Courchevel 1850 is not short of expensive hotels, but only one lets you click into your skis at the door of the Bellecôte piste and disappear into 600 kilometres of the Trois Vallées before the lift queues form. Aman Le Mélézin sits right on the slope, screened by the larch forest that gives it its name, and treats ski-in, ski-out not as a marketing line but as the organising fact of the building: the ski lounge opens straight onto the snow, and a ski concierge team has your boots warmed and your skis waxed before breakfast.
Behind the Savoyard shell of timber façades and stone pillars, the interiors go somewhere unexpected: pale natural oak, low lines and floor-to-ceiling windows with a distinctly Japanese calm, closer to Kyoto than to the antler-chandelier school of alpine decorating. The 31 rooms and suites are generous by Courchevel standards, several with fireplaces, terraces and, in a handful of suites, private hot tubs facing the piste. We found the quiet almost disorienting after the theatre of the resort outside.
Evenings pivot around Nama, Aman’s Japanese restaurant, which serves sushi, sashimi and washoku cooking good enough to justify staying off the mountain, though the kitchen will produce fondue, raclette and truffle dishes on request for anyone missing the Alps. Below it all runs a serious wellness floor: a 14-metre pool between limestone pillars, a hammam and a Russian banya, and therapists who spend their winters unknotting skiers’ legs.
