Why I Don't Travel in Summer

Last October, in a cellar in Amador, a winemaker pulled a glass of something dark from a barrel — unfinished, not for sale, not really even wine yet — and held it out to me just to watch my face when I tasted it. He was exhuasted. It was the middle of the crush, the hardest weeks of his entire year. And he had all the time in the world for me.

That is the whole secret. That is the thing I have quietly built a company around, and the reason I'll let you in on a small heresy for someone in my line of work: I don't travel in summer.

Not to the places worth traveling to, anyway. Not in July, not in August, not into the high-season crush where the café has a ninety-minute wait and the man who owns it is too underwater to be glad you walked in. In summer, a beautiful place performs its hospitality. It doesn't offer it. There is a difference, and once you've felt it, you can't unfeel it.

What I love — what I plan my whole year around — is the narrow window just before a season turns. That’s why I love Italy in late April. The shutters are coming off. The menus are being reprinted. The town has remembered how to be charming but hasn't yet grown tired of strangers. Walk in then and you get the one thing no amount of money buys in August: someone's full, undivided attention. The proprietor who sits down at your table. The shopkeeper who tells you the story behind the thing before you've even asked. The winemaker offers the special wine. You are not processed. You are received.

So in summer, I stay close to home. I keep my radius small. I let the rest of the world have its sunburn and its queues, and I do the quietest, happiest work of my year: I build the fall and the winter.

Because while everyone else is fighting for a beach chair, I'm designing the editions I actually love. The Coastal Reset, for the weeks right after the summer renters in Maine clear out and the shore finally exhales. Scottsdale, when the desert lets go of its heat but the days are still long and rejuvenating. Napa at the crush — when the days are still warm but the leaves are turning the vineyards gold. And the Christmas Markets, when a German square fills with woodsmoke and glühwein and lights strung in the square with the hustle and bustle of pop-up markets selling hand-made wares and delicious food to sustain you through the cold winter.

The off-season is the season that still has time for you.

So let the summer be the summer.

When the crowds go home and the world starts paying attention again — come travel with me!