Luxury Briefing

published 19 September 2018

1. Where to catch the falling leaves this autumn

Each autumn, Mother Nature stages a spectacular show for appreciative audiences throughout America. Her schedule varies, but when she’s ready, green trees take on hues of gold, orange and red, delighting her fans. These “leaf peepers” and “foliage followers”, as they’re known, should head to the country’s national parks, with their dense forests, tree-covered mountains, plains, lakes and deserts.Click here to read the full article

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This might be one of the finest-value red wines of the year. With the merest kiss of oak and utilising a large percentage of old vines, the fruit intensity here is tremendous, but it never oversteps the mark into elevated alcohol levels or Portiness. In fact, I Muri weighs in at 13.5%, which is nimble and refreshing by comparison with most red wines from Italy’s “heel”. The violet and rose-petal nose gives way to a vibrant plum and mulberry palate and it is dotted with liquorice and coffee-bean notes, which add impressive complexity.Click here to read the full article

While smartphones are now most people’s primary source of music and podcasts, even the best of them come with leaky plastic earphones, whose thin, tinny sound is no match for the competing racket of the street, train carriage or aircraft cabin. In-ear buds go some way to keeping out background babble, but true audiophiles will be drawn to noise-cancelling rivals such as the Bose Beoplay H8i. These technologically advanced headphones analyse extraneous sounds and neutralise them with an equal and opposite soundwave.Click here to read the full article

It's the most maligned meal of the day – a symptom of "soulless suburban conformity", says The Guardian. More baldly, "brunch is for jerks", declared The New York Times back in 2014. And yet the brunch phenomenon rumbles on, fuelled by an apparently inexhaustible supply of poached eggs, avocados and millennials. To get your day off to the right start with the perfect portmanteau meal, here are the best brunches across the UK.Click here to read the full article

Europe is an incredibly diverse continent brimming with history and culture, often in places that don’t typically figure on the tourist maps. New flight routes, festivals and anniversaries help to bring such destinations to the forefront, and luxury accommodation soon springs up to cater to discerning frequent travellers.Philipp Weghmann, executive vice president of Europe at Preferred Hotels, presents his pick of the continent’s sweet spots.Click here to read the full article

“Technology has made certain aspects of cooking easier, quicker and has enabled kitchens to be much more efficient,” says the Michelin-starred chef, author and former MasterChef judge. “I would say though that it has meant that certain skills that were essential back when I was learning my craft aren’t thought of as important now. I might be a bit old school, but I think every chef should know the basic skills, regardless of whether you think you’ll ever need them or not. You need that solid foundation to really be able to hone your craft. You’d be surprised at the amount of chefs that come into the kitchen not knowing the basics, simply because they’ve never needed to know. It’s not their fault, it’s just something they’ve never been taught.”Click here to read the full article

Jesper Borjesson, head of men's design at the H&M sister brand, explains how he has created a wardrobe of beautifully simple menswear: “The first thing I did was to build up an archive of great vintage menswear pieces,” he says, “because if you think about it, in menswear, where do you start from? So, I decided to go back to see what the reference was for every item you can see in a contemporary wardrobe. ‘Arket’ actually means "blank sheet of paper" in Swedish, so that’s how I saw it – I was starting with nothing. But soon there was a growing rack of bad-smelling vintage clothes, many from dealers in London, actually.”Click here to read the full article

Legend has it that when Boabdil, the last Muslim king of Spain, was forced to give up his beloved Granada, he stopped his journey into exile to take a final look back at his kingdom with a heavy sigh. After a stay at the region’s five-star La Bobadilla hotel, we know how he felt. Although to call La Bobadilla just a hotel is like saying Picasso was just a painter. It is a small whitewashed village in itself, nestled in a 1,000-acre estate surrounded by mountains and olive trees, and the staff have taken luxury hospitality to new heights.Click here to read the full article

Venice is a puzzle. In what is surely the most alluring destination in all of Italy if not Europe, it is one of the trickiest places to find somewhere decent, let alone exciting, to eat. It is nothing to do with the ingredients as the freshest fish is delivered daily and there are plenty of exquisite fresh herbs, artichokes and courgette flowers on display at the Rialto Market and elsewhere. And despite its tourist trappings, a mouth-watering culinary tour of the Floating City is possible without breaking the bank.Click here to read the full article

It’s not often that an executive fastback grabs your attention within an instant of setting eyes upon it. True, many of them boast sharp designs and neat interiors, but they rarely offer a level of premium that can really wow drivers. But the Volkswagen Arteon bucks the trend. It’s an all-new model that merges the practicality and space of a five-door saloon with all the stealthy elegance of a luxury coupe.Click here to read the full article

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