GOURMET TRAVELLER 139T
he short drive from St Anton to
Lech involves typically pulse-racing
scenery and a pit-stop at St Christoph,
famous for its charitable foundation
which has provided refuge to alpine travellers
since 1386.
It is less well known as the birthplace of the
world’s first ski club (in 1901) and a repository of
an amazing collection of large-format Bordeaux and
Burgundy wines.
They’re stored in a hillside cellar at the Arlberg
Hospiz, where Werner escorts me underground to
marvel at magnums of St Émilion (Chateau Figeac to
be precise) and balthazars of Cheval Blanc, produced
exclusively for his hotel. His father, Adi, started the
€45-million collection in the 1970s after a patron at
his restaurant, a ski lodge-styled affair renowned for
good times, asked if there were any “better wines”
than those listed.
Adi’s passion was wine; his son’s is art and
culture. Werner junior built deluxe apartments in
St Christoph to fund a subterranean Contemporary
Art and Concert Hall, which, thanks to heavy rain,
is the substitute venue for a signature event of Bach’s
2018 gastronomy and art festival.
Originally booked to perform on a floating stage
on Lake Verwall, instead German virtuosos Karolin
and Friederike Stegmann, identical twins in flaming
red dresses and gold crotchet earrings, play Liszt and
Rachmaninoff on piano to a packed audience with
such hypnotic intensity that one man faints. Theevening, which includes acrobats and a rock concert
by a Queen cover band, is considered a great success
despite the change of venue.
The festival also brings art exhibitions, literary
and musical performances and a fashion show to the
Arlberg in late summer, but culture permeates the
landscape year-round. On the 22-kilometre Green
Ring hiking trail (it becomes the White Ring ski route
in winter), artists from five countries have installed a
series of nine wilderness doorways that open to grand
Tyrolean vistas, part of a three-year project that ends
this northern summer. It’s preceded by British artist
Antony Gormley’sHorizon Fieldproject, in which he
erected 100 iron men over 150 square kilometres of
the Alps. Only one remains, standing forlornly like
a lost soul above the Kriegeralpe, a tavern of gingham
tablecloths and traditional tastes such as schnitzel,
beef soup with sliced pancake, and Domaine de la
Romanée-Conti La Tâche. Opened last northern
autumn, American artist James Turrell’sSkyspace
is a roofless pavilion framing ephemeral glimpses
of sky from a grassy mount above Lech.
Lodgings are far easier to come by here in
summer than in winter, when reservations are
passed down through generations like an inherited
privilege. I spend three nights at the Hotel Gasthof
Post in a pine-walled suite with every comfort I could
imagine, including access to an outdoor pool that
looks directly to Omeshorn, the house mountain.
“In the German-speaking world, everyone who can
afford Gasthof Post knows Gasthof Post,” says➤From far
left: Hotel
Tannenhof’s
pool; views
from the
Valluga lookout,
St Anton;
waiter Sarah
Klar at the
Kriegeralpe;
Chalet Skyfall at
Arlberg Hospiz.