Innehållsförteckning för June/July 2023 från Robb Report

David K. Peng Originally from North Carolina and now living in Los Angeles, Peng is a photographer and former restaurateur. As the son of two chefs, it's no coincidence that food and beverage are often the subjects of his cinematic imagery. For the wine category (p. 147), he captured our selection of award-winning vintages, playing with light and shadow to mesmerizing effect. “I love a striking image that draws the viewer in and catches their attention,” he says. Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen DeSimone and Jenssen are award-winning journalists, travel writers, and Robb Report's contributing wine editors. Together, they've appeared on the Today show, written a cookbook, and had their bylines published in Huffington Post and Wine Enthusiast, among others. In selecting the issue's Wine of the Year (p. 147),…

THE BIG IDEA A Better Battery and Beyond As with a child's first steps, the automotive industry's halting and at times bumpy adoption of electrification is to be celebrated—but more is expected. To maximize initial momentum, automakers have latched on to lithium-ion, the battery tech that's currently most cost-effective for production. But they'll soon need to let go if real advancement is to be made. “We started, as an industry, with electric cars less than 10 years ago. There's so much that we need to learn,” says Pablo Di Si, president and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America. “Remember cell phones 30 years ago?” Today's rechargeable lithiumion setup relies on minerals—nickel, magnesium, cobalt, and graphite—that require extensive mining, and the liquid electrolyte is highly flammable. “There will be a lot of…

THE BIG IDEA Vacation 24/7 Call it Traveling for Life. In the wake of the pandemic, many of us have come to see travel very differently than we did before: It's no longer an escape from the routine but rather a respite within it, an element of our everyday. One indication of this trend: Just ask any high-end agent about how much more frequent their communiqués with clients have become. Tanya Dalton, managing director of Greaves Travel Limited, says that around 30 percent of her clientele now contact her outside of regular office hours, a rarity pre-pandemic. The new ease of working from anywhere has helped put affluent travelers on the road more than ever. Indeed, elite specialist Cookson Adventures now often bundles in services such as Starlink for itineraries…

THE BIG IDEA Tasting Menus Fade Out Prior to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, albums were largely an afterthought in the music industry. The single was king. But the commercial and critical success of that 1967 Beatles LP represented a paradigm shift that made a coherent collection of songs the path to musical (and financial) immortality. A decade later, French nouvelle chefs led a similar revolution with the tasting menu. They moved meals away from a few big courses toward multiple tiny ones that, taken together, comprised the chef's full artistic vision. Each course was a track, the entire tasting menu the LP. And in the same way that great albums separated elite musicians from mere onehit wonders, tasting menus are where the legends of chefs such as Bocuse, Keller,…

THE BIG IDEA Fully Loaded For some home buyers, the prospect of selecting every window treatment, light fixture, table, chair, and artwork is part of the fun. But for a growing number, decorating is simply a slog. In recent years, turnkey properties have provided an alluring alternative for purchasers looking to bypass pandemic-related backlogs and realize their dream dwellings instantly—and the real-estate industry is taking notice. According to the Coldwell Banker Global Luxury Report, move-in-ready residences are among the top trends driving high-end buyers in 2023. As a result, developers have started hiring designers to craft upscale interiors and then selling the furniture, accessories, and even art in package deals. Sean McPeak, a broker with Serhant, says the real-estate firm has been staging more and more apartments and making physical…

THE BIG IDEA You Ask, A.I. Listens ChatGPT and other large-language artificial-intelligence (A.I.) models remain a source of fascination due to the uncanny way they can mimic human speech, but data-savvy companies are already using A.I. to help shape the products you buynot by talking, but by listening. Consider every time you've tossed an annoyed @ on Twitter complaining about the concierge service at your vacation villa rental or griped to a chatbot about a Rossconfusing tech user interface. Ditto blowing up a sneaker brand's comments section pleading for a new colorway or taking to a watch forum to debate the design merits of an overlooked vintage model. Each of these seemingly off-the-cuff interactions is in fact incredibly rich with data points-a trove of unvarnished opinions, desires, and ideas, proffered…

Nemo 2 Axiom Personal VS. Extravehicular Submarine Mobility Unit FROM THE SHOWROOM TO THE FIELD The display model had a plain white exterior and black leather seats. But it's the views from the inside that count-and you can upgrade both packages for about $18,000. Esther Marquis, costume designer for the Apple TV+ space drama For All Mankind, made an eye-catching black version for NASA's unveiling press conference. The real astronauts will wear white suits to reflect heat from the sun. WHAT'S IT WEIGH? 5,510 pounds At roughly the size of two Jet Skis, it's the first personal submarine that you can tow by a large SUV or pickup truck. 121 pounds The suit is way too heavy to wear under the pull of Earth's gravity. Luckily for the astronauts, it'll…

THE BIG IDEA 3-D Printing Superyachts In 2019, the University of Maine built a 25-foot boat from the world's largest 3-D-polymer printer. It took just 72 hours to complete and, up close, looked as if miles of spaghetti had been neatly layered to finish the hull. Last year, for the U.S. Marine Corps, the university built two heavier 25-footers in even less time. These vessels, while rough, are proof that 3-D printing, otherwise known as “additive manufacturing,” is poised to disrupt yacht building, along with so many other industries. “We're already seeing exponential applications of this technology,” says Marnix Hoekstra, co-creative director at Vripack Yacht Design. “The first 3-D-printed boats are being sold, and the offerings will only grow in both size and complexity.” Designers like Vripack are using 3-D…

THE BIG IDEA Resetting the Archive For jewelry houses with long histories, digging through the archives and paying homage to established icons is a perennial practice. These reinterpretations are done with such frequency that connoisseurs and enthusiasts alike can easily match legendary motifs—Serpenti, Anchor Chain, Bird on a Rock—to the brands that created them (for the uninitiated, that would be Bulgari, Hermès, and Tiffany, respectively). But recently, the industry's biggest names haven't just tweaked decades-old designs but instead have looked to reinvent them. At Bulgari, the snake-shaped Serpenti—applied to everything from chokers to watches—is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. The latest iteration eliminates the head and tail, allowing the eye to focus on the serpent's body in a new necklace, which creates a sleek, slithering form around the neck,…

THE BIG IDEA American Single Malt Has Arrived In the century-old barn that houses Tenmile Distillery, visitors can watch a pair of massive copper stills turn malted barley into whiskey. Come for a tour of the facility and master distiller Shane Fraser, a Scotsman who previously worked at Oban, Glenfarclas, and Wolfburn, will show you how things work before directing you to the adjacent bar for a cocktail or a dram. This might sound like a scene in the heart of Speyside, but it takes place five times a week, just 90 miles north of New York City—a location notable due to the kind of juice the distillery produces. Tenmile, which specializes in the burgeoning category of American single malts, got up and running in 2019; it launched Little Rest,…

THE BIG IDEA Green Space In the renderings for Casa Atibaia, a concept by architects Charlotte Taylor and Nicholas Préaud, the minimalist home hovers above a river in a tropical forest, supported by monolithic rock formations. These natural pillars define the interiors, forming the walls of a dressing room and bathroom. The structure wraps around existing vegetation to create a natural courtyard, and its floor-to-ceiling glass windows allow the indoor spaces to visually blend with the lush, leafy surroundings. Though ground hasn't yet been broken, Atibaia—named for a municipality in São Paolo, Brazil—provides a convincing argument for the benefits of biophilic design. And since the advent of Covid-19, the term has gained a renewed importance among design cognoscenti and their clients. “The resulting feeling of this jungle home is one…

THE BIG IDEA The World Keeps Moving It has been a good 12 months for what are euphemistically termed New World cigar producers—that is, those makers based outside Cuba. During the past year, it has been almost as difficult to obtain a Cuban cigar in many parts of the globe as it has been in the U.S., where sales of Cuban products have been illegal since the 1962 embargo. Many stores, most notably in Europe (traditionally the biggest market for “Habanos,” or cigars made entirely from Cuban tobacco), have been largely devoid of Havana's finest, as Cuba hasn't been able to produce enough due to a concatenation of events, not least the ravages of Hurricane Ian last September, which destroyed a substantial number of Cuba's tobacco barns and wiped out…

THE BIG IDEA Walk Softly After what seems like an eternity of extremes, with lockdown sweatpants and hoodies at one end of the spectrum and celebratory “We're back, baby!” eveningwear at the other, it feels like men's style is finally settling into the 2020s. At the fashion shows earlier in the year, most brands presented collections that were grounded in modern menswear staples, with designs that felt sleek, sophisticated, and the opposite of shouty. Now, well-cut jackets, full-length coats, finely tailored overshirts, and butter-soft leather blousons are the cornerstones of 2023's wardrobe, care of brands such as the Row, Hermes, Alexander McQueen, and Zegna. Saint Laurent's SS23 collection, which was unveiled in July last year during a show in Morocco's Agafay desert, hinged on classically proportioned tailoring and a restrained…

THE BIG IDEA Time Out If the watch industry has learned anything in recent years, it's to pay attention to secondary-market valuations. While prices have softened in the face of tighter markets over the past six months, watchmakers at the high end are realizing there's still money to be made in their own circular economies. Some are already there—independents such as Richard Mille, F. P. Journe, and MB&F began reselling in 2015,2016, and 2018, respectively—but when Rolex announced it was launching a certified pre-owned program (CPO) last December, it was a game changer: Few brands have the power to shift an entire industry dynamic more than the Crown. By January, Audemars Piguet followed suit, announcing that its own CPO would launch by the end of the year. Both brands have…

THE BIG IDEA On Shifting Ground At its heart, making wine is the highest expression of agriculture. Practices related to fanning and production on the globe's more than 18 million acres of vineyards have an enormous impact on the planet. At the same time, events that can be attributed to climate change, such as temperature extremes, drought, wildfires, and out-ofseason hail and frost, are threatening the future of viticulture. It's not an exaggeration to say that, within a few years, intense summer heat and lack of rainfall could make it nearly impossible to produce well-balanced wine in a number of regions. But a small group of family businesses is leading the charge to bring winemaking back to its roots, so to speak, with the introduction of regenerative farming as well…

THE BIG IDEA Return to Sender It's no coincidence that when the British Museum first opened its doors in 1759, the U.K. was deep into its imperialist period. The collection's initial cache of over 80,000 items had been amassed by Sir Hans Sloane, whose fortune derived in part from Jamaican sugar plantations worked by enslaved African laborers. From the get-go, the museum became a depository for treasures excavated, bought, looted, or forcibly seized from Britain's sprawling empire. Over the centuries, such priceless pieces as the Benin Bronzes and the Parthenon sculptures—previously known as the Elgin marbles, in tribute to the Englishman who ripped the 5th-century-B.C. antiquities from the Acropolis temple and shipped them home—have found their way to the London edifice. Today, though, the British Museum and other institutions in…

THE BIG IDEA The Electric Air Revolution After years of hype, aviation's electric revolution has arrived. EHang's EH216 is expected to be certified this year, the first of a half-dozen electric verticaltakeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) rotorcraft planning to enter the market in 2024 and 2025. A handful of more conventionallooking electric airplanes are aiming for certification at about the same time. Development programs have been proceeding at breakneck speed for several years, with billions now being poured into the market by investors. Six of the leading companies have already gone public. But the runway to silent, zero-carbon aircraft will have bumps. In March, Beta Technologies, one of eVTOL's early adopters, announced it was delaying the launch of its Alia-250 eVTOL and will instead seek certification for its electric conventional takeoff-and-landing (eCTOL) CX300…

THE BIG IDEA Controlling the Purse Strings The hot topic in the field of philanthropy this year has been the imminent transfer of financial power from men to women-a trend that will accelerate as the wealth creators of the baby boomer generation die and as women continue to gain ground as high earners themselves. How they choose to spend their newfound cache stands to unleash some of the most profound changes to philanthropy in decades. By 2030, American women are expected to control most of the $30 trillion in financial assets held by baby boomers, a level approaching that of the annual GDP of the United States, according to a McKinsey report. By 2035, women will have inherited 70 percent of this unprecedented intergenerational wealth transfer, according to a report…

Juan José Nemer and Mauricio Alvarez established their Mexico City furniture studio, Ad Hoc, almost a decade ago. But though the partners in life and business are well-known in their home country, they're less recognized internationally, despite having accomplished something astonishing: the elevation of traditional Mexican forms to an exquisite level of luxury. Following in the footsteps of noted Mexican modernists such as Luis Barragán, Arturo Pani, and the Cubanborn transplant Clara Porset, Ad Hoc roots its work in Mexico's greatest design resource: the craftspeople themselves. Their approach prioritizes the use of skills that have evolved over centuries, rather than simply creating new designs and commissioning a maker to execute them. “What really motivates us is that artisans value their work and feel proud of what they do and where…

Cigar making is a collaborative effort. Thus, this year's Lifetime Achievement Award goes to not one but three individuals representing multiple generations of America's oldest familyowned premium-cigar manufacturer, the J. C, Newman Cigar Company: thirdgeneration president Eric Newman; his brother, executive vice president Robert “Bobby” Newman; and Eric's son and the company's general council, fourth-generation Drew Newman. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were over 40,000 cigar factories throughout the United States; today there are fewer than 50, most being boutique operations. By comparison, the Tampa, Florida-based J. C. Newman Cigar Company, founded in 1895 by Julius Caeser Newman-whose misspelled middle name was given to the Hungarian-born entrepreneur when he arrived at U.S. immigration–makes approximately 60,000 cigars per day in its recently restored 113-year-old El Reloj factory.…