For those of us who’ve done the big mountains and the sprawling wedding-cake hotels, a new kind of alpine sanctuary awaits.
Curious about quiet? Calling all alpine aesthetes who’ve grown tired of dodging paparazzi in Verbier and navigating the sprawl of St. Moritz—welcome to eriro. Opened in 2024, perched mid-mountain at a small ski area one hour from Innsbruck, this discreet adults-only boutique hotel is not for the many. It’s a high-touch hideaway for the few.
Slopeside Solitude, Delivered
As the gondola rises slowly skyward across the Austrian flank of the Zugspitze, the pretty Tirolean villages of Ehrwald and Lermoos retreat in the distance. At the summit, a black all-terrain Can-Am waits to whisk us the extra few steps, across a gentle piste to the front of a heavy hand-carved wooden door. Inside, there’s a palette of calming taupes, a wash of alpine panorama, and a delicate whiff of woodsmoke perfuming the air. Soon, local conifers, salts and wild herbs will flavor not just our food and drink but the very atmosphere itself. This is luxury—but on a deeply human scale.
Located in a quiet ski area with just eight lifts and immaculate grooming, this rustic-chic inn offers just nine suites, alongside superb cuisine, classes that include woodcarving, yodelling, and yoga, and a pampering spa that outstrips what one would commonly expect in such a bijou setting.
Expect nothing shiny, apart from polished stemware and copper lampshades; nothing bright, save the crackling open fire and shimmering onsen. Inside and out, the forest is reborn in every possible permutation—from the extraordinary bathtubs hewn from a single tree, to ceilings blanketed in hand-split, recycled spruce, to the 4,000 cotter pins binding it all place. Among the hand-made linens and house-bottled spring water, modern technology does exist—but only on request. A pair of handknit heavy wool socks wait as a welcome gift in my suite; guests are encouraged to pad about zu Hause, and there’s a box in each suite to deposit phones, if possible. In lieu of TV, each suite has a pair of binoculars and a turntable with a few classic LPs.
So, down the wool-padded corridor I pad, toward the morning wood-carving clinic with a local young master of the regional art. Later, after a handful of relaxed runs on the near-private pistes at my doorstep, an apres-ski yoga class beckons. Led by an attentive and masterful yogi, I surrender on a mat that reads “Alles ist Jetz”. And this is true—everything is now, on request, à la demande, just as one wishes.
From the cellar, with love
Chef doesn’t write menus, he composes them—daily, depending on what the forest serves up or the neighboring farmer delivers. Yoghurts, jams, and creamy milk comes from nearby alms. The eriro summer has been spent foraging, pickling, and smoking. From hay-aged speck and pine sorbet, an astonishing and delicious array of all things infused, oxidized, and fermented appear in delicious succession. One evening, there’s a 68° onsen egg and a main elegantly comprised of just three components: butter foam, salmon trout, and pickled elderberry. The wine list leans Austrian and esoteric. During a bespoke tour of the pantry lined with hundreds of hand-filled jars and bottles, chef modestly calls his technique “accidental science”. It works.
Not a spa. A sanctum.
No laminated spa menu, just a quiet question: “What do you need right now?”
The reply is but steps away. For the pleasure of the few, a gorgeous spa is built around granite touchstones weighing two and half tonnes. Bouquets of nettle, arnica and other mountain herbs hang drying above steaming onsens and meditation pools. There’s a Finnish sauna, sleep-inducing sheep’s wool hammocks, and a soundproof room lined with hay where infrared loungers come with stereophonic views of the Tajakopf. The massages of Tatiana, the Belarusian engineer-turned-artist, are spiritual choreography. Her soulful hands dance and heal and wave above me, complete with a sorceress finger snap to seal the moment. Each treatment is bespoke: from herbal oil therapies to therapeutic massages.
From the old German for “entrance to the forest”, eriro was envisioned by a cadre of talented locals committed to fine mountain culture: hoteliers Amelie and Dominik Posch, Ehrwalders Christina and Martin Spielmann, and timber construction expert Andreas Mader. Together, they created a calm without ostentation. Oh, what a bit of sheep’s wool and granite can do.
By night, slow lighting illuminates the quiet corridor, and the moment arrives to draw down the stone-on-a-string outside my door to indicate privacy. It scarcely seems necessary, but the mere motion – hand on rock, wood on string – produces an anachronistic rush of dopamine. I quickly nod off, to the strains of Ella Fitzgerald on vinyl and the silence of the falling snow.
