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21 December 2022Ski with Style
The world has a few high-altitude resorts that combine some of the world’s more challenging slopes with the best in rest and relaxation
Rosa Alpina, San Cassiano, Dolomites (Italy)
Although Italy’s Sud Tirol is not short of creature comforts, the Rosa Alpina, in the heart of a picture postcard village, is still the benchmark for excellence.
Opened in the back of beyond in the 1850s, it was bought by Engelbert Pizzinini in 1940. Today, it is run to an ever-expanding game-plan by his grandson, Hugo.
The main lift, 100 metres down the road, provides direct access to 130km (80 miles) of intermediate pistes and connections with 450 lifts serving 1,200km of marked runs on the Super Dolomiti lift pass, the largest in the world.
The Rosa Alpina’s rooms are immaculate, with wood fires and decked balconies, but the great attraction is Norbert Neiderkofler, acknowledged as the culinary maestro in a famously gastronomic area. After leaving his remote mountain valley to train in some of Europe’s finest kitchens, he returned to his roots to open a restaurant at the Rosa Alpina in 2000.
St Hubertus, evocatively named after the patron saint of hunters, won its first Michelin star in 2000 and its second in 2007.
Perhaps because he cycles around the mountains to harvest ingredients, Neiderkofler is living proof that a chef can be great and thin. Exotic dégustatation and à la carte menus featuring truffles, foie gras and seafood can’t claim total local status, but nettles and dwarf pine needles add that extra je ne sais quoito his risottos and he gathers berries and mushrooms in season.
The spa, ahead of its time when it opened in the 1980s, is masterminded by Hugo’s Austrian stepmother, Daniela Steiner, an entrepreneur who used it as a springboard to turn herself into a global brand.
From €350 per night (double room)Tel: (+39) (0) 471 849 500
rosalpina.it
Rosengarten, Kirchberg, Tirol (Austria)
The 35-year-old Simon Taxacher is a standout chef in a nation mostly known for its dumplings. That may sound unkind, but Michelin pulled the plug on its Austrian Red Guide in 2011 because the volume was too slim to make commercial sense.
That was bad timing for Taxacher, who lost the two Michelin stars he’d acquired in his twenties just as he was unveiling the boutique hotel he’d built to accommodate visitors to his temple of gastronomy. In 2012, he regrouped by joining Relais et Châteaux and winning its prestigious Grand Chef Gourmet Trophy for creative cuisine, among a host of other awards.
As proof of his dedication, the restaurant is closed whenever he’s not there to cook.
The helicopter arrives on the pad outside the door immediately after breakfast whisking off brave souls to the powderfields and glades
The Rosengarten has 26 rooms and suites, named after luxury food items such as Beluga, Alba and Saffron. Cream fabrics touched with yellow combine with bathrooms in aquamarine glass to encourage rest and relaxation.
Kirchberg’s Maierl gondola, a sleek 2011 replacement for an ancient chair two minutes’ drive from the hotel, locks swiftly into the Kitzbuhel ski area, with onward links to a dozen smaller resorts on the Ski Welt lift pass.
Taxacher’s cooking is inspired by the French Mediterranean, but he has a talent for creating unfamiliar combinations in dishes of tantalising complexity. Goose liver with eel, scallops with sea urchins, black truffle with foam: the dégustation menu is a constant tale of the unexpected. The extra ingredient is fine dining as theatre; tables divided by spaces illuminated by spotlit orchids, dark floor-to-ceiling strand curtains concealing and revealing soft-footed waiters who choreograph the meal with due reverence.
From €220 per room per night, including breakfastTel: (+43) (0) 5357 4201
rosengarten-taxacher.com
Guarda Golf, Crans Montana (Switzerland)
Even by Swiss standards, this five-star boutique hotel is exceptionally comfortable. As the name suggests, it is located near the Crans-sur-Sierre golf course, home to the annual European Masters championship but, in only its second year in business, it is equally popular as a base for skiing the extensive network of runs shared by Crans and Montana.
Twenty-five spacious rooms and suites are furnished with a fine eye for detail, with antique furniture mixed with modern art. Each has a huge balcony looking out over the golf course and the Alps – the perfect place to bask in winter sunshine.
The lounge is as relaxing as a gentleman’s club, with deep chairs and sofas and the kind of service that delivers whatever you want almost before you’re aware you want it. There’s also a cigar bar, something of an anachronism even in a country that is less critical than most of smoking in public.
Goose liver with eel, scallops with sea urchins, black truffle with foam: the dégustation menu is a constant tale of the unexpected
On the culinary front, the hotel spreads its bets, offering Giardino for fine dining with an Italian spin and Les Alpes for traditional Swiss dishes – the truffle fondue is a winner. The restaurant has plenty of space for outsiders as well as residents, the food is mouthwatering and immaculately presented and the wine list offers tantalising choices. The 600sq m spa has a gym, indoor swimming pool, hamman, whirlpool and sauna as well as a golf simulator. The treatments are the first in Europe to use products from Brazilian cult label Clinica Ivo Pitanguy.
Momentum SkiFour nights’ B&B from £885 per person including flights and transfers
Tel: (+44) (0)20 7371 9111
momentumski.com
hotelguardagolf.com
Bighorn Lodge, Revelstoke, British Columbia (Canada)
When seeking food, glorious food with skiing to match, Revelstoke, a remote railway town in the heart of the British Columbian logging zone, is not the obvious place to look. In the mid-noughties, the simple lift system used by the locals was expanded up the mountain to cater for the international market. It was a bold plan, underpinned by the notion that fanatics would support the unique combination of serious pistes, snow cat and heliskiing under one umbrella.
In 2012, British entrepreneurs Michael and Chris Kirkland opened Bighorn to cater for their creature comforts.
With no shortage of timber, the lodge is imposingly bulky, with atrium sitting space, log fires, imported furniture, eight double bedrooms and panoramic views over the valley.
The Kirkland brothers, still in their early thirties, have realised their dream of creating the perfect environment for eight powder experts sharing a chopper in two groups of four to ski until they drop.
The helicopter arrives on the pad outside the door immediately after breakfast, whisking brave souls to the powderfields and glades, while lesser mortals work off massive meals in the gym or swimming pool.
Alternatively, guests can slump in the cinema, play pool or communicate with the real world on resident bedside iPads until the ski team comes in for tea – what else but cucumber sandwiches served without crusts? Resident British chef Pete Hughes rises magnificently to the challenge of providing quality in the wilderness. Told there was a two-week wait for pea sprouts, in his opinion an essential ingredient in one of his amuses bouches, he grew them himself in one.
Meals are eaten in the dining room at a gleaming walnut table seating 16, or in the kitchen at a semi-circular granite counter around a teppanyaki hot plate. Either way, the food is superb.
Seven-nights’ full board, including drinks, from £2,570 per person (16 sharing), seven-night heliski package, full board, five days’ heliskiing & two days’ guided skiing on Revelstoke Mountain, from £8,000 per person (16 sharing)Tel: (+44) (0)20 3432 0726
bighornrevelstoke.com
The Boix-Vives family have added baroque to minimalist to create a delightfully idiosyncratic hybrid
Le Strato, Courchevel (France)
Creating a wow factor in this part of the Alps is becoming ever more difficult, but the Boix-Vives family, owners of both Rossignol and this self-indulgent retreat within five minutes’ walk of the Croisette, have added baroque to minimalist to create a delightfully idiosyncratic hybrid.
The hotel is named after the ground-breaking Rossignol Strato ski, designed by Laurent Boix-Vives in 1965 and exported around the world. The dining room has striking curvy chairs with silver woodwork and purple velvet upholstery, while foyer and halls are dominated by life-sized statues.
Ski out means instant access to the Trois Vallées, 600km of prime pistes served by 180 lifts. Ski in, whether as a resident or a lunch guest, means removing boots by the ski room champagne bar. Even in Courchevel, this is a first, but it’s hard to fathom why anyone would sip their bubbles in a designated smelly socks zone rather than scale a dozen steps to the bar proper.
After only three years in business in Courchevel, Starto’s chef, Jean-André Charial, has won a well-deserved second Michelin star for his outstanding Provençal cuisine.
As the grandson of Raymond Thulier, founder of the iconic l’Oustau de Baumanière in Les Baux-de-Provence, cooking is in his blood.
Working through the elaborate dégustation menu is sheer gastronomic delight, the climax a succulent lamb en croute under a golden pastry dome of mouth-watering perfection. A recent addition is a brasserie menu featuring dishes from around the world.
Half board from €890-€1,290 per nightTel: (+44) (0) 1993 899 420
oxfordski.com
hotelstrato.com
Words: Staff
