The first resort
Verbier is the trendiest place in the Alps, says Alistair Scott Walking into the Fer à Cheval, Verbier, Switzerland, on a sunny spring day recently (Verbier is at its very best in springtime and the lifts run here until 27 April), it felt as though nothing had changed in this resort’s café/bar/pizzeria and principal meeting place.
Nothing, that is, since the late 1970s when I first came here. Neil Young’s ‘After the Gold Rush’ and The Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ were playing; Pascal, the original owner, was still hanging out even though his distinctive ponytail was somewhat longer and greyer; and the sun was still refracting in the beer glasses of the ski bums and multimillionaires sitting on the terrace.
The youngest of the main Swiss ski resorts, Verbier has always been a place where an international community of rich and poor coexisted happily, united by a love of skiing and enthusiasm for every new trend going. If a new snow sport was invented in the States, you could be sure it would first make European landfall in Verbier, the Aspen of the Alps.
Hence the craze for ‘Hot-Dogging’ (ski acrobatics on bumps, performed using unconventionally short skis, that wrecked many an anterior cruciate ligament) in the Seventies; the early embracement of the snowboard soon afterwards; the sudden, fanatical enthusiasm for paragliding; and so on.
But Verbier skiers always had big appetites for après-ski as well and there was ever a lively nocturnal scene as the lifts closed and the partying began. ‘Ski all day, party all night, then get up and do it all over again’ was the seasonlong mantra for many.
Of course I was kidding myself that afternoon in the Fer à Cheval. Verbier has changed enormously in 30-odd years — it has tripled in size, though certainly not in year-round population — for a start. New lifts have been built and pistes and snow-making have improved. Most significantly, thousands of new luxury chalets and apartments have been constructed The Xtreme ski freeride contest, Verbier in a sprawling fashion above the resort centre.
For the most part this change, though relatively rapid, seemed somehow evolutionary. This season the changes seem to have been sudden and involve not so the much skiing as accommodation and nightlife. At a stroke, Verbier has become fashionable with a capital ‘F’.
Richard Branson has opened the luxurious Verbier Lodge, just beside the Medran lift station, but this sleeps only 18 and for much of the season is only sold to whole groups for up to £59,000 per week.
The second new hotel is the Nevaï, in the centre. Sleek and attractive, this is Verbier’s first design hotel, but it could do with more hands-on management and staff who speak fluent French which is, after all, Verbier’s first language. But the big hype in Verbier this season has concerned what laughably styles itself ‘the first ever luxury VIP club in the Alps’, the Coco Club. A lavish launch party in December, attended by ‘celebrities’ and a few impressionable hacks flown in from the UK, guaranteed early publicity, but the club’s essential vulgarity is exemplified by its decision to price a cocktail at over £5,000. The décor boasts hand-painted wallpaper and one wall covered in £30,000 of gold leaf; but with some strange curtained-off booths, the overall effect reminded me of that unsavoury cliché, ‘tart’s boudoir’.
Richard Branson is due to host a charity evening here at Easter, but one hopes his guests will be luckier than the Brits in February who were hospitalised after being given caustic soda, rather than salt, for their tequila glasses. Coco is backed by a London entrepreneur and partners, but authorities found that even the ice cubes did not meet hygiene standards. Down the road, the renowned Farm Club, run for 37 years by the Berardi brothers and with very little spent on decoration in that time, remains a thriving and fairly unpretentious institution, untroubled by its new neighbour.
British skiers wishing to sample the Verbier life have the choice of mid-range chalets with companies such as Inghams and Ski Total or very luxurious ones run by the likes of Ski Verbier and Descent, which include gourmet foods and wines and taxis to and from the lift. With Easter falling so early this year there should be the chance of good last-minute prices, not to mention lazy afternoon barbecues on sunny terraces.
Finally, it must be reiterated that though nowadays some party all night, then sleep all day and never ski at all, Verbier has some great off-piste ski terrain (take a guide) on runs such as Col des Mines, Col de Mouches, the back of Mont Fort and Stairway to Heaven — now I wonder in what decade that run was named?
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