Finca Cortesin

The road from the coast climbs through cork oaks and olives, past the first fairways, to a white building with a tower and a long colonnade. Finca Cortesin sits on the hills above Casares, between Estepona and Sotogrande at the quiet western end of the Costa del Sol, on an estate of around 215 hectares that its owners planned as a single resort rather than a hotel beside a golf course.

History

The estate was developed by the Spanish Lopez-Chicheri family's company, Single Home, which bought the land in the late 1990s and laid out the golf course first; it opened in 2006 and the hotel followed in 2008. The resort was conceived to compete with the established addresses of Marbella, twenty minutes east, by offering space those hotels could not. The golf course drew the Volvo World Match Play Championship from 2009 to 2011 and, in September 2023, the Solheim Cup, the first time the women's Europe versus United States match had been played in Spain. The hotel has stayed independent, with no chain flag, and has been extended with villas and residences on the estate.

Architecture and design

The hotel is built as a cortijo on a grand scale: whitewashed walls, terracotta roofs, stone arcades and a series of patios with fountains and orange trees, around a central courtyard the size of a village square. The architects took their forms from Andalusian monasteries and the great houses of Seville. Interiors by Duarte Pinto Coelho mix antiques, tapestries and Portuguese and Spanish ceramics with high ceilings and cool stone floors. Gardens of lavender, cypress and olive run down to the pools.

Rooms and suites

All 67 keys are suites, starting at around fifty square metres and rising to the two-bedroom Villa Suites with private pools. Each has a terrace or balcony on to the gardens or the golf course, a sitting area and a marble bathroom with a separate shower and tub. The estate also offers private villas with staff for families, and residences owned by members.

Dining

Kabuki Raw holds a Michelin star for Japanese cooking in the Kabuki style, with Andalusian fish and produce at a counter and in a small dining room. Lutz, named for the German chef Lutz Bösing who ran the kitchens for many years, serves Mediterranean dinners, El Jardín de Lutz covers breakfast and lunch in the garden, and Don Giovanni does Italian. The Beach Club has its own kitchen a few minutes down the hill.

Wellness

The spa covers around 2,200 square metres with an indoor heated pool, a Roman bath circuit, a snow cave, saunas, a hammam, treatment rooms and a gym. Outside are two large pools in the gardens and, at the Beach Club, a third pool with loungers on the sand. The golf course, designed by Cabell B. Robinson, and the Jack Nicklaus Academy complete the sports offer, with tennis and padel courts beside the clubhouse.

Weddings and events

Finca Cortesin is one of the most used wedding estates in southern Spain, with ceremonies in the gardens or by the pools, dinners in the courtyards and parties that run late without neighbours to disturb. The meeting rooms and the clubhouse serve corporate groups, incentives and golf days; full buyouts of the hotel are common for large weddings, and the villas house the families.

Location

Casares village, a white hill town, is ten minutes inland; the coast road and the beach club are five minutes below the hotel. Málaga airport is about an hour's drive east and Gibraltar airport forty minutes west, with Sotogrande and Estepona both close. The nearest railway station with high-speed service is Málaga María Zambrano. For a luxury hotel in Andalusia the estate offers what the Marbella seafront cannot: silence, land and a golf course at the door.