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Les Étrennes
A chalet for the festive season
There are chalets, and there are chalets. There are those as old as the mountains, all worn timber and creaking wooden floors, lauze stone and latticed roofs, that epitomize the Alpine lifestyle and the Switzerland of bygone times. Then there are Verbier’s super chalets that flourish amid the same snowy landscape, boasting every avant-garde amenity and creature comfort the modern world has to offer, a harmonious composition of ease, beauty and indulgence. Les Étrennes is one of these; a modestly opulent bolthole featuring four floors of unforgettable luxury.
It starts with the view. Lodged near the foot of Savoleyres’ slopes, turned towards the south-westerly sun like a glorious oversized flower, Les Étrennes presides over Verbier, surveying the slopes and smiling over to Mont Blanc and its mountain range which return its gaze from afar.
It used to be a typical, run of the mill chalet. However, since being entirely redesigned and revamped in summer 2017, it has been propelled to super chalet status, fastforwarded into the era of airy spaces, luxury comfort, and uncompromising quality, melodically crafted by artistic artisans.
You enter the chalet on the ground floor into the entrance hall with the ski room directly ahead of you. Upstairs, the first floor has two double bedrooms and a steam room, perfect for easing aching muscles and a spot of pampering. The second floor houses the most coveted of Les Étrennes’ six bedrooms, the master suite, where an authentic old wood ceiling is discerningly offset by cream-hued walls and azure blue furniture. The super king sized bed is an island amid an ocean of wood, and the gaze is beckoned by panoramic views and a sunken hot tub on the huge terrace, sending your senses into overdrive.
Three more bedrooms open out onto the same sun-drenched balcony, each composing their own sweet symphony of colours.
On the top floor, edging closer to seventh heaven, is a Cathedral-style open-plan living and dining area, adorned with timber beams and sliding glass panels that let the mountain scenery and pink tinged hues of the sunset flood in. Burnt Sienna cushions nod to the flames in the hearth, while open-plank stairs sneak up to a mezzanine reading nook. Majestic yet cosy.
