Euros put North Americans to shame when it comes to après ski. If you’re heading across the pond this winter, Leslie Woit presents the Coles Notes on where to party.
from December 2014 issue
1. PARTY CENTRAL
For the biggest boot-stompin’, oompah-disco après ski, get the party started before you leave the slopes in St. Anton at the Mooserwirt. Over at Zermatt’s Vernissage Backstage Hotel, guests have their own elevator onto its VIP stage zone. Zermatt also rocks at Snowboat; and the Hotel Post is an all-night option under one roof: start at the Loft, move to live jazz at Pink and end in The Broken, whose name says it all. Sporty Nordics can be found in Chamonix’s Chambre Neuf, where Scando-chic meets Mammut-clad muscle.
2. BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS
For confident, cash-rich twenty- and thirtysomething Euro-trash and Chelsea types in Verbier, congregate first at Farinet and later at the new W Hotel’s Carve. If that doesn’t finish you, The Farm Club, an institution overseen by the Berardi brothers for more than 40 years, surely will.
3. HOT, HOT, HOT
Ischgl stands high, on stilettos, attracting fur-collared, affluent Teutons who sing-n-sway in Champagnerhütte, Niki’s Stadl and five-star Trofana Alm. Eastern Europe’s most nubile exports shake their cabooses on the bar-tops at Schatzi’s and in elevated cages at Pasha till dawn.
4. BOYS AND BOARDS
Lights, cameras, techno-vibes: pump it up in sportif resorts that take a page from the St. Anton handbook of dancing your way to happiness. Top picks for beer-boogie are Sölden’s Fire+Ice and the Kuhstall; Mayrhofen’s Brück’n Stadl; and with the endorsement of the first man to jump from the edge of space, Felix Baumgartner, Goaßstall in Saalbach. France has cottoned onto the DJ dance scene, too: Val d’Isère’s Folie Douce has now branched out to Val Thorens, Méribel and Alpe d’Huez.
5. GLITZ
For reserved, elegant affairs, tuck under a heated umbrella bar with a fresh fig and vodka in Lech, do Cortina’s Post Hotel draped in cashmere, or visit swish St. Moritz and its panoply of five-star bars and nightclubs. First among them, Kings Club at Badrutt’s Palace (jacket and tie for gents); for cocktails and DJ in the afternoon, try Vivai (it reopens at 22:30). And anyone who says Courchevel doesn’t do après ski hasn’t been to La Mangeoire; every night even the oligarchs have their dinner tables pushed aside to make way for Champagne-fueled dancing.
