As you stroll the remote French village of Assignan, you can’t miss the colors of Chateau & Village Castigno, a wine hotel that’s been splashed all throughout the town.

As you stroll the remote French village of Assignan, you can’t miss the colors of Chateau & Village Castigno, a wine hotel that’s been splashed all throughout the town.
In a new annual tradition, Tablet CEO Lucy Lieberman presents the twelve hotels she’s most excited about for the year ahead. Maybe this time she’ll even get to visit some of them.
We’re most intrigued by hotels that have distinguishing features — some set of singular traits that separates them from all the rest. A hotel like the Saint James, then, really gets us excited. It’s the only hotel of its kind. The only hotel in Paris that fits the definition of a classic, country-style chateau.
It’s ironic, isn’t it? Deserts are synonymous with emptiness, isolation, hostility. Yet some of the world’s most beautiful, most desirable hotels overlook its barren landscapes. There’s an inherent drama to all that nothingness.
Nestled in Oaxaca, Mexico’s history-soaked Valley of Xaaga, El Silencio is a lauded mezcal maker that believed it was time their product ascended to the natural next plane. Wineries have hotels on the vineyards — why not mezcal?