Perhaps it’s the altitude but Luca Biaris — toned, tanned and as Italian as they come — is restless long before we stop to eat.
After nearly five decades on the slopes of Champoluc, the 53-year-old knows where to find the mountain’s superb off-piste nooks and crannies better than anyone. But he’s also a full-time chef and determined to tackle as many steep descents as possible before making tonight’s pasta at his restaurant, Le Petit Coq.
“If I’m not in the kitchen,” he says, “then I’m out skiing.” Not until the après-ski hour does the cook even think about taking a proper lunch.
I am in the mountains of the Aosta Valley because of people such as Luca. Only in north-west Italy would you find a chef-come-ski guide, and his old-school attitude is the norm in places such as Champoluc. Its empty slopes, unrefined wildness and heaving menus underpin the basic rhythms of life — and they are exquisitely appealing to someone as obsessive about winter sports and mountain grub as me.
All over the valley are reminders of a time when ski resorts focused on simpler pleasures. There are ramshackle Alpine refuges, rudimentary two-person chairlifts and a feeling of intimacy that is at odds with the widescreen views that stretch all the way to the Matterhorn in neighbouring Switzerland. It’s unshowy and low-key: you won’t find any fur-draped sun loungers or St Moritz swank here.
In what seems like a ginormous game of snakes and ladders, we go downhill at speed then rocket back up again, crossing from the glades runs of Champoluc to the steeper gullies of rural backwaters Gressoney-La-Trinité and Alagna, which combine to form the vast Monterosa Ski area. Its beauty is in its protean nature and ability to flip one minute from gentle show-off to big mountain rollercoaster.
This Alpine bonanza is the second reason I’ve come. Plans are afoot to create the world’s second-biggest ski resort by size and I’ve been hankering for a glimpse of what it might become. When complete, the scheme will link Monterosa Ski’s three Italian valleys with nearby Cervinia on the southern slopes of the Matterhorn for a year-round destination.
Most of this mind-boggling vastness can’t be reached by road but the hope is that it will eventually whizz skiers into new territory via an ambitious Screwball Scramble system of hanging gondolas, chairlifts and cableways. In the meantime, visitors will just have to make do with the valleys’ jaw-dropping emptiness.
As I’ve come for a glimpse of the future, it makes sense that one of my first stops is Rifugio Novez, a paint-still-wet restaurant cabin at the piste’s edge. Its adventurous a la carte menu is perhaps a sign of things to come, and after eyeing the menu Luca orders a round of pumpkin soups, unexpectedly topped with steak tartare, followed by bowls of beetroot spaghetti. It creates the perfect Venn diagram of winter sports overlapping with exquisite food and wine.
Out-there cuisine at altitude is hardly a new travel trend. But it’s only now that people are starting to talk about the Aosta Valley in the same breath as other gourmet ski destinations in Italy such as Cortina d’Ampezzo and Alta Badia in the Dolomites. Dishes are deliciously brave — I’d wager snail ravioli or smoked eel with burnt leeks were never go-to dishes in Alberto Tomba’s day — but there are also homages to traditions that have gone before. An unforgettable zuppa valpellinentze, a sticky baked cheese and cabbage soup, brings a silence to my table later that evening at CampZero, another new arrival and Champoluc’s first five-star eco-resort. After too many herbal génépis, I need more than strong espresso to shake off my drowsy fug the next morning. My destination is Cervinia, 90 minutes by car transfer, but far, far away in the minds of skiers and boarders.
There are places you dream of visiting for years and Cervinia is one such destination. While it doesn’t shout enough about the fact that it has as much of the Matterhorn in its backyard as Switzerland does, it should. This is scenery with thigh burn, and no matter which way you look at it, it is one of those rare must-see landscapes that is more impressive — more memorable and dazzling — with the naked eye. “Like Zermatt but better,” says Luca, my ski guide for the day.
We ascend to the 3,500m summit of the resort’s highest ski lift at Plateau Rosa to spy Champoluc in the powderdusted distance and to make sense of the resort-in-the-making’s epic scale. As well as showcasing some of Europe’s most recognisable mountains — namely Mont Blanc, which straddles the Franco-Italian border at nearby Courmayeur — the slopes are so quiet they offer the pleasant illusion that we are discovering them for ourselves.
That’s the thing about the Aosta Valley. It’s difficult to believe more people don’t come here. But there’s a growing sense, with the investment that’s about to flood in, that in the years to come they soon will.
For information on Cervinia, Champoluc and the rest of the Aosta Valley, visit aosta-valley.co.uk
