Luxury escorts in Gstaad

“Come up, slow down” is the promise on the road into Gstaad, and the village keeps it. The chalet rule has held for a century — nothing tall, nothing loud — and the money here is old enough not to need mentioning. The season's geography is precise: the Palace on its hill, the Alpina above the promenade, the Eagle Club on the Wasserngrat for lunch, and the promenade itself, five minutes end to end and sufficient for an entire January. This is the resort for guests who have finished proving things.

Our Gstaad engagements are correspondingly settled: chalet weeks with the days built around snow or the summer's riding and tennis, dinners at the Palace where the maître has known every face for twenty years, the Menuhin Festival in August for guests whose season is musical rather than alpine. Companions who come to the Saanenland are chosen for polish of the quietest kind — conversation, languages, an instinct for when an evening wants charm and when it wants silence. Geneva is two hours by car, the airfield at Saanen rather less by air.