury chalet and the contemporary extravagance of not being seen. But this winter, a new generation of luxury hotel is on the rise in France, combining old-world hospitality with the newest trends in dining, design and wellness—plus that most prized of modern amenities: privacy. Hot on the heels of the benchmark-setting Four Seasons Megève, December’s relaunch of Les Chalets du Mont d’Arbois showcases further collaboration between the hotel brand and the de Rothschild…

In a marketplace flooded with $100 cashmere sweaters and dissembling messages about “accessible luxury,” it’s a bold thing to start a minimalist essentials line that frames a $695 crewneck as a value proposition. Yet that’s exactly what Davide Baroncini is doing with Ghiaia. He created the brand, which launched this fall—the name, pronounced jhe-EYE-yuh, is a reference to the beach pebbles found in his father’s native Sicily—partly in response to the fuzzy math that makes preposterously inexpensive cashmere possible in the first place: Cheaper sweaters are made from short, coarse cashmere goat hair that feels soft initially but pills almost immediately. Ghiaia, however, uses only the longer, finer fibers from the goats’ bellies, transforming them at a family-run facility in central Italy into remarkably soft and lightweight crewnecks and hoodies.…

A NAME CAN pack some power, and in motorcycle circles, Ducati has its fair share of impressive monikers. Monster, Panigale, Superleggera—they each represent a facet of Bologna’s best machines. But for 2020, the bike builder is reviving its most brutish, intimidating model. The Streetfighter is back, and prior to press time, Ducati gave Robb Report a preview ahead of the big reveal. Ducati is closing the gap between street bike and racer. Missing from the Ducati family tree for the last eight years, the Streetfighter V4 and up-spec Streetfighter V4 S are essentially a Panigale V4 S superbike that has been partially stripped of its bodywork, with a one-piece handlebar replacing the fork-mounted clip-on bars. The new edition will get some 208 hp from its 1,103 cc Desmosedici Stradale V4…

To mark 100 years of coachbuilding from design house Zagato, Aston Martin has once again partnered with the Italian company on an extremely limited-edition pairing, the track-only DB4 GT Zagato Continuation and the road-touring DBS GT Zagato. But for this special offering, you can’t get one without the other. A continuation of the original DB4 GT Zagato, built from 1960 through 1963 to campaign against Ferrari’s racers, the reborn coupe carries a 390 hp, 4.7-liter straight-six engine mated to a four-speed manual transmission. Each example takes 4,500 hours to build. The DBS GT Zagato, based on the DBS Superleggera introduced in 2018, features world-first 3-D-printed accents made from carbon, aluminum or PVD-coated gold stainless steel. The 760 hp speedster is powered by the Superleggera’s twin-turbo 5.2-liter V-12. Offered together for…

WHEN IT’S ABOARD a luxury yacht, of course. And when you’re eager to be among the first to cross the Atlantic in a 138-footer on just one tank of fuel. “I asked myself, ‘What would really push the boundaries and mark our 20th anniversary?’ ” says Angela Pernsteiner, managing partner/CEO of Dominator Yachts. “I called our chief engineer to say that we need a 42M Ilumen that can reach 19.5 knots and go from London to New York, my two favorite cities, with one tank—and the 42M Tri Deck transoceanic was born.” The engineers for the Liechtenstein-based company have been hard at work since. Expect the new 42M Ilumen flagship yacht, now under construction at its Italian yard for a German client, to debut at the Cannes boat show in…

MEDIUM-FORMAT cameras capture a much larger image area than their traditional 35 mm counterparts and render greater detail and accuracy. Founded in 1941, Swedish brand Hasselblad built its legacy on the V System, a medium-format film camera that captured photos of the first foot set on the moon and continues to inspire photographers today. A professional photographic tool with few, if any, equals, Hassy’s boxy V has the aesthetic “right stuff” that makes it a joy to look at and a pleasure to use. The latest V System, the vintage-inspired 907X, is the company’s smallest, lightest medium-format camera ever. The new digital back ingeniously fits almost every V System body going back 60 years, so older Hasselblads can come up to digital speed. The 907X camera body can be paired…

1 The Perfect Porsche Reimagined by Singer We’ve taken the guesswork out of what to get your favorite car collector—with the help of Los Angeles–based Singer Vehicle Design. The boutique design-and-restoration house is offering one Robb Report reader the opportunity to own a Porsche 911 reimagined by Singer through the latest results of its Dynamics and Lightweighting Study (DLS), and to partake in exclusive driving experiences with the Singer team. Singer founder Rob Dickinson has teamed with Robb Report on a unique interpretation of the German marque’s air-cooled 911 variant, the 964 (built from 1989 through 1993), one of only 75 examples to receive DLS services. “The Dynamics and Lightweighting Study represents a pursuit of the most advanced air-cooled 911 in the world,” says Dickinson. “In our 10th-anniversary year,…

Back in 1993, longtime art collectors Mera and Don Rubell filled a former DEA warehouse in Miami with their Keith Harings and Jean-Michel Basquiats and ignited the current craze for private museums. Twenty-six years later, the Rubell Family Collection is moving into roomier digs in the Allapattah neighborhood and being renamed the Rubell Museum. “We have all these traveling exhibitions—30 Americans has been out there for 10 years—and it was like our babies were coming home and we’d taken away their bedrooms,” says Mera Rubell, of the decision to expand. “Our director was in a total panic about making room.” The new 100,000-square-foot space more than doubles the Rubell’s size and opens December 4, Art Basel’s VIP opening day—fitting, as the couple was instrumental in bringing the fair to the…

ETHAN FRISCH LIKES to joke that he started Burlap & Barrel, the three-year-old single-origin spice company he runs with his business partner, Ori Zohar, as “an excuse to travel to cool places.” What started as a joke ended up an understatement. Think of Frisch and Zohar as the Indiana Joneses of special seasonings, motorbiking across Vietnam in search of old-growth cinnamon trees, bundling into prop planes in Zanzibar for black pepper perfectly ripened on the vine and trekking the hills of Guatemala in pursuit of cloud-forest cardamom. But those trips are just the gravy. Frisch, who was a chef in New York and London before working with NGOs in some of the world’s most war-torn places—Afghanistan, the Syrian-Jordanian border—has loftier goals. As a public-benefit corporation, the company has a two-fold…

ASPEN W Aspen The first luxury hotel to open in the area in a quarter-century, the W Aspen is gearing up to celebrate its first winter season with a long-overdue bang—including the reintroduction of storied local bar 39 Degrees, formerly of the Sky Hotel, now a moody, velvet-infused cocktail den and grotto inspired by the area’s red-light district. If you’re feeling more social, take in the panoramic mountain views with a poolside mezcal cocktail on the 12,000-square-foot all-weather rooftop. Come nightfall, tuck into one of 88 guest rooms (there are also 11 residences); our vote is for the Extreme Wow suite—think of it like a presidential—which comes decked out with a fire pit, hot tub and DJ booth with a curated music library. If you can pull yourself away from…

TRICKER’S The old-money English set favors a classic black cap-toe with a tux, like this exemplary Appleton model from Tricker’s. $505, trickers.com BERLUTI For a more formal—but extra sleek—patent-leather lace-up option, Berluti steals the show as usual. $2,700, berluti.com TOM FORD The master of libertine formal wear goes seductively old-school with this decadent patent opera pump. $1,650, tomford.com GUCCI An iconic horse-bit loafer in dark blue suede with a subdued double-G logo—subtle swag, the Gucci way. $730, gucci.com LOUBOUTIN Louboutin’s sharp take on the venetian loafer: jacquard, grosgrain piping and a metal-spiked patent toe cap. $895, christianlouboutin.com…

EVERY NOW AND then a yacht comes along that changes the conversation, one that pushes the boundaries of capability or redefines design. As would be expected, these boats often remain newsworthy because of their owners or where they’ve gone or what has befallen them. The following trio in this category are for sale, waiting for their next headline with someone new. Launched in 2003, the 414-foot Octopus was built by Lürssen for the late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s leading philanthropists. And Octopus broke the mold. The quintessential explorer vessel, it combines state-of-the-art research technology with Allen’s four passions: a recording studio for music, a cinema for film, a basketball court (Allen owned the Portland Trail Blazers) and ocean conservation. Regularly used for exploration projects…

A LUST FOR adventure. A need to explore. These are the drivers behind an increase in experiential travel. For yachties, this has been manifested in overnight camping in Antarctica, whale spotting in the Norwegian fjords and fly-fishing in the wilds of Patagonia. But for those who truly seek to push the boat out, the Kuril Islands more than deliver. Stretching approximately 800 miles northeast from Hokkaido, Japan, to Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, this volcanic archipelago—flanked by the Sea of Okhotsk to the west and the North Pacific Ocean to the east— is one of the last outposts of a land less trodden. The landscape is awash with virgin forests, rocky shores, wide rivers and snow-capped peaks, ideal for heli-fishing in salmon streams and heli-skiing from summit to sea. Both lavish expedition…

AVIATION HAS A new contest, and it’s fast, young and green. Air Race E takes its lead from the renowned Reno Air Races, where the only rules are, “Fly low, fly fast, turn left.” But this new zero-emissions motorsport promises all the thrills without the gas fumes and noise. This new zero-emissions motorsport promises all the thrills without the gas fumes and noise. During the competition, all pilots are airborne at the same time, jockeying for position around tight turns on a spectator-friendly course. Teams are being formed and aircraft built for this new formula, which departs from any other type of air racing in that it permits only electric motors, keeping pace with Formula E and MotoE for cars and motorcycles and slashing the industry’s environmental impact. “Technology we’ll…

IN THE LOW-KEY region of Ancona, Italy, Palumbo Superyachts is quietly creating a fleet of user-friendly yachts, primed for those who enjoy playing in the water as much as they love floating atop it. Tidy, multistory Italian houses with geraniums in the windows line the road, and just beyond a tranquil meadow is the Extra Yachts facility. Palumbo Superyachts has absorbed some impressive brands in recent years, such as Mondomarine and ISA, and infused them with cash and creativity, but last year the company launched its Extra Yachts division to counter the perceived seriousness of big vessels with a dose of playfulness. This year the brand debuted new models like the 86 Fast, Extra 93 and Extra 130. On the 86 Fast, a pass-through window links the galley and the…

An hour into an eight-hour hike to the top of a rain-swept peak, we pass by a monastery perched on the edge of a wooded mountainside and temporarily adopt 13 dogs. Or to put it more aptly, the pups adopt us, as they promptly abandon their monastic home to serve as our yipping, joyful guides. We’re headed to the summit of Talakha, a 14,000-foot-high mountain above Bhutan’s capital city of Thimphu. Yet it couldn’t feel more remote: The land is shrouded by thick eddies of mist. The fog flitting through the pine trees and bamboo is eerie—we can barely see. Earlier we spotted tracks of a Himalayan black bear in the mud, and our Bhutanese guide tells us, earnestly, that easily angered Buddhist deities live in these woods as well.…

Formula One drivers and world leaders rarely have anything in common but Lewis Hamilton and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president of Mexico, have together started something of a campaign: the anti-private jet movement. In recent months, each man has dumped his personal plane—in Hamilton’s case, a $21.4 million, candy-red Bombardier Challenger 605 and in López Obrador’s, a $218 million Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Both men cited environmental concerns. Hamilton, a six-time world champion who is a vegetarian and rails against the destruction of the natural world, said, “I want to lead a healthier life.” And López Obrador pledged to cut down on foreign travel, skipping the G20 summit in Osaka this past June. While Hamilton and López Obrador are acting on moral grounds, companies are ditching their business jets to avoid…

WILD MOUNTAIN CUMIN Alejandro Rodriguez, chef de cuisine at Nopa in San Francisco My favorite is the wild mountain cumin. I try to not use it on everything, but I end up cooking with it a lot. I use it in eggplant dishes and lamb marinades, and it was very good in tomato mole and peach pecan mole. The list goes on. GROUND BLACK LIME Edwin Bloodworth, executive chef at Red Stag Grill in Asheville, North Carolina When I first opened up the jar of ground black lime, my mind was blown. For our last spring and summer menu, we used it in a dish with house-made cheese and marinated mushrooms on a flatbread cracker. NILE CORIANDER Brian Lockwood, chef de cuisine at Eleven Madison Park in New York City…

When you’re hiking through the bush, everything rumbles. The wind through the grass, the call of a kingfisher—everything is amplified when you’re on equal ground with rhinos and lions. Walking safaris offer a more visceral experience, one that’s available only in select African parks. Most span a few hours, but in January, Asilia Africa, which has been operating walking safaris for 15 years, will launch a collection of multiday walking expeditions through Kenya’s Maasai Mara Conservancies. A six-day, five-night journey traverses 53 miles through one of Africa’s most iconic landscapes. Days are spent exploring the types of views, plants and wildlife that typically go unnoticed from the back of a rumbling safari vehicle and include visits to the Mara Elephant Project, Maa Trust and Mara Predator Conservation Programme. At night,…

ANY VISIT TO Monaco feels as if you’re in a grand spectacle. The pink and cream buildings overlooking the shimmering Mediterranean exude panache, a feeling that is heightened from behind the wheel of the dramatic 2020 Bentley Flying Spur. “On the exterior, I love the new Flying B the most,” says Stefan Sielaff, who, as Bentley’s director of design, might be expected to say that. But we, too, admire the crystal-winged hood ornament, a modern symbol for the 100-year-old marque. Four driving modes ensure that, like Walt Whitman, the third-generation Spur contains multitudes. Coasting by Monte Carlo’s Hôtel de Paris, we’re in Comfort, the driver’s seat massage set to Stretch. Even in this square that sees automotive luxury daily, we are now the spectacle. Onlookers pause, perhaps fixed on the…

la datcha has not set sail yet but is already making waves in the industry. Scheduled for delivery in autumn 2020, the 252-foot superyacht is being built in the Netherlands for Russian banker Oleg Tinkov as part of Damen’s SeaXplorer series. The world’s first purpose-built icebreaker yacht compliant with the International Maritime Organization’s Polar Code, she’s set to become the undisputed best in the growing expedition category. Described by Damen as “the ultimate crossover of superyacht quality and finish with serious capability,” the rugged La Datcha can break through 16-inch-thick ice and maintain autonomy at sea for up to 40 days. Tinkov played an integral role in the design and customization of this SeaXplorer SX77 model, and his passion for adventuring is reflected in the ship’s extraordinary equipment inventory: two…

The Longitude’s cabin averaged sound levels of 67 decibels, similar to a luxury car speeding along a highway. TUCK THOSE noise-canceling headphones back in your bag. If we’re to believe Textron Aviation, we may not need them on board its newest jet—the Cessna Citation Longitude. To set it apart from the other aircraft in its supermidsize class, the company claims to have created the quietest cabin possible. To deliver its most silent sanctuary, the jet builder performed significant R&D, from aerodynamic engineering to new soundproofing methods, such as adjusting window geometry, pane thickness and seals. There were also some surprising fixes, like using the furniture to muffle sound and the walk-in baggage compartment as a barrier to engine noise. The team’s first step was to identify exactly where noise was…

ITS SMALL FOOTPRINT belies the big performance of this flagship, all-in-one piece of audio equipment from maverick sound architect Vinnie Rossi, whose electronics have earned acclaim from those who know. Integrated amps, once relegated to inexpensive systems, have been gaining popularity among serious audiophiles, as top-tier manufacturers take on the challenge of building a single-chassis component that delivers 99 percent of the performance obtained from a massive stack of separates. Rossi, long admired for no-compromise designs, joins his L2 Signature Preamplifier and L2 Signature Monoblock amps into one chassis, the L2i-SE. The preamp is a class-A vacuum-tube design that showcases a pair of 300B triode tubes, big glowing glass “bottles” known for delivering music with delicious detail and harmonic sophistication. The amplification stage features a dual-mono power supply and custom-wound…

A car is the very last thing you should give as a gift to a car enthusiast. We are an incredibly fussy bunch. No matter how desirable the Ferrari or Bentley that appears on our drive adorned with an outsize bow, some tiny detail won’t be right. The wheels will be of the wrong design, or the fancy tan upholstery won’t be the sober, driverly black we wanted, or the absolutely critical sports suspension package will be lacking. For auto obsessives, the delicious agony of working through the options list and committing to the perfect specification is as pleasurable as actually driving the end result. Gift us a car and you deny us that. And you’ll never, ever guess our ideal specs unaided. Normal people, however, would be delighted to…

When we took over the French Laundry in 1994, in many ways fine dining was not that different from how it is today. But back then, it had been mostly focused on Europe. French cuisine has always been the father of great fine dining, and that continues, but just as we have evolved, so has the dining experience over these last 25 years. When we began, I had just lost my job in LA and started a small olive-oil company, but I was looking for something else. On a visit to Napa I met Sally and Don Schmitt, the original owners of the French Laundry, which they’d opened 16 years before. They agreed to sell, and we settled on a price. Then I had to raise the money. Eventually I…

When Robin Lail launched her namesake Napa Valley vineyard nearly 25 years ago, her most critical decision was whom to bring on as winemaker. The choice would be closely scrutinized, as Lail was not only a prominent figure in the wine community, having been a partner at top-tier Dominus Estate, but also a keeper of the valley’s history: Her great-great-uncle was Gustave Niebaum, founder of legendary Inglenook Estate. Sought-after winemaking consultants, with world-class labels on their résumés, weren’t hard to come by, but Lail says she wanted someone “who would make wine to match our vision and involve us in the blending process.” In fact, she started with three winemakers collaborating during that first vintage, in 1995. The competition of sorts was over within months. By January, with that first…