I sampled brandy from 2022 in a $21 million tasting room overlooking a hillside. I dined on the season’s first fava beans at one of the country’s best restaurants. I drove on bucolic back roads in an electric BMW borrowed from my $1,100-per-night hotel.
“Isn’t Napa lovely?” you might be thinking. Yes, but all of this happened at Klocke Estate, in upstate New York.
The Hudson Valley may lack the wineries, golf courses, and spas that make Napa and Sonoma destinations for the American Express Centurion set, but make no mistake: the helipads have landed.
For decades, the Hudson Valley and Catskills have been declared “the new Hamptons.” But outside of Millbrook and, more recently, Hudson, the scene was never sufficiently over the top for the description to really stick.
When I bought my weekend home, in Woodstock, in 1996, the region’s refusal to be fancy was the appeal. These days, it’s not uncommon to read that a Michelin-starred chef has taken over a 4 Bros Pizza or that a hotel’s “modernist suite” (in a former nursing home) is going for $1,200 a night. The Californication of upstate New York is in full swing.
“It’s interesting what’s happened with the brand of ‘upstate,’” says Jeffries Blackerby, a former magazine editor who is now a real-estate agent with Houlihan Lawrence in Hudson.
Until recently, a $2 million property was considered the top of the market. Now he’s showing $3 million, two-bedroom homes to buyers from California, Texas, and Palm Beach. “You, of course, have to explain to them that ‘upstate’ is vast, from the Pennsylvania border to the Massachusetts border,” says Blackerby.
Ten years ago, a stylishly renovated ski lodge or B&B that had been de-cluttered and painted black made local news. Just before the pandemic, New Yorkers armed with mood boards (and, often, generational wealth) began snapping up acreage, undervalued homes, and retail spaces.
The founders of the beauty brand Fresh opened the stylish Maker Hotel and restaurant on the once neglected end of Hudson’s Warren Street. Downtown New York City restaurateur Taavo Somer cut his hotel teeth turning a Kingston bank into a weekend hot spot before opening the country-clubby Inness resort, which now has a partnership with Blade, the private-helicopter company that initially only serviced the eastern tip of Long Island. (He also recently opened the stylish all-day café Little Goat in an 18th-century town house in Rhinebeck.)
Audrey Gelman, who founded the co-working space the Wing, has opened the Six Bells, a country-themed hotel in Rosendale. The Ranch, a notoriously strict wellness retreat whose original location is in Malibu, is now operating in Sloatsburg.
Anthony Champalimaud and his wife, Charlie, worked with his mother, the well-known interior and hotel designer Alexandra Champalimaud, to transform Amenia’s historic Troutbeck estate into a 37-room hotel, locavore restaurant, and arts club.
Larger developers have been in the game for just as long, but they’ve faced stronger headwinds. Auberge Resorts slogged through seven years of opposition from locals in Gardiner before welcoming the first guests to the 160-acre Wildflower Farms, in 2022. Soho House has been announcing the opening of the 250-acre Grasmere House, outside of Rhinebeck, for years; it’s currently slated for this fall.
Near Hyde Park, the luxury spa group Six Senses, which launched in the Maldives, has been repeatedly rebuffed in its attempt to open its first U.S. property. (It’s currently operating as a private retreat.) Troutbeck’s Alexandra Champalimaud spent four years renovating a historic home just over the state line, in Litchfield, Connecticut, to create the beautiful Belden House & Mews, complete with a bathhouse and spa. Even though it’s been open for less than two months, it’s fully booked on weekends through November, including the $3,500-per-night penthouse.
Food has been a major driver in attracting tourists (and buyers), thanks in no small part to upstate’s strong agricultural community. Clare De Boer, a co-founder of King restaurant in New York City, opened Stissing House in Pine Plains four years ago. Says Blackerby, “If I had a dollar for every listing that references its proximity to Stissing House!”
Celebrated New York chefs have followed De Boer, including the duo behind Contra and Wildair, now at Matilda, in Hensonville’s Henson hotel; José Ramírez-Ruiz, at Amenia’s Isabela, which quickly earned him a Michelin star; and Efrén Hernández, who was nominated for a James Beard Award last year, at the Camptown hotel’s Casa Susanna, in Leeds.
Michelin-starred One White Street culinary director David Israelow recently took over the 31-year-old Blue Plate Restaurant & Bar to open Four Corners in increasingly less sleepy Chatham, now home to the FilmColumbia festival and where the architect Annabelle Selldorf is designing the $18 million Shaker Museum complex.
And while not as gleaming as, say, the new Banque bakery and restaurant in Hudson, the owners of New York City’s Black Seed Bagels are behind the restaurant at Little Cat Lodge, in Hillsdale. The town’s new nickname: “Beverly Hillsdale,” thanks to residents Walton Goggins, Brian Cox, and Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy.
The Hudson Valley lacks Napa-quality grapes, but not ambition or funding. Klocke Estate, the vision of a Boston financier, is making brandy and eau-de-vie from 43 varieties of apples and nine grape varietals in Hudson. Purchased in 2017, the swish distillery, whose tasting room is designed by Napa’s own Ken Fulk, will debut its first brandy this fall.
The equally ambitious Tenmile Distillery, in Wassaic, is making whiskey, gin, and vodka from local ingredients and gaining a reputation for its chef residencies, while there are more award-winning “farm to stein” breweries than one can count. And, yes, there is a wine trail. A few limos too.
Can hot-air balloons be far behind?
Christine Muhlke, a former editor at The New York Times and Bon Appétit, is a co-author of Wine Simple, with Le Bernardin’s Aldo Sohm, and a co-author of Phaidon’s Signature Dishes That Matter. She is also the founder of culinary consultancy Bureau X and the creator of the Xtine newsletter
