The Other Side of Ibiza – Travel Review

By Kevin Pilley, October 2024

The Carthaginians arrived in Ibiza in 654. The Goths and Visigoths, Muslims and Christians followed. Then came the Chavs, the piercings, the thongs, the ‘full-on’ party animals, the Jagerbombs, the Thirsty Thursdays and bottomless Gigglewater Prosecco. The £24 G&Ts, the VIP chill pits, the ebullient non-binary scene, the re-masterings, the mixology, Deep House, Techno and the ecstasy.

But we all outgrow amnesia and the Balearic bass beats of Fisher, Martin Garrix and Bosnia super-DJ Sebastian Gamboa. We all get tired of going to bed at 6am for five days on the trot, waking up every afternoon with a hangover that feels like an Iberian hanging cured ham has dropped on our head overnight. Our preferred nightspot becomes our bed.

But Ibiza can make you feel less old. Heritage sites are good for you. Necropolises, Phoenician relics and the world’s second-oldest living thing – Ibizan sea grass – make you realise you’re not as old as you think.

Although ‘getting it on’ will always refer to sunblock.

“Highbrow wine pairings”

Not everyone goes to bed at sunrise after too many “zingy” mojitos and club crawls around the stag and hen party gulag of San Antoni. Many come to Ibiza to eat as well. The sort of people who prioritise a chef over a resident tattooist.

The restaurant 1742 in the Palacio Bardaji in Dalt Vita, Eivissa, Ibiza’s UNESCO-listed hilltop Old Town, offers Flanders Zeeland/Ibizan fusion and a £260 per head degustacion tasting menu. With highbrow wine pairings, an aria and a box seat affording a close-up and personal view of a UNESCO Cultural Heritage site.

Two-starred Dutch master chef Edwin Vinke has Ibiza’s other Michelin-feted chefs, Óscar Molina at La Gaia and Alvaro Sanz Clavijo of Es Tragon.

“Gastronomy and art with a wink”

Next to the Cathedral of Nuestra Senora de las Nieves, Vinke’s new restaurant is in a restored mid-eighteenth mini-palace. A bespoke “nature-driven” menu celebrates Mediterranean seafood and Dutch sea life – “It mixes gastronomy and art with a wink.”

Vinke’s “exclusive experiential dining concept” begins in a diddy, four-man valet taxi which take diners – and in our case the resident violinist – up through the narrow, winding, cobbled “calles” of the ancient hilltop town to be met at the door by a statuesque lady bearing gin and tonic infused chocolates on long spoons.

You are escorted up questionable carpets, past a large rose corsage wall (“There to show you you’re loved”) to be met by the artfully tattooed patron chef for a game of “Guess the appetizer”. You might think the answer is on the tip of your tongue but few get it right. It’s a carrot. But no ordinary carrot. A smoked one, lovingly cooked for twenty hours. Slow cooking carrots is Edwin’s speciality. And passion.

The Other Side of Ibiza

“Experimental-artistic inventions”

Parisian maitre’d Frank Briquet then shows you the special function room (“What happens in the 1742 stays in the 1742”) and escorts you up more stairs and more visually challenging carpeting, to enjoy a flute aperitif on the rooftop terrace overlooking the harbour and overlooked by two giant plastic penguins. Apparently, they’re made from recycled materials by Belgian artists in a protest against animal cloning.

You are then taken back downstairs, under a Discoball through some 1970s Soho strip club in Ibiza purple lighting and shown your table in one of the two “multi-sensorial salons”.

The menu comprises a banquet of  “experimental-artistic interventions” including Italian cutlery and Fair Trade tableware. A piece of beautifully carved wood from Thailand acts as a seafood platter. The napery passes as a blank canvas. The silent ambient Acid Test light show (by Aladdin of south London) pulses on the walls and ceiling. The restaurant is a moving feast.

Look one way and you have surrealism and the other, the Gothic, Catalan and Baroque in the form of the Our Lady of the Snow Cathedral and its trapezoidal bell tower.

“Insightful fruits de mer”

With wife Blanche and son Tom, two-Michelin star Vinke runs the celebrated “De Kromme Watergang” in Hoofdplast in the Zeeland region of the south-west Netherland. The 56-year-old earned his first star in 2005 and second in 2011. He was named Chef of The Year in 2011.

You read from the Experience Menu that  “works of art feed you” and what you are about to experience is “a credo, more movement , more rebellion” and that “eating is insight”.

And, after introducing you to some insightful fruits de mer and “Mame” local fish, you avidly listen as a south American waitress picturesquely paints in  words a “Bogante Azul” with beach crab and broad beans  and lyrically deconstructs some summer deer and pumpkins , leaving you in no doubt that Vinke is master of the briny and  a proponent of the wild over the tamed, raw over overcooked.

Smoked carrots notwithstanding.

It’s theatre. Food becomes a public art installation. It’s performance art with the best wines. Without the blary music and bouncing floorboards. The chilled House being wine with an astronomical street value.

“A violinist and a diva”

The restaurant is a joint venture between the celebrated chef and the Braun family from Nassau, Germany who founded the Nassau Group. The family also runs the Casa Munich farmhouse agro-tourism near the salt pans and Nassau Beach Club on Playa d’en Boss where drinks are served in mini rowing boats. A bath of champagne is available for 2000E.

Here the profligate and beautiful pose on sunbeds, honing their chillaxing skills on tuna poke bowls. Their evening ends with nausea, ours with a violinist and a diva.

Not everyone goes to Ibiza to bust a move and throw some shapes. Those who treasure quiet and their eardrums stay inland in “civilised” agrotourism cans.

Can Sastre, near the racetrack, is a tranquil base to explore old Ibiza, its serene countryside and pre-dance culture history away from the rowdy “xiringuio” beach bar. Eclectically decorated, the farmhouse with swimming pool and honesty bar may not have a restaurant but the staff are marvellous and will point you towards the inexpensive Spanish barbecue restaurant Pilot just down the road in San Rafael. Get there early before the locals. It’s first-come.

“Deep-rooting vines”

You cannot say you have been to and done Ibiza and experienced all it has to offer until you have accepted David Lorenzo’s invitation “to please come to see my starter yeast” and been given permission to fondle his uva.

The Galician is very proud of his grapes And his terroir-driven creations. You cannot leave Ibiza without a lesson in cold racking and malolactic fermentation.

Once you’ve done the Punic sanctuaries, the candy-striped Portinatx lighthouse and the Marca caves at Puerto San Miguel, discover DO Vino De La Tierra Ibiza at the Ibizkus tasting rooms at Santa Gertrudis, between Santa Eulalia and Ibiza Town.

A rich and no doubt very cool and laid-back English DJ wanted to plant his own vineyard and make his own wine at his huge mansion and estate on Ibiza.  But he didn’t listen to the locals.

They told him not to plant Merlot. But he did and, within two years, all the vines had died and there was no wine.

David Lorenzo took two years to realise that he had to take the advice of locals to make good wine on Ibiza, which was to use deep-rooting vines. The son of a fabric maker, he produces 90 per cent of Ibiza’s wine.

“Isolation from the mainland allows us to express the notion of terroir in its purest form. Ungrafted vines make up several of our 40 hectares of vineyards, reflecting the regional character of our wines. We are now using grafters from Rioja. My job is to keep the grapes unstressed through the whole year. I work harder in the winter than I do in the summer!”

“Ibicence”

Founded in 2007 as Totem Wines by a Spaniard, a Swiss man, an Englishman and a Frenchman, Ibizkus produces 11 different wines from grapes grown at seven sites and three labels under the Geographically Protected Indication Vino de la tierra Ibiza. Totem, the premium, gastronomic label from single parcels or ungrafted vines, “Ibizkus”  (including a rose, multivarietal white and two monovarietal reds (Monastrell and Syrah) and the young, “entry level” Can Basso.

The other vineyards on Ibiza are Can Maymo at San Mateo and Can Rich de Buscatell. The sister island of Formentura has Terranoll and Cap de Barbaria.

The Swiss Lehrer brothers make the red blend Blacknose of Sa Roca des Falco in the  Saint Joan de Labritja mountains.  Surrounded nu ancient purpose-built terraces underpinned by “muros secos”, at 320m above sea level the vineyard is the highest on Ibiza. Cabernet Sauvignon was planted in 2016 and the Giros Ros white grape in 2020.

Blacknose is named after a breed of half-wild sheep (Schwarznasenschafe) which originated in Valais.

Adds Lorenzo, whose partner Estania also works at the winery, “We remain dedicated to recuperating older, ungrafted Mourvedre vines” known locally as Monastrell. Ibiza is an ancient grape-growing, wine-making land. During the phylloxera outbreak in 1889-90, Ibiza supplied France with wine.

“Respect for local customs and traditions”

“Local pruning technique interested me. We have continued respecting many practises. The mother of one of our growers, Pepe Torres, is 103 years old and she still gets upset if the vines are not totally free of weeds!! Wine has only been really sold here commercially for twenty-five years,” says Henrik Smith. The Danish-born, San Francisco-educated former web tech and data development expert who now oversees production and marketing as co-administrator. He came to visit his sister in Ibiza and stayed.

“With utmost respect for local customs and traditions, we aim for sustainable wines that true to their grape varieties, subtle yet elegant and with balanced acidity. Preserving Ibiza’s viticultural heritage and having a minimal impact on the island’s environment are at the heart of our philosophy.

“A strong focus on autochtonous varieties, cover cropping, “goblet” pruning older vines, dry-farming, hand-harvesting and sustainability is what we are all about. We are on the wine lists in top hotels and restaurants on the island. We produce 80,000 bottles a year. Belgium is our biggest export market.”

“The real buzz of Ibiza”

Growing grapes and making wine on an island like Ibiza has many challenges. “There is no market for purchasing grapes. We prune, labour and harvest all our vineyards. Based on dry farming were limited on increasing output per hectare and hindered by climactic factors. There are alas no professional technician for equipment such as bottles in the island.  They have to come from the peninsula at great cost and delay. We will keep improving the quality of our wines and to grows as much as the island allows us to grow. A 15% increase in production is achievable over the next three years.

Adds Lorenzo : “I came not knowing that wine was made on Ibiza.  Now I am preserving that tradition and heritage. I want to make quality wine with a personality. Climate change and the local ‘torcaces’ pigeons permitting!  I am not sure if the locals and purists would approve of some of our methods to deter them. Especially inflatable scarecrows!

“I want to make a wine with a special accent. A little Galician but mostly Ibizan! I want Ibiza to be something important in the wine world.

His wine will a give you some Dutch courage to ask your gracious Dutch host at Can Sastre, raymond Van Der Hout, to temporarily mute his “laid back vibe” playlist or turn off the  Lemongrass, Mystical Dimensions and Triangle Sun.

And, when he asks what music you prefer, to quietly say, “The cicadas will do.”

That’s the real buzz of Ibiza.