Hotel Casa Velha do Palheiro is part of the Palheiro Nature Estate owned by the Blandy family, famous around the globe for their Madeira wines. The estate includes a golf club as well as elegant gardens sourrouding the five-star Relais & Chateaux hotel.
After my stays in 2012 and 2015, this was my third visit to Casa Velha. For the first time, I slept in the hotel’s Golf Wing (room 43), which had been renovated during the lockdown in 2020: carpets were replaced, new wooden floors built, USB connections and new safety technology installed, the lighting in the rooms was improved.
One of the Palheiro Gardens next to Casa Velha. Books about Madeira from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de.
A short description and history of Hotel Casa Velha do Palheiro
On May 1, 1997 the first hotel guests arrived at Casa Velha do Pahlheiro, situated some 1500 feet above sea level, roughly seven kilometers from Funchal city center. The Superior rooms and the Senior Suites were built in 1999. The following year, Casa Velha became the only Relais & Chateaux hotel on the island of Madeira.
In 2009, the Palheira Spa opened. It features an indoor and an outdoor pool, a Finnish sauna, a Turkish steam bath, massage and treatment rooms, a gym, a table tennis table, a badminton grass space and a tennis court.
The Old House features public areas, including the restaurant, the bar and a billiard room, as well as three Main House Junior Suites and seven Double Main House Rooms. The Garden Wing offers fourteen Double Garden Wing Rooms. The Golf Wing is a new, small construction added in 1999, with three Senior Golf Wing Suites and ten Double Golf wing Rooms as well as a sitting room with a public computer for hotel guests. The rooms on the ground floor have private terraces to the backside with two chairs and a table each. The largest hotel rooms are the three front lawn Main House Junior Suites with 52 square meters each and the Golf Wing Senior Suites with 57 square meters each.
View of a Casa Velha Junior Suite in the Main House. Photos copyright: Casa Velha do Palheiro.
The bathroom with traditional azulejos in a Senior Suite in the Golf Wing of Casa Velha.
With its 38 rooms in three buildings, Casa Velha is an intimate, five-star hotel with a club atmosphere. Most guests are golfers who use the 18-hole Palheiro Golf Course, which is just two minutes away on foot if you walk down the garden and through the gate to start at Hole 10. Hourly courtesy buses bring you within three minutes to the club house, if you prefer to tee-off at the Club House.
Between the second and the third tee of the Palheiro Golf Course, just ten minutes on foot from the hotel, you can get a perfect view of Funchal and its port. The same applies to the Golf Club House.
Adam Blandy’s (and Rita Fletcher’s) oldest son, Jonathan, took over as chairman of Palheiro Golf and Casa Velha in 2004/05 and of Palheiro Real Estate in 2008. Adam Blandy remains the chairman of the holding company.
The larger Palheiro complex includes several dozens of villas, the golf course and the Palheiro Gardens with plants and trees from around the world, including double camellias with red and white flowers. Overlooking the gardens is the imposing manor house by the 1st Count of Carvalhal, which remains until today the residence of Adam and Christina Blandy. The manor house was built by the architect George Somers Clarke, who also constructed Reid’s Palace. A nearby baroque chapel is part of the Palheiro property.
Palheiro Gardens attract many tourists. Oak, beech, chestnut and cedar grow besides exotic trees and plants such as Californian redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, eucalyptus, araucaria pines, a candelabra tree from Brazil, an Australian jasmine tree as well as grass trees from down-under, a handkerchief tree (Davidia involucrata) and a tulip tree (Liriodendron tulifera), to mention just a few. Another part of Palheiro Gardens is situated below the hotel, stretching until the golf course, famous for its 200-year old Camellia trees.
[Added on October 7, 2020: read our history of Casa Velha before it became a luxury hotel].
View of one of the two traditional restaurant rooms at Casa Velha do Pahlheiro.
A vegetarian dinner at Casa Velha do Palheiro
The Palheiro Nature Estate hosts two restaurants: one at the Golf Club House, the other one at the hotel. On September 27, 2020 I enjoyed a dinner at Casa Velha do Palheiro. Chef Nelson José Rodrigues Camacho (*1988 in Funchal) had previously learned his job and worked in Funchal, at a Meridién Hotel on the Algarve coast, in several Starwood Hotels in Portugal and Greece as well as in restaurants in Norway and the UK, before returning to Funchal. In 2014, he became sous-chef at Casa Velha before taking over as chef five years later.
Chef Camacho offers Madeiran and Mediterranean cuisine. He gives priority to local produce by local farmers. The Palheiro Estate with its 120 ha not only grows flowers, but also vegetables: tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, green beans, aromatic herbs, etc.
The chef’s speciality is fish: the deep-water black scabbardfish (Peixe Espada Preto), seabass, tuna, snapper and parrot fish. I went for a vegetarian dinner.
My evening began with a glass of Portuguese sparkling wine, a Marques de Marialva (Beira Atlantico). As a starter, I tasted caviar aubergines with fresh cheese from a local producer (queijo fresco) and dried tomatoes, pine nuts, parmesan, etc. A touch of spices might have improved the light dish.
My main course consisted of a carpaccio with black truffles from Italy with vegetables, including potatoes, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli and mini-beetroot. After this healthy and delicious dish it was already time for a dessert. In addition to a sweet and brilliant panna cotta with a local flavour (passion fruit), the highlight of the dinner, I could not resist a scoop of maracuja ice cream.
After the dinner, a short rest at the bar and library followed, softened by a glass of a 1975 Terrantez Cossart Gordon, a Madeira wine with a strong, sweet caramel taste and a hint of smoke. This wine was bottled in 2020, bottle 63 out of only 992 bottles; Cossart Gordon is owned by the Madeira Wine Company aka the Blandy family.
An vegetarian afternoon tea at Casa Velha
The following day I tried the afternoon tea at Casa Velha. It was served on a classic three-tier stand and consisted of a scone with clotted cream, apple and mango jam, a excellent brownie, a delicious raspberry-physalis-redcurrant-kiwi tartelette, a mini-cheesecake, several cookies with for instance honey or cannelle, an outstanding house cake with carots, nuts, grapefruit as well as two rather average finger-sandwiches: one with tomato and fresh cheese, one with salad and pickles; non-vegetarians are offered one with salmon.
In short, at Casa Velha do Palheiro you can dine in style, in a familiar atmosphere in a hotel where not only the restaurant manager, Luis Emmanuel, knows you by name.
Photo of my Afternoon Tea, presented on a classical three-tier stand, with the clotted cream for the scones in the foreground on the bottom left.
The bottle of the 1975 Terrantez Cossart Gordon which a tasted after my afternoon tea. This is a fortified Madeira wine with a strong, sweet caramel taste and a hint of smoke. This wine was bottled in 2020 (bottle 63 out of only 992 bottles). Incidentally, Cossart Gordon is owned by the Madeira Wine Company aka the Blandy family.
Aerial view of the Palheiro Estate, showing Casa Velha and the Palheiro Golf Course.
Most guests at Casa Velha are golfers. Between the second and the third tee of the Palheiro Golf Course, just ten minutes on foot from the hotel, you can get a perfect view of Funchal and its port. If you like, you can tee-off two minutes away from the Main House of Casa Velha. Just walk down the garden and through the gate to start at Hole 10. Or you can tee-off at the Club House.
The front lawn at Casa Velha do Palheiro. You can enjoy an afternoon tea or a cocktail on the outside terrace. On the left, you can see the hotel’s Golf Wing, where I stayed in Room 43.
The outdoor pool at Casa Velha do Palheiro. There is also an indoor pool
The gym, where I worked on my lockdown kilos. Books about Madeira from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de.
All photos copyright Hotel Casa Velha do Palheiro. Hotel, afternoon tea and restaurant review added on October 6, 2020 at 19:19 Madeira time.
