Monte Carlo

In Kyrenia Harbor, along the base of the panhandle-shaped northern coast of Cyprus, a Ferretti 670 cruises past a moored Gulet 27m where a group of swimsuit-clad passengers lounge, cocktails in hand, on a snow-hued sectional sofa. From the deck of the newly docked yacht steps a man in a gray linen suit, the collar of his shirt unbuttoned and fluttering in the breeze. He offers a hand to a sun-basted woman wearing a billowy, hibiscus-print maxi dress and gladiator sandals. Across the way, a dealer’s showroom’s worth of luxury car brands—BMW, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Lamborghini—motor into the downtown, ferrying assorted VIPs and European glitterati.

The scene might feel familiar, and it’s about to get even more meta. Northern Cyprus, the burgeoning resort casino capital of the Mediterranean, has positioned itself to become the “new Monte Carlo,” a place for high rollers and yachting enthusiasts to stay, sail, play and maybe even risk it all in glitzy spaces that have the throwback glam of a James Bond film.

The southern portion of the island, often referred to as Greek Cyprus, boasts Europe’s largest gaming resort, the breathlessly named City of Dreams. From Hong Kong gambling powerhouse Melco, the facility has 14 floors, 1,000 slot machines, 100 gaming tables, nine restaurants, and its own family adventure park.

But that hasn’t stopped northern third of the island, self-declared by the government of Turkey as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, from angling for a piece of the industry pie—which exceeds $100 billion annually in Europe, an increase of eight percent since before the pandemic, according to the European Gaming & Betting Association. The island’s industry traces its roots to an investment from Cypriot-born Erbil Arkin, who opened the island’s first casinos in the mid-1980s, in a bid to create the “Las Vegas of the Middle East.”

The Turkish government has since capitalized on the momentum, sinking significant funding into Northern Cyprus and courting a variety of resort brands. Its efforts have resulted in the building of 32 resort casinos, which employ roughly 80,000 people, in a region only slightly smaller than Rhode Island. Two more are in development for 2024, with another pair to launch in 2026.

The newest to date is Kaya Palazzo, in Kyrenia. It debuted pre-pandemic, only to be shuttered until its grand reopening in 2023. “Casino tourism is developing every year in Northern Cyprus,” says Kaya Palazzo Sales Supervisor Mustafa Kirtas. He believes the island has a “big geographical advantage” compared to the other popular casino destinations, namely 11 months of sunny weather, historic sights and plentiful activities within close proximity. Another bonus: the current record-low exchange rate of the Turkish lira against the dollar.

Gambling was outlawed by Turkey’s conservative religious majority until 2019. Once the government changed its tune, the money began rolling in. Over the past five years, visitation numbers to Northern Cyprus’s casinos have ballooned to 400,000, raking in $300 million dollars annually—an “economic lifeline” for the mainland, according to an analysis by the Agence France-Presse.
This has stoked fears of a darker type of tourism. For its part, the government of Northern Cyprus has taken a proactive stance, including, Kirtas says, “establishing clear regulations that. . . ensure fair play, player protection and stringent measures against money laundering.”

It remains to be seen whether the runaway success of the Northern Cyprus gaming industry will stoke new tensions on the island, which has been divided between Greek and Turkish factions since 1974. Still, it’s hard to deny the appeal of the north’s resort casinos, which blend the thrill of the tables with an extravagant dose of Turkish hospitality.

Kaya Palazzo, for example, was inspired by the design of the Palace of Versailles, with majestic rectilinear architecture, genteel gardens overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and interiors to rival the plushest European manor house. King Suite Sea View Rooms (starting at $1,200/night) are larger than the average New York apartment at 1,300 square feet, and have velvet-upholstered seating areas, window-view jacuzzi tubs and generously appointed his-and-hers bathrooms. The hotel offers four additional classes of suites. The most decadent is the Royal Spa Suite Swim-Up Room (starting around $3,000/night). At 3,200 square feet, it sports three bedrooms, two jacuzzis, three bathrooms, a private swim-up pool and its own hammam, steam bath and massage room.

No matter the suite class, accommodations come with the assistance of a private butler, coffee and tea service, and a five-tiered dessert tray that features handmade delicacies like baklava, helva, chocolate truffles and Turkish delight studded with pistachios, saffron or rose petals.

Among Kaya Palazzo’s amenities, five a la carte restaurants serve everything from multicourse traditional Turkish foods to contemporary twists on Italian classics. Guests can reserve a waterfront cabin with overwater hammock, or be chauffeured into downtown Kyrenia in one of the hotel’s fleet of BMWs for sightseeing, boutique shopping or offsite sips and bites at hip new culinary hotspots. Kaya Palazzo’s on-premise spa ups the ante with more than a dozen choices of aesthetic services and bodywork treatments, including an authentic Turkish hammam.

Time will tell if the destination will be mentioned in the same breath as Monte Carlo or Las Vegas. But for now, Northern Cyprus has managed to capture the imagination of adventurous spirits who seek untold riches—of both the financial and cultural variety.

Looking for more luxury destinations? Check them out here.

The post The New Monte Carlo appeared first on JetsetMag.com.

A modern icon blends Old World wine techniques with New World sensibility

To say that Hélène Seillan grew up in the wine world would be an understatement akin to insisting that the French like the occasional glass of dry red. Decades before becoming the assistant winemaker at Vérité Estate in Healdsburg, California, she was shuttled, at just three years old, between vineyards and cellars in her native Bordeaux, where her father, Pierre Seillan, was a sought-after vintner.

“During harvest, my mom would take me on weekends to the different wineries. It was before cell phones, so that was the only way I could still know that I had a dad for three months out of the year,” Hélène laughs, fingertips playing along the stem of a wineglass in a narrow, lushly appointed dining room. This is just one of several hospitality spaces in Vérité’s new chateau, a grand, French-style stone building with interiors decorated in a fusion of classic European grandeur and California easiness. Its centerpiece is the barrel chai, where the wines are funneled from the neighboring production facility via an underground transfer system to rows of wooden casks beneath a dramatic vaulted ceiling.

The Seillans moved to California in the mid-1990s, lured by the promise of winemaking in a region that was full of potential and loose on regulations, as well as by American legends Jess Jackson and Barbara Banke of Jackson Family Wines. Convinced they’d found the next big wine region, Jackson and Banke purchased property in Sonoma County—then the redheaded stepchild to Napa Valley and its much-ballyhooed big, bold Cabernets.

Beyond clusters of oak trees dripping with lace lichen, and high up on the slopes where Chalk Hill meets the Alexander Valley and Knights Valley, Vérité—French for “truth”—was different from its inception in 1998. The soils and temperatures of Sonoma County, which lies in the shadow of the Mayacamas Mountains, vary from appellation to appellation and benefit from the cooling breezes off the Pacific Ocean. This diversity allows grape harvesting from 50 different micro crus—small, hand-farmed, low-yield vineyard blocks.

The short-term result: dozens of expressions between varietals. The long-term result: seventeen different 100-point vintages.

Hélène began working alongside her father in the early 2000s, starting at the “bottom, bottom, bottom,” she says. “My dad’s a pretty tough guy, and because I’m his daughter, I think he was even harder on me than on others.” Following a brief stint in a California junior college, she returned to Bordeaux for a two-year viticulture and oenology program—which she agreed to on the condition that she would spend half her time working with her hands.

While she enjoyed learning theory, she found classroom practice stifling. “Sometimes we had exercises like ‘make the best wine possible,’ and I was getting really bad scores because they didn’t agree with how I did it,” Hélène explains. “My dad and I are a lot of alike in that we’re very artistic. Sometimes we don’t know why we do things. There’s this little voice inside that leads us to this or that in the blends, and it just works.”

That petite voix has guided every vintage since her first in 2006. In 2013, the year she was elevated to assistant winemaker, Hélène had her first big test: coming up with Vérité’s three main blends. Pierre declared two excellent as-is. The third he modified by a small percentage of one varietal. It became the only one of the trio not to receive a full 100 points from Robert Parker that year.

Hélène stands poised to eventually take the reins of a program that regularly tops critics’ score charts and collectors’ lists. It’s significant in an industry where women are often better at detecting aromas and flavors in wine, yet, according to a 2020 study by Santa Clara University, only 14 percent of vintners are female. She isn’t daunted by this, or by Vérité’s potential to bring Sonoma wines to the world stage.

Still, Hélène isn’t interested in putting her own stamp on Vérité. “I’ve never had an ego about it, and I’ve never needed to shine. Every time somebody asks me, ‘What are you going to bring that’s new?’ It’s like, ‘I’m not.’ I want to keep Vérité, Vérité. It shouldn’t be about us. It’s about the land and the signature of the wine.

“I want people to approach Old World-style wines with an open mind, and know we’re not making a copy,” Hélène concludes. “It’s not about being better, but being part of an ongoing conversation.”

A Tasting of Vérité Wines with Hélène Seillan

“I love the challenge of food pairing,” says Hélène, who once entertained a career as a chef. Here she offers her tasting notes and pairing advice on three of Vérité’s standout vintages.

1998 Vérité La Muse

Vérité’s first wine, the Merlot-base La Muse was born of Pierre Seillan and Jess Jackson’s love of Right-Bank Bordeaux (Pomerol). 1998 La Muse has aromas of Spanish cedar, sweet tobacco, cranberry, dried red currant, and black cherry, along with earthy notes of freshly turned soil and black summer truffle. On the palate, the texture is lithe and elegant, with velvety tannins and refreshing acidity. Contrary to conventional theory, Hélène serves this red with seafood, from seared scallops to lobster with drawn butter, or trout beurre blanc.

2011 Vérité La Joie

The cool temperatures, rain, and cloud cover of 2011 posed a challenge for many California vintners. While all three expressions of 2011 Vérité have aged well, Hélène calls this La Joie “exceptionally satisfying.” Reminiscent of a classic vintage from Pauillac, its nose is characterized by deep red and stone fruits, with earthy and spicy notes like mushroom, oak, cocoa, clove, and nutmeg. The wine pairs wells with fat- and protein-rich foods like seared New York strip with buttered scalloped potatoes, or Sonoma County Dry Jack cheese.

2013 Vérité Le Désir

This was the first vintage that Hélène blended by herself, marking Vérité’s transformation into a multigenerational winery. Rich but with a refreshing acidity, it has notes of dried blackcurrant and blackberry coulis balanced by quintessential Cabernet Franc aromas like fresh cut greenery, black tea, and black pepper. The palate is both powerful and elegant, with a juicy acidity, firm tannins, and dried stone minerality leading to a very long finish. Hélène recommends pairing this Cabernet Franc-based blend with aged Comté cheese.

The post Crushing It: Old World Wine Techniques with New World Sensibility appeared first on JetsetMag.com.