It’s 4pm on a Friday at Cap Horn, and a customer on a corner table’s looking impatient. It’s been at least eight minutes since the last magnum of champagne he had brought over, shaken and sprayed into the crowd by the staff. This is lost champagne-spraying time. He keeps waving over waiters, murmuring to them and sending them racing off in different directions looking for something.
When two of the waiters come back, it’s with a Balthazar of champagne this time – 18 bottles’ worth. It takes both of them to carry it through the crowds, take out the fist-sized cork, stand on a table and send the contents jetting out over the people dancing below. Despite the mountains, and the people in skiwear – and alright, the Eurotechno on the speakers – 21st century Courchevel has a very 18th century, Court of the Sun King feel to it.
‘Dance on tables, your ski boots on, let yourself be washed over in a decibel storm’, the website begs.
If you wanted to build a 53-apartment residential development in the flashiest of the Alpine resorts, how do you impress people who leave a trail of empty Magnums and champagne-drenched table-dancers in their wake?
Six Senses Residences have taken the view that you do it with less flash and more pared-back luxury. And that maybe after a hard day’s champagne-spraying, you just want a simple, high-design, five-star penthouse to call home – ski-boot dragging distance from the Dior boutique on rue du Rocher, and the dancefloors of La Mangeoire.
Our flat this weekend is all of those things. Although all of the other One Courchevel selling points – two minutes’ from the slopes, on-site spa, ski concierge service – are overshadowed by the mind-blowingly beautiful views from every balcony and window.
Morpheus London, the studio brought in for their bespoke interiors service, have gone with furnishings that echo, rather than compete with, the lines of the landscape outside. It’d be so easy to stay in one of the armchairs on the balcony, just watching the mountains brighten and darken all weekend. Spotify at the touch of the apartment’s iPad. Wine cellar just inside the door, warmth of the heat-lamps above.
But I didn’t bring my dangerous blend of total amateurism and massive over-confidence all the way to the Alps not to hit the slopes. And Courchevel’s slopes are meant to be the best in the Three Valleys, with 150km of runs, 58 ski lifts and the kind of incredibly expert skiers who’d be attracted by those things on hand to give you lessons.
We ski, for hours. I stay upright, mostly, and I don’t do myself or anybody else permanent damage on the slopes, which is proof of how expert the ski tuition is. Then we take a ski lift up to Le Panoramic for lunch, and it’s not my instructor’s fault that however great the skiing was, I love this part twice as much. Not even the lunch, which is heavy with cheese and genepi liqueur and mountaintop views and therefore great on all fronts, but the cable car up there.
These crags unfurling in front of us are so amazing that I think about writing off the afternoon plans and just spending the day crossing the mountains on cable car after cable car until sunset. And probably would have, if I weren’t already booked to be riding a skimobile across those mountains in a few hours – which I’m excited for, with a frisson of terror – and for a Six Senses massage before that – just excited, no terror.
Whatever happens during the Ski Revival massage, it’s hazy. I’m zoning in and out, on tides of incense and strong hands and the memory of my glory on the green slopes that morning. But by the end of it, I’m walking more like a person than the Terminator, which is a triumph, and I’m ready for skimobiling.
Just physically ready. Emotionally I don’t know how you prepare for this. Josh climbs onto our skimobile in front of me and says, ‘God I love racing’, and ‘look, this speedometer goes up to 120km, huh’ and then pulls down the visor on his helmet so he can’t hear what I think about those two facts.
It’s easily the most frightening and easily the best thing we do all weekend. We skirt sheer drops, winding roads, cross the same slopes we skied down that day. Our guide tears up the snow ahead of us, raising a halo of powder around his snowmobile that gives him a dry ice, 80s Bon Jovi sort of effect against the sunset. After a while the only points of light narrow down to the ones flicking on in the town below, and our headlights.
This is the perfect way to say goodbye to Courchevel. And a perfect reminder of why Six Senses have poured so much thought and luxury into the Residences – knowing that this is a place people fall in love with, and want to revisit over and over again: to conquer its ski runs, invest in its penthouses and spray its slopes with their champagne.
Six Senses Residences Courchevel is the first fully-serviced residential development in Courchevel 1850 and is at La Porte Courchevel, Rue des Tovets, Courchevel 1850, 73120, Savoie, France. For more information, visit www.one-courchevel.com.
Opening in autumn 2016, Six Senses Spa Courchevel will be open to residents and locals, with a comprehensive menu of massages and post-ski treatments.
Weekly rentals are available and cost from USD 6150 to USD 40,000 per week. For additional details about rental services, please contact Jerome Lagoutte at Savills, jlagoutte@savills.com.
