Menorca Experimental

What began as the Experimental Cocktail Club was always destined for bigger things, but it’s still surprising, in retrospect, that the path from a hip bar in Paris to a beautiful farmhouse hotel on the Balearic island of Menorca took barely a decade to map out. Experimental Menorca joins sister hotels in London, Paris, and Venice, a diverse set of experiences that have little in common besides the creative personnel involved and — what’s always been the Experimental Group’s greatest asset — the flawless good taste that seems to underwrite the whole enterprise.

In other words, they’ve earned the sort of trust that permits guests to surrender to Experimental Menorca without a care. The rooms are designed by the same Dorothée Meilichzon, whose work is no less at home under the timbered ceilings of these farmhouse buildings than it is in the more urban Experimental hotels. The result is both true to the 19th-century finca and indelibly stamped with a contemporary personality — and the spaces, needless to say, are more generous than their counterparts in Paris and London, and doubly so in Experimental Menorca’s nine freestanding villas.

The restaurant and bar, naturally, are particular highlights, both exquisitely tailored to their setting and indicative of the Experimental Group’s original expertise in nightlife and dining. And it shouldn’t go unremarked upon that the setting, quite apart from the charms of the hotel, is something special in its own right: Menorca is a UNESCO-protected biosphere, a spectacular island crisscrossed with hiking and riding trails and fringed with wild pebble beaches and spectacular seascapes.

Please note: Menorca Experimental is a seasonal hotel open seasonally from late March thru late October.