So here comes the task of introducing ourselves to our lovely customers. We promise we truly have been there since the beginning – Dan more than Georgie, I suppose.

Dan, my husband is Jonathan and Cass’s nephew so has been a Hall for his whole life. I have worked for La Montaña for over three years now. We have a one-and-a-half-year-old son named Stanley, and have another on the way, due in December. Oh, and we also have a boxer dog called Sid. Despite all of this on our plate, we could not say no when Jonathan and Cass asked us to take over La Montaña, as they step back and, well… enjoy mountain life!

Until we actually got married in December 2022 (in Las Vegas, post Covid lockdown and after 4 years of engagement – but that’s a story for a different time), Dan and I marked our anniversary as the 27th of July. This is because it was on this exact date in 2012 that I (Georgie) flew out to Valencia and subsequently made the long journey up the narrow winding roads of the mountain, that you will all be familiar with by now, to stay with my university housemate Dan and his ‘really cool’ Uncle and Aunt, Jonathan and Cass. This getaway, truthfully, started as a couple of days and somehow turned into an entire Summer when I ‘missed my flight’ from Alicante airport (despite Dan driving an hour to get me there 3 hours prior to departure, but we’ll miss that part out…)

For those that don’t have the same attachment to summer 2012, perhaps transport yourself there by remembering it as the summer of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the summer that Andy Murray won Wimbledon, Bradley Wiggins became the first Brit to win the Tour De France and London hosted the Summer Olympics. Times were good. For Dan, this included Spanish lessons and hours upon hours of padel with Jonathan (see image below), and for me, hours upon hours of chatting with Cass, picking her brains about her career as head of PR at Lancôme and we both plotted my high flying future career in beauty PR. An industry I went on to spend 9 happy years working in, until the stars aligned, and I became the Communications Manager at La Montaña.

Summer 2012 was great. For Dan and I, our relationship was blossoming at the top of a mountain in the middle of beautiful Spain, surrounded by scents, colours, people and buildings that were new to me and unique in their combination, to this region of Spain and this mountain in particular. Jonathan and Cass spent the last 12 years refining and bottling that combination, into candles and home fragrances that we know are able to transport you to that mountain that is so important to all of us…. without having to get on a flight to Valencia, as I did those years ago. In fact, that Summer 2012 was the first time that ANY of us, Jonathan and Cass included, had a sniff of the fragrances which now make up the first four in the collection: First Light, Alfredo’s Café, Galan de Noche and Winter Oranges. We have photographic evidence – see below.

Every year since 2012, Dan and I have made the pilgrimage to Valencia for at least a week to stay on the mountain with Jonathan and Cass. Not to work, idea spin or plot the great success of La Montaña (although this sometimes does happen after a few martinis…) but just to absorb ourselves in the mountain that we love so much, with the people that we love. It holds a place very dear to our hearts, as you can probably tell. So, the rest, as they say, is history.