Feast on the Glories of the Catskills
From an estate that has shaped the world to farms that have shaped the farm-to-table movement.
October 9, 2018
As a travel writer, we have an invitation for you, but first we want to tell you a little about where we live, why we live here and why it matters to you.
We are Spillian: A Place to Revel. One of the last of the Catskill heyday era mansions, built by the Fleischmanns Yeast family, who re-invented how America ate and founded cultural institutions across the world, from The New Yorker to the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Carefully restored to its original standards of beauty, elegance, and rustic inspiration Spillian echoes with the glories of this first Catskills Borscht Belt.
For the past 200 years — back when the only way to get to the Catskills was by horseback or a slow train — our corner of the world was always the place where movers, shakers artists and doers, industrialists, musicians, actors, painters came together to find ideas and inspiration that changed the world.
For more than a century, the Spillian mansion has welcomed many of them. Anton Seidl, Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic director; tonalist painters AH Wyatt, J. Francis Murphy, and Ada Murphy; Gertrude Berg, creator and star of the groundbreaking radio and television show, The Goldbergs; internationally renowned Talmudic scholars such as Rabbi Aaron Kottler; and hundreds more.
They still come…just in the past five years, we’ve hosted planning and imagining sessions for the staff of The New Yorker magazine, Anthony Bourdain's media heart Roads & Kingdoms, an independent record label choosing artists for the year, Etsy's Good Work Institute, The Open Society Institute, the Joseph Campbell Foundation, The Jefferson Awards for Public Service, musician Dar Williams...
With the mission to help people imagine past what they think is possible, Spillian holds the legacy of the Fleischmann family as provocateurs, inspirers, philanthropists, inventors, explorers, and marketers.
The Magic Catskills
There’s an energy here—uniquely Catskills. It’s in the dirt, the forest and the water. Our piece of the Catskills is and always has been a salon, a mixing pot of art and commerce and food. A place to pull back from the world’s noise, from the daily grind ——a place to redefine, re imagine and re connect with the basic inspirations of land, food and weather before returning to the world, changed, inspired and reenergized.
Our walls hold the energy. You can feel it sometimes in evening time or in those quiet mysterious hours just before dawn. In our great room where the wood holds memories of the thousands who have come here to imagine, the walls hold the very DNA of the inspirers who have been coming here since Spillian was built in 1883. Our guests tell us that sometimes they can even hear the voices...
It’s all still here and waiting, and we are the guides.
Join us!
We offer you an invitation…. to a place removed from the beaten path, a place that’s not that easy to find, up a mysterious unpaved road. To a place that’s worth it…
We invite you as our guest to Forage Your Feast: A Mythic Catskills Weekend, November 2-4, in partnership with Table to Farm Tours
There’s a unique combination here, of glacial dirt, sun, climate and altitude that has always made Catskill grown foods taste better.
Spillian is proud to partner with Table to Farm Tours for the ultimate foodie weekend—come and taste—literally and metaphorically—the flavors of the Catskills. This is a custom designed private tour of a hand-selected array of Catskills farms. We’ll introduce you to an extraordinary group of farmers who love this land, in all its beauty and its harshness, the very same growers who food is inspiring the new cuisine farm-to-table movement.
You’ll understand what makes our foods so tasty and so nourishing as you enjoy the uniquely complex flavor of foods harvested just hours before. This is the bounty of late Fall in the Catskill valleys and hills. Just in time for the holidays, you’ll bring a Catskill harvest directly home to your celebrations.
Come join us. Be a partner—bring your baggage, your quest, your experience and your genius….Come to the Mythic Catskills Weekend, and be changed by what we make together.
Come further out to come further in.
Forage Your Feast Schedule
Friday, November 2
An evening of Catskills Flavors.
- A robust farm-to-table charcuterie, including local meats, dairy and vegan cheeses, spring greens, hummus, relishes, chutneys, and more from our neighboring farmers and food producers.
- A flight of the Catskills finest ciders, beers, and spirits such as Awestruck Ciders, Wayside Ciders, Catskill Brewery, Roscoe Brewery, and Union Grove Distillery, and Delaware Phoenix Distillery.
- Tales, real and mythic, about farmed and wild food in the Catskills in front of the blazing fire, led by Spillian co-founder and cultural mythologist Leigh Melander, PhD.
Saturday, November 3
Foraging Your Feast on the Farms
- Begin your day with a gentle guided moving meditation inviting you to savor a sense of place in the Catskills.
- A Catskills breakfast featuring eggs from Spillian Farm’s ridiculous chickens.
- A custom Catskills farm tour with Table to Farm, tasting and gathering the foods that speak to your soul and taste buds to inspire your holiday cooking.
- A lunch at one of our local farm-to-table restaurants.
- Catskills hard cider cocktails on the porch, and a chance to laze by the fire or on the porch for a bit before dinner, watching the sky change down the valley
- An Autumn feast from Spillian’s chef Christian Van Etten, featuring flavors from the farms you visited during the day.
- Storytelling of myths and legends of the Catskills and our yearning for wildness
Sunday, November 4
Foraging Wild Woods Flavors
- A Spillian breakfast.
- Foraging in the pines on Spillian’s property, and a cooking lesson with Christian on how to to use pine syrup in your holiday recipes.
- A gathering on Spillian’s porch for a farewell toast
We have a limited number of rooms and slots for our FAM guests. If you’d like to attend or have more questions, please RSVP to this email, or call Leigh at 845-807-4801.
We look forward to meeting you!
Yours,
Chris
Chris Hensley
Media Coordinator
Spillian: A Place to Revel
[email protected]
spillian.com