Inside Robb Report India's First-Ever Masters Of Luxury Event In New Delhi

Robb Report India hosted the first edition of Masters of Luxury at The Leela Palace, New Delhi, with The Macallan as celebration partner, built around a single question put to a room full of people qualified to answer it: what does luxury mean in India right now?

The Leela Palace, New Delhi, sits within the city's diplomatic enclave, its architecture and interiors drawing directly from the design language of Lutyens' Delhi, made for a fitting setting for a conversation about where Indian luxury stands today. The Macallan, the celebration partner for the evening, was founded in 1824 as one of the first distilleries in Scotland to be legally licensed under the Excise Act, a history of over two centuries that gave the whisky pairings through dinner their own quiet weight.

The Masters Of Luxury Panel

Guests arrived at Arq By The Leela, the hotel's members-only club, for a networking hour ahead of the evening's main event, a panel on India's new narrative of luxury moderated by Robb Report India's Editor, Aindrila Mitra. Anuraag Bhatnagar, Director and CEO of The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, brought over three and a half decades in luxury hospitality to the conversation. Paul Ross, Chief Operating Officer for Edrington in India, spoke for the house behind The Macallan. JJ Valaya, long known as the Czar of Indian Fashion, and fellow designer Rina Dhaka represented three decades of Indian couture between them, while Roshini Vadehra, Co-Director of Vadehra Art Gallery, one of the country's most influential galleries, spoke to what luxury looks like from inside the art market she has spent years expanding into major fairs at home and abroad.

Cocktails at Jamawar

Ahead of dinner, it was drinks hour at Jamawar with a cocktail experience by The Macallan built around three drinks. The Macallan Meridian paired the 12 Years Old Double Cask with dry vermouth, orange cordial, and saline. The Macallan Robur used the 12 Years Old Sherry Oak with a spice infusion, sweet vermouth, date syrup, and ginger ale. The Macallan Cobbler, also built on the 12 Years Old Sherry Oak, combined apple juice, elderflower syrup, and soda water.

The Dinner

Dinner followed with a five-course menu built to run alongside four expressions from The Macallan. The amuse-bouche, a salt-baked baby beetroot with avocado crémeux, blood orange gel, coriander oil, and a buckwheat crisp, was poured against the 12 Years Old Double Cask, which carried through the first course too, a buffalo burrata with compressed heirloom tomatoes, basil essence, tomato consommé, olive crumb, and pine nut praline.

The second course offered a choice between a roasted butternut ravioli finished with brown butter, sage, amaretti, toasted walnuts, and 36-month Parmigiano Reggiano, or a duck confit ravioli with cherry-port reduction, roasted shallot purée, and duck jus, both matched to the 15 Years Old Double Cask.

The third course ran three ways: a jardin de légumes croustillant of Peruvian white and green asparagus, black truffle, aged Parmesan fondue, vine-ripened tomato confit, and aged balsamic reduction; a dry-aged lamb saddle, hay-smoked, with burnt onion purée, potato mille-feuille, glazed baby onion, and smoked lamb jus; or a Chilean sea bass with cauliflower purée, Oscietra caviar, grilled asparagus, green peas, and beurre blanc, all three paired with the 18 Years Old Sherry Oak.

Dessert closed the menu on The Macallan Symphony, built specifically around the whisky itself: 70 percent Valrhona chocolate crémeux, Pedro Ximénez reduction, caramelised pecan praline, burnt vanilla ice cream, and orange confit, served alongside a return to the 15 and the 18 as a nightcap pour at the Arq bar.

The evening marked the start of what Robb Report India intends as a recurring series, a room built around a single, changing question, and a menu built to answer it as much as any panel discussion could. For a first edition, the format, panel, cocktails, and a five-course menu paired course by course to whisky, set a clear template for what Masters of Luxury is meant to be going forward.