Hotels for wine lovers: four of the best
Posted on | January 2, 2012 | No Comments
Western Australia
While Margaret River produces three per cent of Australia’s grapes, it accounts for more than 25 per cent of its premium wines. On its own secluded vineyard within an estate fringed by lakes and forest, 22-room Cape Lodge, once a private house, has twice been voted Australia’s finest boutique hotel. It makes its own sauvignon blanc and shiraz exclusively for hotel guests and for its award-winning restaurant, which also has a 14,000-bottle cellar filled with the best vintages from the most awarded vineyards. Sitting right over the lake on stilts, the restaurant, run by the celebrated chef Tony Howell, has a lovely alfresco deck and hosts cooking classes and gourmet weekends.
Cape Lodge Margaret River Hotel
The seasonal local menu (try the Margaret River venison or Fremantle sardines) changes daily. There is also a five-bedroom, exclusive-use ‘Residence’ ideal for a group of friends, a one-bedroom cottage, an all-weather tennis court and a huge free-form swimming-pool. Close by are pristine beaches lapped by the Indian Ocean, and neighbouring Margaret River wine estates such as Mosswood, Cullen and Pierro.
Relais San Maurizio Hotel
Piedmont, Italy
The Milanese flock to Relais San Maurizio in the Piedmont Hills at weekends for great food and wine in a beautiful converted 17th-century monastery setting, and to stock up on bottles from the local vineyards (Barbaresco, Barolo and Barbera, for example, are all within 10 miles). Perched on a hilltop overlooking the village of Santo Stefano Belbo, the hotel has 31 rooms and suites fashioned from the original monks’ cells, lovely sprawling gardens with gnarled ancient olive trees, criss-crossed by hidden paths, and more formal gardens. The hotel’s excellent but expensive Michelin-starred Da Guido restaurant, serving traditional Piedmont dishes with a contemporary twist, is housed in restored barrel vaults within the original monastery cellar and has a three-volume wine list with more than 2,200 labels and 30,000 wines. There is also a bistro, La Vie en Rose, housed in a frescoed hall with beautiful outdoor terraces, where breakfast and lunch is served. A spa (‘La Via del Sale’, meaning the Salt Path) features a series of increasingly salty baths and two pools, including one on a hillside overlooking vineyards.
Hotel Cheval
Paso Robles, California
If you fancy yourself as a bit of a Californian wine expert, you have probably heard of Paso Robles, a pretty little town about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles with a reputation for experimental, maverick winemakers breaking with the mainstream winemaking traditions of other parts of California. It is also the centre of one of the fastest-growing wine regions in the state. Just off the historic town square is the very welcoming Hotel Cheval, the perfect base for exploring the local wineries, with 16 large, comfortable bedrooms and an inner courtyard with a working fireplace. While it has no restaurant – there are so many very good ‘farm-to-table’ options in town, you really don’t miss it – it does have the Pony Club, a bar serving some of the best wines of Paso Robles and central California, where daily breakfast is also served. Paso Robles is the place to come for wine and olive oil tastings, to explore farmers’ markets and to eat out in great restaurants, and the hotel can arrange customised wine tours and dinner bookings.
The Yeatman Hotel
Oporto, Portugal
Paying homage to the terraced vineyards further up the valley, the Yeatman in Oporto, a collaboration by the founders of Taylor’s Port (run by the same family since 1692) and two other port companies, has been built into the steep south bank of the Douro river. It has 82 spacious rooms, each named after a local wine partner (which has been allowed to decorate it – one has fashioned a bed from an immense port barrel), spilling down the hillside. All overlook the hotel’s decanter-shaped infinity pool and across the Douro to the vibrant Old City beyond. The hotel’s 25,000-bottle cellar is home to the world’s most comprehensive selection of Portuguese table wines and ports. These are married with intensely flavoured, locally sourced food in the restaurant, overseen by the award-winning executive chef Ricardo Costa. Every Thursday a wine dinner is hosted by a different local grower and the chef builds a menu around four of its wines. The wine theme continues in the Caudalie Vinothérapie Spa, where treatments are grape-based. There is also a hammam and Roman-style baths.
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