Grace Cafayate

We’re still scratching our heads as to why Argentina’s northern province of Salta isn’t more famous than it is. With its effortless wine-country elegance, the dramatic snow-capped peaks of the Andes serving as a backdrop, and a low-key capital city that drips with colonial charm, it just seems like it ought to be crawling with visitors. If it’s lacking anything, it’s a hotel on the same level as the best ones in places like Patagonia and Buenos Aires. Fortunately, that’s a problem that the Grace hotel group is more than capable of solving — and as it happens, they’ve done it by more or less splitting the difference between the low-key charms of a rustic Patagonian estancia and the high modern style of a Porteño boutique.

Though the hotel is small, just twelve rooms, the scale of the surroundings is as grand as could be. Grace Cafayate sits on the spectacular Estancia de Cafayate, a 1,360-acre sporting estate complete with an equestrian center, one of Argentina’s most prestigious championship golf courses, an extensive network of trails for hikers and bikers, and a veritable sea of vineyards. Suffice to say that if you like the outdoors, you won’t lack for things to do.

And if you prefer to take your experience of the outdoors sitting (or lying) down, you’ll still do just fine here. At the spa, the therapists make use of the grapes and vines growing just outside, and the views of the mountains bring the outdoors in as well. Of course the local agricultural bounty is put to even better use in the restaurant, where authentic Argentinian specialties receive refined contemporary treatments, accompanied by quite the enviable wine list.

How to get there: Grace Cafayate is about a 2½-hour drive from Salta’s Martín Miguel Güemes International Airport (SLA).