“Don’t speak,” said the guide. I quashed the impulse to break into a tuneless Gwen Stefani rendition, but couldn’t stop nervously monologuing under my breath. To anyone who can snowshoe blindfolded, hanging onto a rope whilst dragging flipper-like footwear over tree roots without nervous talking, chapeau. Sight, it turned out, wasn’t a sensory deprivation I responded well to.
It was like a corporate team building day gone organic, albeit more scenic, under the full moon in fresh powder snow in La Rosière, Haute-Savoie. Our snowshoe walk was to culminate in wine and fondue — my favourite kind of incentive — but before that we had to train our senses. First up was taste, which completely lost me on a blind tasting of rose hip jam. Smell went a little better when I correctly identified silage, and touch pushed me fully out of my comfort zone as I, a vegetarian, found myself clutching a severed deer’s foot.
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All of this was to give us a better appreciation of the wine which we were about to taste. In a low-lit teepee in the woods, where thick snow periodically slid down the canvas with a noise like a belly flop, sommelier Julien Ettel guided us through a sensory tasting, urging us to study our wine with one sense at a time: sight, smell, taste. His company, Livino Les Liens du Vin, works exclusively with organic and biodynamic wines from small producers, many of which supply Michelin-starred restaurants.
In spite of the preparation, which should have left my taste and smell buffed, polished and primed, I identified the aroma of one wine as “laundry left in the machine overnight”. Fortunately, it tasted much better than it smelt.
This was the last in a series of drinking experiences I wouldn’t have associated with ski holidays. Gone were the panachés, peach beers and joss shots. There was no messy slipping and sliding down from La Folie Douce like a game of Twister, or trust fund kids sabering bottles of champagne with the edges of their skis. This was ski holiday drinking for grown-ups.
In the former castle stables in the 12th-century town of Samoëns, a wine festival was in full swing. Les Vignerons Font du Ski (Winemakers Go Skiing) celebrated its second year this winter, and for the princely sum of €5 (£4.10) you get a branded wine glass and all-you-can-drink tastings. We made a beeline for our ski instructor, Adrien Vallier, whose Australian shepherd dog was contentedly chewing a bottle cork behind the makeshift bar. As a highly seasonal profession, most ski instructors have two jobs, but I’d never met a ski instructor-cum-winemaker before. Vallier was enjoying large quantities of his wine, and that of other winemakers, but it didn’t stop him positively flying down the slopes in front of us the next day.
Having grown up by the sea, there’s a hangover cure I’ve always sworn by: a bracing, cold sea swim. It’s a New Year’s Day tradition, and it never fails to blow off the cobwebs. My version of cold water, however, is generally around 14C. The water temperature at Lac Bleu, Morillon, was just 6C. The little lake was ringed with snow, and so as not to feel like my feet were being finely cleaved with a mandolin slicer, I did something I’d vowed never to do: I donned a pair of Crocs.
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I’d imagined taking the plunge at a run, but instead, our teacher Asa talked us through controlling our breathing as we inched in, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. We wouldn’t just be getting in once, either, but three times. Fortunately, Asa’s company Bastu74 combines cold-plunge sessions with a barrel sauna on the lakeshore.
“Do you ever have any accidents, or people who can’t cope with the cold water?” I asked Asa once I’d regained my breath in the sauna. I resisted the urge to replace “accidents” with “fatalities”.
“Only two,” she replied cheerfully, “and they both had pre-existing conditions.”
Asa guided us through three consecutive dips, but we’re all surprised when we voluntarily opted to jump in a fourth time. Be it that I’d become an inadvertent disciple of a Croc-and-cold-water cult, or that my body was simply relieved not to be meeting the same end as Titanic’s Jack Dawson, I was euphoric. And ravenously hungry.
Who needs fancy chalets hung with chandeliers when you can see a line of cows’ arses out of the window? At La Ferme Dunoyer we tucked into what can only be described as Savoyard tapas: liberal quantities of fondue, tartiflette and raclette, washed down with pitchers of wine. The serving staff, closer to milk-drinking than wine-drinking age, were the grandchildren of the owners. There was more than I could ever hope to eat, all for €30 (£25) with wine, which was less than I’d paid for an onion soup starter at Courchevel a few weeks previously.
Move over joss shots and après: I’ll take teepee wine tasting and all-you-can-eat fondue any day.
Anna Richards travelled as a guest of the Samoëns Tourist Office.
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