Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
WELCOME TO THE MOUNTAIN
Enjoy a private national park and hike to your breakfast in Tennessee in the US
TO get to breakfast at Blackberry Mountain, a resort built into Tennessee’s Chilhowee Mountain, you could lace up a pair of takkies, ideally with rugged soles, grab a walking stick, and set off on a 2.3km uphill climb shaded by chestnut oak trees that culminates at the Firetower, the property’s restaurant (elevation: 853m) that serves inspired riffs on traditional breakfast dishes – sunny-side-up eggs topped with house-fermented hot sauce and avocado yogurt – alongside panoramic views of Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas, in the US.
On the way, you might pass candy-striped mountain laurel (don’t lick, it’s poisonous) and jet-black ravens. The trip up takes about an hour. Or, you could call the front desk and ask for a ride in one of the in-house Lexus SUVs. On the way, you might pass golf carts. The trip up takes about five minutes (and still ends with a delicious breakfast).
This is one example of the “choose your own adventure” philosophy of holidaying advanced by Blackberry Mountain, described by its proprietor as “your own private national park”.
Opened in February, it is the sister resort of Blackberry Farm, the award-winning bastion of Southern hospitality.
While the Farm, a pastoral paint by numbers with lush green lawns and white wooden rockers, is bucolic bliss, the Mountain, 11km away in the Great Smoky Mountains, with 40km of private hiking and biking trails, is summer camp stepped up. Stepped way up: rates start at $995 (R14 251) per night (for double occupancy, including dinner and breakfast).
The robust slate of activities ranges from sound bathing (a guided meditation enhanced by sonic vibrations) to endurance climbing.
While the staff will graciously deliver the tools needed to make S’mores in your outdoor fireplace (they’ll even start the fire), the Mountain’s food goes well beyond the flaccid hot dogs and canned beans known to many who have tried to make a home away from home in the great outdoors.
Up at the Firetower, mussels bathe in a Thai-spiced broth of coconut milk and ginger; down at the Lodge, the Three Sisters restaurant serves tandoori chicken atop a bed of tart cherry-studded cauliflower rice.
“It’s impossible not to eat well up here,” said Andrew Zimmern, the food and travel television show host. Zimmern was a guest at an April “house party”, a weekend of special talks, classes, and meals – Zimmern cooked up salmon that he caught in Patagonia earlier in the week – that Blackberry Mountain plans to host a few times a year to bring together the boldfaced names who’ve become part of the Blackberry family since the Farm started operating as a resort in 1976.
Another one is scheduled for September, and experts in topics as diverse as combat, holistic healing, parenting and floral design are scheduled to host workshops throughout the year at the resort, nestled in the hamlet of Walland.
The weekend my husband and I visited, lured by the lore of Blackberry’s second-to-none food, wine and hospitality, Zimmern mingled with winemakers Andy Erickson and Annie Favia-Erickson, who talked about their passions for yoga, hiking and tea in addition to leading a tasting of their Napa Valley cabernets.
Nashville singer Jessie Baylin serenaded the 50 or so house party attendees in a lounge stocked with cocktails and green curry-spiced popcorn; culinary travel consultant Christina Grdovic moderated a fireside chat with Zimmern, in which he shared a Buddhist proverb, told to him by the Dalai Lama, that helped him come to terms with his past substance abuse.
“These are smaller gatherings, it’s a smaller property than the Farm, and we can have really intentional conversations,” said Mary Celeste Beall, the proprietor of Blackberry Farm and Mountain. “Our goal is to find people who have interesting roles in society and say, ‘Share your knowledge with us, but also share your passion in something that’s completely different.’ ”
This is how I ended up shooting clay pigeons next to Zimmern, though he required less help than
I, a firearms novice taken under the wing of a very kind instructor named Caleb, who smiled and told me to “just shoot when I say ‘bang’ ”.
The next day I shifted gears, attending a restorative yoga class with Favia-Erickson. We held pigeon poses and supine twists for long, languid stretches; an instructor with svelte arms and a soothing voice weighted down our limbs with strategically placed sandbags and described the class as “a guided nap”.
“You can’t add wellness to your body,” Favia-Erickson said afterwards, as she brewed a pot of her Napagrown lemon verbena tea for the group. “You have to do it from the inside out.”
“Wellness” has become a buzzword in travel, applied to hotels, resorts and retreats. Blackberry Mountain lets guests decide what wellness means to them.
“Some people might want to do three classes every morning and hike to lunch,” Beall said. “Some people might do one. I can’t wait until I have time to exercise all day long for three days, to not drink and feel so clean and amazing.
“But I also love the more balanced, realistic idea of, ‘Let’s get some exercise done in the morning, I’m going to eat a great lunch, I might have a glass of wine in the afternoon, and then I might do a cocktail clinic.’ “It’s a mix. People can take it for what they want.”
While Blackberry Farm includes breakfast, lunch and dinner in its daily room rate, the Mountain’s includes breakfast, dinner and most classes (alcohol, at both resorts, is charged by consumption). This, according to Hall Mebane, one of the 21 fitness and outdoor adventure guides employed by the Mountain (he specialises in rock climbing) is what sets the two resorts apart.
A decade ago, Beall and her husband Sam Beall purchased 2 104 hectares of woods that they could see from the veranda of the Farm’s main house, wary of someone else scooping up the land and developing it to oblivion. They put 1 133 hectares in conservation and had a few renderings made.
“Sam had seen every inch of the mountain and knew it so well,” Beall said. “He’d take a fourwheeler up there and just go. I had been there a lot but I am not the adventurer he was.”
In 2001, Sam Beall, a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef, took over management of Blackberry Farm from his parents, Kreis and Samuel E Beall III (founder of the Ruby Tuesday chain of restaurants).
Having attracted worldrenowned chefs and the foodies who follow them to the Farm, with the Mountain, the Bealls sought to create a similar kind of haven for wilderness lovers.
She never imagined doing it without him, but after Sam died in 2016, at age 39, following a skiing accident, the mother of five, felt compelled to see her husband’s vision through.
“I joke, but not really, that if I hadn’t had to get up and get dressed and go to a meeting about Blackberry Mountain, I don’t know what would have happened to me,” she said.
“Figuring out the layout, the restaurants, the activities – it was a way for our whole team to honour Sam but also to say, ‘This is such a crazy idea, Sam would’ve loved it.’”
That’s how the 2.3km hike to breakfast came to be. Intrepid guests staying in the six Watchman cabins by the Firetower can kick off their stay with this uphill climb, though they’d do best to let an SUV transport their luggage.
Most of the property’s 22 other cottages and multi-bedroom homes are within striking distance of the Lodge, and can be reached in a few minutes by foot or golf cart, which are swifter and quieter than standard models (they don’t beep when backing up, so as not to disrupt any quests for mental wellness).
Other parts of the property reflect Beall’s eye for design and knack for anticipating what guests want.
While the Farm’s style of decor is southern plantation home meets French country estate, with worn wood, heavy drapes, and leather bound classics lining the shelves, the Mountain’s is decidedly more modern. Greys and blues instead of maroons and golds. The Marine Corps Way to Win on Wall Street instead of
The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“When you connect people with a common interest, it’s magical,” Beall said. “That’s our goal with the Mountain: how can we create more magic for our guests?” Hiking not necessarily required.