In a quiet, gated community in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, this grand home offers 24-hour security. Inside, the welcoming stairway at the entry leads to the great room and main living, which open to the pool area.

“As you walk down the stairway entrance you feel like you are walking into a grand ballroom,” says listing agent Jaime Gould of Coldwell Banker St. Croix Realty.

The home also features three bedrooms, three full and one half baths, a one-bedroom apartment and a two-car garage.

“This home is good for people who like to entertain and have guests stay with them,” says Gould. “Each bedroom has its own area, so if you need to get away or have peaceful quiet time you can.”

This property was featured in the Fall 2019 edition of Homes & Estates magazine.

To see the full digital version, click here.

Trudy Stambook, 

CIPS, CME, SRS, CNE, TRC

Centre City Properties 

220 West “G” Street, Suite A, San Diego, CA 92101

619.252.1944 | Trudy@TrudyStambook.com | www.TrudyStambook.com | CA BRE# 00694195

Renown for discreet, individualized client service, Trudy Stambook is a key resource for real estate clients and those actively engaged in the business, development and cultural community in San Diego. First named among the nation’s elite luxury real estate agents back in 1995 by Unique Homes Magazine, and recognized annually ever since.

• Over 30 years of experience as a luxury real estate professional

• Over 20 years of worldwide marketing in 85 countries

• Representing both Buyers and Sellers

• Repeatedly voted Five Star “Best in Client Satisfaction” by readers of San Diego Magazine

PINNACLE 3402

Capturing the essence of sophisticated urban living, this extraordinary, one-of-a-kind Pinnacle top tier residence is resplendent in custom designed finishes and panoramic views. Nearly 3,000 sq ft of impeccably crafted living space, gleaming marble floors, walls of glass, glamorous entertaining areas yet a finely tuned haven for day-to-day living. Revel in the best vantage point in the city.

Trudy Stambook originally appeared as an Elite agent in Unique Homes Spring ’19: Elite edition. See her ad here.

“My 3D illusions are where the language of proportion and innovation meet. I’m so excited about this project as the illusions I have created will be partnered with elegant chandeliers and the world’s finest cakes. The marriage of all three will shift the perception of what is reality,” says Wenner. 

The cake truck will start service starting this month in Northern California, and guests are encouraged to tag and follow along with the hashtag ​#ladymxbaccarat. ​A microsite tracking the cake truck’s journey throughout California will be live at ​www.ladym.com/thecaketruck​. 

All photos courtesy Samantha Nandez / BFA.com

Photo by Giacomo Maestri. 

New design brand LATOxLATO, founded by the young architects Francesco Breganze de Capnist and Virginia Valentini, presents its first collection of furnishings and objects that strives to tell a story of true passion for Italian design. Exclusively made in Italy, LATOxLATO uses the finest materials and refined techniques, all built on a search for the best artisans and craftspeople. 

“LATOxLATO comes from the wish of bringing the artisans’ knowledge passed down across generations to the public,” say designers Breganza de Capnist and Valentini, “and make people realize that in Italy we still have a great tradition of true masters of the art that mold one piece at a time with their hands … Our mission is to show the consumer everyday objects in a different way from the one they are used to seeing them, freed from the constraints of the usual trends through the constant dialogue between art, aesthetics and functionality.”

The duo is usually inspired by day to day life, taking their personal memories as well as the architecture of Italy and transposing generalized design concepts into household pieces. For those looking to outfit their home, both designers say that these pieces help to “tell a story about [the] owner.”  

“Each product has a unique and recognizable identity and is meant to embellish its new home and also bring value to its new owner. The goal is to give the consumer the chance to own a very unique piece that tells a story about him, what he likes and what are his dreams.”

There are several pieces in the collection, varying in look and purpose. The Fourmosa storage chest draws on the clean formal lines of classic Italian design from the 1950s, updated for the modern age.

The piece is in varnished oak, with masterfully carved sharp edges bringing a sense of continuity to the surface. Designed to fit together in infinite combinations, these pieces create a dynamic, personalized piece that can even be expanded over time.

The trapezoidal modules easily lend themselves to various free combinations, without the use of joints. 

Photo by Matteo Imbriani.

Candleholders, vases and a centerpiece are a tribute to the Italian art and architecture that inspires their form and character.

The Vestalia candleholder boasts the natural elegance of the most precious marbles, from Carrara White to Carnico Gray and Imperial Green. 

A complex process of water-jet carving, entrusted to historic Venetian ateliers, brings out the stone’s edges and veining.

Their design, rich in tactile emotions and interactive possibilities, makes them objects of compelling sculptural presence. 

Photo by Matteo Imbriani.

Nancy Dolan & Lynn Dolan

William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty

251 Main Street, Southport, CT 06890

(203) 258-2303 | (818) 620-0554 | ndolan@williampitt.com | ldolan@williampitt.com

Nancy M. Dolan and Lynn Dolan are top producers in Connecticut’s Fairfield, Southport, and Westport markets. They are with William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty in the Southport Harbor Office. Nancy’s 30+ years of experience and membership in many professional real estate organizations, as well as her appearance in Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate, contribute to her success. “Be considerate, flexible, honest, and genuinely caring at all times. I love what I do!” Experience is our best asset!

Listings by Nancy Dolan & Lynn Dolan

COTSWOLD COTTAGE 

Gardens, terraces and panoramic views surround this English Cottage. Built in 1914 and completely renovated in 2016-17 incorporating exceptional top-of-the-line materials/mechanicals while maintaining its charm. Set high on Sasco Hill, it offers views of Southport Harbor, the golf course and Long Island Sound from all rooms.

$2,495,000.

Nancy Dolan & Lynn Dolan originally appeared as Elite agents in the Unique Homes Spring ’19: Elite edition. See their page here.

Engel & Völkers | Mallorca West

Archiduque Luis Salvador, 1, E-07179 Deià, Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain

+34.971.636.363 | deia@engelvoelkers.com | www.engelvoelkers.com/mallorca-westcoast

On Mallorca, the West Coast where the Sierra de Tramuntana is located has recently declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, remains one of the most authentic and sought after areas of the island. The Engel & Völkers real estate team will be pleased to present you with the best properties in this region, both those seeking a second home for the summer and those who have decided to reside here permanently.

Listings by Engel & Völkers | Mallorca West

A GEM ON THE WEST COAST OF THE TRAMUNTANA 

IThe origins of this extraordinary estate date back to the 13th century. In 1983, the former winery was awakened from its slumber. The impressive entrance hall leads into the living room with its imposing archways ­— a spacious, luminous room was created. There is an open-plan studio area with a dining and a conference table, a gallery and a library. On the ground floor, there is also the Majorcan-style, fully fitted kitchen and on the same level as a charming covered terrace. On this floor, there is also a cozy guest wing with a private terrace with sea views. The entire 1st floor accommodates 5 bedrooms with private baths. There is so much to say about this extraordinary property ­— only a personal impression will convey the true atmosphere. This is a unique, premium home in the Sierra de Tramuntana, which must be viewed.

E&V ID W-02BEEL. €16,500,000.

Engel & Völkers | Mallorca West originally appeared as an Elite company in the Unique Homes Spring ’19: Elite edition. See their page here.

The powder room used to be an afterthought, but for people who entertain this space has become an important design moment. In fact, when it comes to luxury condo buildings, developers are now going above and beyond to create distinct powder rooms that leave a lasting impression – with details like custom wall paneling, unique custom lighting and specially made marble vanities that highlight today’s style trends. To perfect your own powder room, we’ve come up with a few tips based on stylish New York residences.

Embrace the Selfie Lighting

Often small spaces, powder rooms can still offer a great place to capture that perfect Instagram photo, especially if there is good lighting. To create the perfect selfie space, lighting must be on point to not only adequately brighten up the space, as well as both capture the best pose and highlight the style and decor of the room. 

555 West End Avenue

Photo by Hayes Davidson.

Keeping Fashion-Forward

Staying on trend can sometimes be difficult when it comes to home design, so the best way to do so is highlight classic, elegant finishes that remain stylish over time, while incorporating accents and decor that is on trend. Some classic finishes are beautiful marble counters and sinks, black and white tiles or wallpaper, and metallic detailing.

30 Park Place

Photo by 30 Park Place.

Customization is Key

No matter your style, custom finishes or accents are also a defining decor element that can make or break the style of your powder room. Detailed design elements and customized, select finishes make a strong modern statement, create warmth and elegance in every space. Not only will these be a unique focal point, but inspirational in design for those looking to spruce up their own spaces.

40 Bleeker

Photo by Bjorn Wallender.

Spiral

The free-standing, white-plaster spiral staircase at luxury condominium 277 Fifth Avenue was designed by famed interior architect Jeffrey Beers with a custom-made, commercial-size chandelier composed of 18 strands of brass-trimmed pendants that suspend down its center.

The staircase was intently crafted to create a visually stunning and dramatic connection between two floors that house 7,000 square feet of amenity spaces, including a game lounge and state-of-the-art fitness facility.

Courtesy of Pentagram

Wood

Skyline Tower’s glistening bronze and wood staircase was crafted to create a dramatic entryway to the condominium’s expansive Residential Lounge, cascading elegantly into the open-air common space, which was designed to feel like an extension of each resident’s home.

Courtesy of Binyan Studios

Function and practicality are balanced with quality fabrics, exciting designs and an overall sense of style in the robe collections offered at SoffiaB and Julianna Rae.

Function and practicality are balanced with quality fabrics, exciting designs and an overall sense of style in the robe collections offered at SoffiaB and Julianna Rae.

In 2012, SoffiaB was created by British designer Sophie Burkart after she realized that her search for a stylish and comfortable robe was limited. Burkart’s luxury robes and dressing gowns are crafted in New York’s iconic garment district with a special attention to detail and a sophisticated style. 

Burkart also realized that it was difficult to find a robe that works in more than one season. However, five collections offered at SoffiaB have soft cotton linings to accommodate more versatile climates. For example, the Delphine, Delphine Shortie and Hermione collections are silk charmeuse lined with feather-light, sea island cotton. 

• The Hermione Shortie Collection was designed for warmer weather and falls on or around the knee when worn. 

• The Persephone Collection was designed for Autumn/Winter and is slightly longer, making it fashionable and chic.

• The Delphine Collection is the Spring-inspired collection of full-length silk robes that are accented with printed silk. 

• The Delphine Shortie Collection is a collection of shorter, knee-length robes.

• The Daphne Collection is the original Winter-inspired collection of full-length silk robes. They are lined with brushed ultra-soft cotton with rich velvet accents.

Julianna Rae is another luxury brand that keeps real women in mind. The brand ensures original designs that are crafted with top-quality materials and a particular attention for detail. 

 A Julianna Rae spokesperson describes the Ariadne Silk Robe as “a sumptuous full-length robe made from mulberry silk. It has a gorgeous pleated collar and pleated cuffs.” 

The Moonlight Serenade Silk Short Robe is a shorter robe made from our gorgeous silk and rich European Leavers lace on the sleeves. The lace is what really sets this robe apart — it’s wonderfully detailed and enhanced even further by the pattern our designers have cut from the lace to make the cuffs on the sleeves, according to a Julianna Rae spokesperson.

Luxury robes are the perfect holiday gift or addition to your wardrobe. These two brands offer a mix of styles and fabrics that may make your holiday shopping that much easier. 

Photos courtesy of SoffiaB – Jason Miller, Pixelate Photography &  photo courtesy of Julianna Rae

Beer may be the everyman’s drink, but there are some ultra-premium brews priced like fine Bordeaux.

By Roger Grody

Budweiser is the “King of Beers” and rival Miller Brewing Company dubs its flagship product “High Life,” so the concept of elitism has long pervaded the mass-production market. But a new breed of brewmasters is transforming the beer drinking experience through exotic ingredients, elaborate packaging and price tags that would make a sommelier blush.

Craft brewing, a dominant trend in the industry, has fostered diversity, innovation and a focus on high quality artisanal ingredients. Also emerging are small-batch, ultra-premium beers with price points more akin to fine wines than budget-friendly, old-school labels like Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Leading beer authority Stephen Beaumont — his 13 books include The World Atlas of Beer and Premium Beer Drinker’s Guide — reports plenty of media interest in super-expensive beers but does not believe their hype represents a major shift in the industry. “It’s not so much a trend but an attention-grabber,” he says, conceding that whenever a beer sells for $800, people naturally take notice. He suggests that standing in line for the chance to buy a limited-release beer is part of an experience that transcends the palate, and points to 3 Floyds Brewing Co.’s Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout as a prime example. On Dark Lord Day (most recently on May 19, 2018), fans make the pilgrimage to Munster, Indiana to score some of the scarce bottles.

Many high-priced beers are one-off events rather than regularly available products, and their stratospheric price tags are often attributed to extremely limited production. Sapporo, the massive Japanese brewery, introduced Space Barley in 2009, made with barley from seeds that were kept alive in the International Space Station by Japanese and Russian scientists. The grain’s exotic provenance made this one of the most unique beers ever produced — facetiously referred to as “out of this world” — and a six-pack retailed for $110.

From 2008 through 2014, Australia’s Crown Beverages produced a vintage beer called Crown Ambassador Ale, a limited-production beverage designed to cellar for a decade. The handsome 750ml wine-like bottles were originally priced at about $90 but now command in excess of $1,000 on auction sites. The brewer suggests serving it in a red wine glass and reports it pairs well with pungent cheeses, wild game and desserts.

Samuel Adams, the brand that introduced craft brewing techniques to a mass market, has offered 10 vintages of a limited-edition beer called Utopias, a blend of batches aged up to 24 years. At 28 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) — as opposed to the typical 4 to 6 percent — this beer is more akin to a Port or Cognac. Aging in a variety of wine and spirit barrels (the 2017 vintage included a stint in Scandinavian aquavit barrels) further invites such comparisons.

“My original idea for Utopias was to push the boundaries of craft beer by brewing an extreme beer that was unlike anything any brewer had conceived,” reports Samuel Adams Founder Jim Koch. “We’ve continued to stretch the boundaries in brewing with the release of our 10th vintage and I’m proud to present to drinkers this lunatic fringe of extreme beer worthy of the Utopias name,” says Koch of the 2017 vintage. Only 13,000 ceramic bottles resembling copper brewing kettles were released, with a suggested retail price of $199 per bottle. Commentators like Beaumont praise Utopias, suggesting its character and complexity warrants the high price.

BrewDog is a funky Scottish craft brewery (Beaumont calls the company, not necessarily disparagingly, “an unapologetic attention-seeker”) that produces highly rated beers with product names like Elvis Juice, Clockwork Tangerine and Tactical Nuclear Penguin. One of its most celebrated products was Sink the Bismark!, a 41 percent ABV ale that retailed at approximately $75 when released in 2011. If you can find the high-octane brew today, you’ll pay north of $200 for a 330ml bottle.

End of History is a BrewDog beer with a staggering 55 percent ABV. Only a dozen bottles were produced for its first release in 2010, so prices skyrocketed to $750 or more. The beer is now brewed at BrewDog’s Columbus, Ohio facility, legal in the Buckeye State only after a 12 percent ABV cap was lifted in 2016. Despite its American Heartland production, the beer is fermented with juniper berries and nettles from the Scottish Highlands. To raise money for the company’s American expansion, $20,000 bottles were offered to investors. And for packaging that could be viewed as either cool or creepy, each End of History bottle is inserted into a taxidermied squirrel, with the neck of the bottle extending through the mouth of the sacrificial critter.

Denmark-based Carlsberg Group is best known for its eminently affordable Carlsberg label, but offers more than 500 different brands from Uzbekistan to Laos and periodically experiments with high-end beers. Released from 2008 to 2010 is its Carlsberg Jacobsen Vintage, which was originally priced near $400. It can still be cellared until 2059 and remaining bottles are considered precious. “It’s quite a flavorful beer with lots of character and complexity,” notes Beaumont. This year, the company introduced new cask-conditioned beers in conjunction with Nordic Food Lab at the University of Copenhagen.

“The starting point was a curiosity about whether we could brew beers of sufficiently high quality to match Denmark’s elite gastronomy,” says Jacobsen Brewmaster Morten Ibsen, who notes, “We succeeded.” A limited allocation of Jacobsen’s Chanterelle Lager was provided to Michelin-starred Restaurant Tri Trin Ned in Fredericia, Denmark, where dishes on the multi-course tasting menu were carefully crafted to complement the beer’s unique character. The launch reinforces the concept of fine beer assuming the stature of wine in the highest echelons of the culinary world.

Perhaps no craft brewery in America is as dedicated to the art of “culinary brewing” as Chicago-based Moody Tongue Brewing Company, whose mission is to develop flavor profiles that pair well with fine cuisine. Founding Brewmaster Jared Rouben, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and an alum of Michelin three-star Per Se in New York, approaches brewing beer as he would a savory dish in the kitchen. “It’s about sourcing the best ingredients, handling them with care and knowing where, when and why to incorporate them,” he says, adding, “The finished product just hits a glass instead of a plate.” 

Moody Tongue’s Shaved Black Truffle Pilsner (about $120 for a 22-ounce bottle) is a beer designed to complement rack of lamb as effectively as a Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Several acclaimed restaurants have placed it on their lists, including New York heavyweights Per Se and Blue Hill. Part of Rouben’s inspiration for founding Moody Tongue in 2014 was his frustration with seeing the beer selection relegated to the last page of restaurants’ beverage lists, with few choices that could elevate the dining experience. “My inspiration comes from the ingredients,” says the chef/brewmaster, insisting he is not motivated by price. “As soon as truffles go down in price, so will the beer,” he quips.

Shelton Brothers, Inc. is a prominent Massachusetts-based importer currently offering more than 800 labels, including those of Cantillon, a Belgian brewery whose traditionally fermented Lambic beers command high prices. Commenting on the current crop of headline-grabbing beers, Co-Founder Dan Shelton, states, “American craft brewers have figured out a lot of ways of getting people to spend more money:  higher alcohol levels, novel ingredients, creating the impression of scarcity by limiting access, and using what are purported to be innovative techniques.”

“Most of this is just gimmickry,” insists Shelton, who believes the trend toward exotic food additives is cresting. Unimpressed by truffle-infused beer, he says, “I sincerely hope that what comes next is a renewed interest in what I think of as just ‘good beer’ — beer made in the traditional, painstaking way that actually tastes like beer.”

Haute Brews

BrewDog • Scotland/Ohio • www.brewdog.com

Cantillon Brewery • Belgium • www.cantillon.be

Crown Ambassador Reserve • Australia • www.crownlager.com.au

Carlsberg Group • Denmark • www.carlsberggroup.com

Moody Tongue Brewing Company • Chicago • www.moodytongue.com

Samuel Adams • Boston • www.samueladams.com

Sapporo • Japan • www.sapporobeer.com

3 Floyds Brewing Co. • Indiana • www.3floyds.com

Resources

Shelton Brothers, Inc. • www.sheltonbrothers.com

Stephen Beaumont • www.beaumontdrinks.com