MC Recommends: Where to holiday, what to buy and the best experiences to chase right now

Fly Dining Goa in Grand Hyatt entails diners being strapped on to a metal platform, and suspended 160 feet above the Bambolim coastline.

Postcard Hideaway, Netravali: a spot of luxury in Goa's forests

Postcard Hideaway, Netravali lies on a road that connects a village to the Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary. The resort sits over several levels of a hillside. The patio of the luxurious wooden chalet (handcrafted and very mountain resort-like), perched on stilts so as not to disturb too much of the biodiversity, offers an eagle-nest perspective of Goa’s newest sanctuary, home to a moist evergreen forest and the region’s few black panthers.

The 20-acre property is designed to blend unobtrusively with the surroundings. On driving in you see a kitchen garden surrounded by hills of Netravali; the garden is nurtured by Chef Chetan Singh Rana, whose food is worth a mention. From the traditional Goan thali made to its best expression, to his experimentation with dishes such as a pea moose with sweet-pickled beetroot salad.

Everything at Postcard Hideaway, Netravali is about the forest. The pool is in a quiet corner that looks like a forest clearing; the jacuzzi offers great views of the vast landscape; and the spa enclosure pictures frame tree canopies. The hideaway’s resort manager Nisha Sharma says experiences for guests include forest walks, trips to the neighbouring villages, and an opportunity to track Netravali’s black panthers. My favourite: evenings spent under some old-growth trees, as light filters through their dense green canopy and the birds come home to their nests.

Postcard Hideaway, Netravali, Goa

Goa’s newest dining experience is also its most innovative

While we are on the subject of Goa... How do you feel about 'flying' high up on an open platform, looking down at green lawns and the sea beyond, while tucking into your food or sipping a mocktail?

Fly Dining Goa in Grand Hyatt (also popularly referred to as sky dining) entails diners being strapped on to a metal platform, and suspended 160 feet above the Bambolim coastline. This is a table that turns 360 degrees and has seats that can be reclined to 180 degrees for the feel of a roller coaster-kind of ride.

You can book one of four experiences: breakfast, high tea, the stunner sundowner, and dinner. Each experience seat 24 people on a rectangular structure. At one point, when you are hauled into the sky, the surrounding property melts away and you are left with a view of just the trees and the ocean.

This is a dining experience, so mocktails and comfort food are built into the package. Depending on whether you choose vegetarian or non-vegetarian, you dine on chicken skewers, Spaghetti Bolognese, Chicken pasta in white sauce, canapés filled with an apple in a punchy mayonnaise, tomato bruschetta.

Meals are custom-made for the session you book. It can be pongal, fruit, granola bars, and muffins for breakfast; samosas, lemon tea cake, and cookies for high tea; and tartlets, ravioli or biryani, and tiramisu for dinner.

The sky-dining experience can cost anywhere between Rs 3,000 and Rs 8,000, depending on the session you pick, with the sundowner being the most expensive.

The sky dining experience costs Rs 3,000-8,000, with the sundowner being most expensive.

The first look: Aston Martin’s DBX707

The Aston Martin team calls it an “SUV with a sports car soul”. The focus is on “speed and power”. DBX707 showcases Aston Martin’s engineering mastery. Chief among the changes is the reworking of DBX’s Mercedes-AMG-derived twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 engine with a peak output of 707hp and 900Nm of torque, pretty much putting it in the sports car category. Its nine-speed gearbox replaces the torque converter seen in conventional automatics with a race-developed clutch. The centre console gives the driver instant access to a range of newly configured drive modes, including a Sport+ mode, pushing the sports car narrative forward.

DBX707 also scores on the style front. It has a new front-end treatment that sees the DBX receive a larger front grille, complete with new air intakes and brake cooling ducts. Dark satin chrome windows and new louvred bonnet blades co-ordinate perfectly with the front grille. At the back are new quad exhausts. The 707 has GT, Sport, and Sport + modes, which progressively increase the torque-vectoring effect of the active rear differential to help the car turn and send more of the engine's output to the rear axle. The stability control also has a more permissive Sport function. Other changes to the 707 include a more muscular body. Aston Martin states that DBX707 will prove to be the fastest SUV available at the moment.

The 707 has GT, Sport, and Sport + modes.

Zegna’s Triple Stitch sneakers are an experimental expression of its creative director Alessandro Sartori

Luxury menswear brand Zegna has been reinventing its offerings to appeal to the cool and the young with a range of clothing, shoes, and accessories that border more on the casual or semi-casual.

First launched in 2019, the Triple Stitch Sneaker has been reimagined for a more modern wardrobe. In materials such as soft suede and rich-grained leather, the big difference is that they are in slip-ons (you rarely saw slip-on in Zegna’s line-up before, given the brand’s former obsession with a formal style).

The soles are made of lightweight rubber, in keeping with efforts to make the brand more sustainable, and the shoes boast crossed elastic design to add a fun element. The elegant shoe navigates work, leisure, and travel situations with ease, and works well with both formal trousers and sporty joggers.

World’s first multi-wood barrel Single Malt comes from India

Amrut Distilleries has launched a multi-wood barrel single malt whisky called Amrut Spectrum, aged in custom-built barrels christened Spectrum casks.

A two-part maturation technique is used to make the Spectrum 004. The spirit is first matured in an ex-Bourbon cask. Then it is transferred to custom-built Spectrum casks which are made by fusing American and European barrels.

The already-aged spirit is further matured in these casks made with four kinds of staves: New American Oak with Char level 3, lightly toasted new French Limousin Oak, ex-Oloroso sherry staves, and ex-PX Sherry.

This maturation process posed a challenge, as each oak wood stave had different thicknesses and properties. Amrut solved the problem by making four different casks with different types of wood—new American Oak, new French Limousin Oak, ex-PX sherry cask stave and ex-Oloroso sherry cask stave—and stitching the corresponding staves together in the Spectrum cask.

Ashok Chokalingam, Head Distiller, Amrut Distilleries, says, “The resultant spirit is dark honey in colour. On the nose, the notes are of dried fruits and Christmas pudding, giving way to sticky toffee pudding. The taste is rather jammy, with some mild spice shining through, and the texture is creamy.”

Amrut Spectrum is matured in ex-Bourbon casks and then in custom-built casks with four types of staves.

Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) debuts two art spaces in Mumbai with an ‘Iconic’ exhibition

Till before the pandemic, Ashish Anand’s Mumbai iteration of DAG was situated in a lovely old building in the atmospheric Kala Ghoda enclave, surrounded by independent restaurants and boutiques. Not just a prime property but ideal for an art gallery that lets you into the world of India’s modern master—from company paintings to the much-feted Progressives such as M.F. Husain and F.N. Souza.

DAG's new space in the Taj Mahal Hotel’s heritage wing has the same feel, thanks to the wooden ceiling of the heritage wing. Built over two levels connected by a spiral staircase, this is one heck of an art space: wood encased, a library visible from the lower level, and mood lighting, particularly for the Iconic exhibition. The artworks are lit up in a way that they shine, particularly Laxman Pai’s painting of Paris in the evening and a very powerful portrait by Souza.

The exhibition covers a big arc, with works by artists such as Marius Bauer, Edwin Lord Weeks, Nicholas Roerich (Banner of Peace), and Raja Ravi Varma (The Coquette).