Ningxia is now China’s largest wine-producing region, with 253 wineries making about 140 million bottles a year. The Fourth China International Wine Culture and Tourism Expo is scheduled for 9–11 August in Yinchuan, Ningxia’s capital, and over 60 foreign wineries are signed up. Expect big names from Australia, Chile, France, Italy, and Spain.
Savvy oenophiles visiting Yinchuan then, or at any time, should head for the 409-key Kempinski Hotel Yinchuan—its top suite is the three-bedroom, 330-square-metre Presidential Suite. In the hotel, the Grand Chai wine room has two PDRs (private dining rooms) exclusively pouring such Chateaux labels as Haut-Brion, Lafite, Margaux, and Pétrus, with more than 3,500 bottles of French wine in total—the most expensive is a 1995 Chateau Pétrus, a snip at HK$115,000. During the expo, says hotel GM Patrick Ritter, the hotel will offer Bounties of Wine Country dinners, featuring five courses paired with such local wines as Jia Beilan, Kanan, and Silver Heights.
Image courtesy of Capella Singapore
Pair wines with big-name chefs and there’s double success, as Fiamma at Capella Singapore knows only too well. Its regular special dinners are clearly promoted: the latest, which took place on 18 July, paired Fiamma consultant Mauro Colagreco with Veneto wines, resulting in dishes like traditional fresh pea risotto with Tedeschi Amarone Valpolicella Marne 180 and tiramisú with Tedeschi Vapitel Recioto Fontana (both wines vintage 2019).
Image courtesy of Mas d’en Bruno
Wines are also a big deal at Mas d’en Bruno, a sensational new art-filled winery hotel in Priorat, only a 90-minute drive from Barcelona through rolling vineyards. David Stein, Mas d’en Bruno’s man-of-the-world owner, has included pieces from his own collection. One is a three-foot-wide circular clock-with-fringe by Ben Jakober. It hangs on a lobby wall and its peripheral fringe—formed of real books held to the clock by their spines—rotates, the pages flapping as it turns. It’s art, and it’s fun.
It sounds as if the next Art Basel Hong Kong, slated for 28–30 March 2025, will have fun retail. Art Basel’s global CEO Noah Horowitz confirms there will be a boutique, with Unlimited clothing, and trinkets like badges with quips of “See you in Miami Beach.” Art Basel Hong Kong 2025 will, deliberately, coincide with the inaugural Photofair Hong Kong, organised by Scott Gray, who launched the concept in Shanghai.
Image courtesy of InterContinental Shanghai Wonderland
Shanghai has one hotel that is attracting a lot of international interest. InterContinental Shanghai Wonderland in Sheshan, half an hour from Shanghai’s main rail station, isn’t the first hotel to be built in a former mine—Sunway Resort just outside Kuala Lumpur has that honour. But at Wonderland, the architect, Martin Jochman—who did Dubai’s iconic Burj Al-Arab—has produced another wow, an upside-down hotel, with arrival and reception at the top. The best views, says hotel GM Richard Hng, are from the sixth-floor Chairman’s Suite, and the best seafood is at the 330-room hotel’s Mr Fisher restaurant—under water.
Image courtesy of The Beverly Hills Hotel
The best brand for travelling A-list fashionistas these days could well be Dior. Pop-up boutiques at Ember Beach Club at One&Only Desaru Coast and a host of other leisure hotspots are showing Travel with Dioriviera collections. These have soft fern or salmon-coloured toile de Jouy Sauvage and toile de Jouy Soleil pieces by Dior’s global creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri. Far away in Beverly Hills, the stars-favourite Beverly Hills Hotel, part of Dorchester Collection, has similarly allowed its famous poolside, and spa, to be Dior-ised, temporarily. The world is becoming one small place.
