Is there anything more sumptuous than a Parisian hotel? Here are 10 of the best luxury stays in the city, with plenty of views of the Eiffel Tower to go around.
Few people come to Paris to sleep, but they do come for an experience, and the city’s thousands of hotels know how to deliver just that. Across arrondissements, from the monument-dense centre to the quieter residential pockets, grand Palace properties rub shoulders with restored hôtels particuliers and sharp boutique hotels where Parisians linger.
Some have undergone significant renovations as recently as 2025; others have quietly elevated their dining, spa, and wellness programming without losing what made them iconic in the first place.
In no particular order, here are the 10 best luxury hotels in Paris in 2026.
Ritz Paris
Photo : Vincent Leroux
Award: Most legendary
When César Ritz, alongside culinary legend Auguste Escoffier, opened his hotel on the Place Vendôme in 1898, he set out to create the finest hotel in the world. Not only did he succeed in redefining what a hotel could be, complete with the radically novel features for the era—electricity on every floor! private bathrooms!—but it also holds true more than a century later. The now-mythical cast of characters includes Proust, Coco Chanel, who made the hotel her primary home for 30 years and has a suite named in her honour, and Ernest Hemingway, who inspired not only one of the world’s most recognisable cocktail bars but a commemorative suite, too. Today, it’s Hollywood and small-screen A-listers who pass through the Ritz’s revolving front door year-round and into one of 142 rooms and suites dressed up in creams, blush pinks, and soft blues, with Louis XV furnishings, brocade textiles, pastoral paintings, and golden swan-shaped faucets and bathtub taps. Guests have ample choice for drinking and dining, from the one-Michelin-starred contemporary restaurant Espadon run by Eugénie Béziat, the Bar Vendôme (which never has a quiet night, especially with live thematic music dinners on Wednesdays), the Salon Proust for tea time, and the Ritz Bar—helpful when the Hemingway is, invariably, packed to the gills.
Best amenity: The Ritz Club and Spa, a private member’s fitness and wellness club also open to hotel guests, including a 16-metre pool (beneath a painted sky), a David Mallett hair salon, and a new partnership with La Prairie, which adds seven facial treatments, including two for men, a signature treatment, and an exfoliating treatment, to the pampering options.
Can’t-miss experience: Guests can arrange a day with the head chef of the École Ritz Escoffier, the hotel’s prestigious, on-site cooking school, beginning with a market tour before returning to the property for a hands-on cooking class.
Originally built for Louis XV in 1758, Hôtel de Crillon has anchored the northwestern corner of Place de la Concorde ever since. So much has happened within its walls: Marie Antoinette was a regular for piano lessons. The 1778 Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed in some of its rooms. Madonna shacked up in the Bernstein suite for months at a time. As over-the-top as it was for Parisians well into the aughts, it needed a refresh—one that came from the visionary architect-artistic director Aline Asmar d’Amman over the course of a four-year restoration. She infused a kind of poetic opulence, big on comfort, that has made its common areas the place to be and be seen for travellers and Parisians. There are 78 rooms and 46 suites, including two Karl Lagerfeld apartments the late designer co-designed with d’Amman (which includes an all-marble bathroom that looks as if it was cut from one single block) and the Sense, A Rosewood Spa pool, lined with more than 17,000 gold mosaic tiles and lit from above by a glass skylight. Ceramic walls surround the pool, created by New York–based artist Peter Lane, that made us think of Monet’s Water Lilies. Nonos & Comestibles marks superstar chef Paul Pairet’s return to Europe after decades in Shanghai, while the Jardin d’Hiver is a plush cocoon for all-day dining, tea time, and late-night drinks that spill over into what might just be Paris’s most exquisite hotel bar, Bar Les Ambassadeurs.
Best amenity: Hard to beat having an on-site pastry shop and tea salon. Butterfly Pâtisserie offers individual-sized works of delicious art from the hotel’s pastry chef, Matthieu Carlin—ideal when you have a packed itinerary and aren’t able to settle in for a full tea-time experience.
Can’t-miss experience: Did we mention the most beautiful hotel bar in Paris? Bar Les Ambassadeurs has it all: soaring marble walls, a frescoed ceiling, chandeliers draped in metal chains for an unexpected rock-and-roll edge, and live music year-round to go with exceptional seasonal cocktails and a sharp selection of grower champagnes.
From $2,936
La Réserve Hôtel & Spa
Photo : La Réserve
Award: Most intimate
Forty rooms and suites, no conventional lobby, and plenty of intimate salons make La Réserve, which opened in 2015 in a transformed Napoléon III-era mansion near the Champs-Élysées, more like a private club. That intimacy has drawn a reliable clientele that finds the scale of the city’s other palace hotels too imposing and impractical. The cocooning effect is helped along by Jacques Garcia’s interiors, layered with taupes and burgundies, velvet and lacquer (and some 6,000 metres of damask silk thrown in the mix), into a hideaway that’s both ornate and relaxing. The Nescens spa is perhaps the only area of the hotel that isn’t lavish and tasselled—though Garcia’s love for red is still very much intact—and offers a nice break from the scene upstairs. Because as discreet as the salon, Pagode restaurant, Gaspard bar, and Veranda seafood restaurant are, it’s consistently a who’s who of local cultural figures and celebs passing through.
Best amenity: The Duc de Morny Library, a wood-paneled space with an open, working fireplace, lined with books and dressed in green velvet, reserved exclusively for guests. Block time in your luxuriating schedules to settle in for hours with a glass of wine or a cup of the house hot chocolate.
Can’t-miss experience: A three-Michelin-star lunch or dinner at Le Gabriel, the jewel box of a fine dining restaurant overseen by the prodigiously talented chef Jérôme Banctel, whose cooking is anchored in France but visibly shaped by Japanese and Turkish techniques (and eschews butter and cream).
From $2,943
Saint James Paris
Photo : Saint James Paris
Award: Most discreet
The only château-hotel within city limits sits behind iron gates near the Porte Dauphine in the 16th arrondissement, at a clear remove from most tourists. Built on the former private residence of statesman Adolphe Thiers, it became a scholarship foundation in 1892 before reinventing itself as a London-style private members’ club in the 1980s. The vibe can still be felt within the hotel’s townhouse-style scale and countryside-chic design. Several years ago, star designer Laura Gonzalez brought a garden-inspired, neoclassical refresh to the property, which includes 48 rooms and suites, two standalone pavilions, and a separate villa with four fully serviced apartments, some with private terraces and gardens. Dining-wise, guests are spoiled: there’s Bellefeuille, the hotel’s Michelin-starred winter garden restaurant, for sophisticated farm-to-table cooking; an outdoor Versailles-style pergola for grilled dishes in the warmer months; and the Library lounge, a hushed, English-style bar housed in a former student library. It’s stocked floor to ceiling with leather-bound books, offers a creative cocktail menu, a wonderful tea-time experience, and privacy: it’s mostly reserved for hotel guests and private members.
Best amenity: One of only two Guerlain spas in Paris, with Greco-Roman decorative details. The space spans two floors, has three treatment rooms, and one of the most breathtaking pools for practicing your backstroke as sunlight shines through.
Can’t-miss experience: Spend time in more than 4,000 square metres of garden without ever leaving the property. Admire the roses, rhododendrons, and ferns, and visit the greenhouse in peace and quiet.
Opened in 1928 on the avenue that bears its name, the George V has long been the most lavish palace hotel in a city brimming with them. The Four Seasons property, with 243 rooms, including 60 suites that are more like apartments, is as grand and palatial as ever, with 17th-century Flanders tapestries, Louis XVI-style furnishings, and a mix of classic and contemporary works of art. Old-world elegance is playfully disrupted by Jeff Leatham’s monumental floral installations (made up of 11,000 flowers each week, to be exact). At the end of 2025, architect Pierre-Yves Rochon completed a full renovation and upgrade of every room—the first since his 1999 redesign—without the property ever closing its doors. F&B is really the star of the hotel, though, with six Michelin stars across three restaurants. Le Cinq, chef Christian Le Squer’s three-starred spot, remains one of the defining expressions of French haute cuisine; L’Orangerie under chef Alan Taudon offers a plant-forward menu built around French sauces; and Le George, led by Italian chef Simone Zanoni, rounds out the experience with a Mediterranean menu.
Best amenity: A toss-up between the spa, which certainly earns its reputation (there’s a 16.7-metre pool, marble hammam, and six treatment rooms stocked with high-tech Swiss brands for anti-aging and regenerative pampering), and the breakfast spread, which includes the usual features and a few rare items like local pollen and honey, an intriguing vegan butter, and olive-oil brioche.
Can’t-miss experience: Get outside and join the hotel’s intimate running group. Each morning, hotel staff lead a small group of guests on a 10-kilometre run through a just-waking Paris. You’ll get pristine landmarks, empty streets, and an elevated heart rate.
From $3,950
Le Grand Mazarin
Photo : Vincent Leroux
Award: Most playful
Le Grand Mazarin marks a milestone for Maisons Pariente, the family group behind Crillon le Brave, Le Coucou, and Lou Pinet, as its first urban hotel. Swedish designer Martin Brudnizki’s maximalist touch makes it memorable and certainly the most eclectic in the portfolio. Located in the Marais, a few blocks from the Seine, the name nods not to Cardinal Mazarin himself but to the literary salons of his era, when the great thinkers, performers, and artists of 17th-century Paris gathered in lavish settings. Brudnizki translates that spirit into baroque details, floral frescoes, and beds with Aubusson-style tapestries that double as canopies across 61 rooms and suites. The effect is resolutely whimsical and fun. The restaurant Boubalé extends that fun with a festive menu rooted in Levantine and Mediterranean tradition; it gets ramped up in the adjacent bar and, especially, at Le Petit Bazaar, a basement speakeasy-meets-dance party led by a DJ who sets the rhythm until 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.
Best amenity: One of the more unique minibar selections in Paris: locally sourced snacks, Café Joyeux coffee, and a premium skincare selection delivered to your room within 30 minutes.
Can’t-miss experience: Leave the high energy behind and relax in the small-but-mighty wellness area that includes the hotel’s star feature: an ethereal striped mosaic-tiled pool and jacuzzi crowned by a vaulted, frescoed ceiling by the artist Jacques Merle.
From $938
Maison Proust
Photo : Benjamin Rosemberg
Award: Most romantic
Romance and Marcel Proust may not be obvious bedfellows, but this two-year-old boutique property in the North Marais was designed by Jacques Garcia to bring the two together. In a restored six-story hotel particulier, Garcia’s signature Belle Epoque style unfolds in dimly lit salons, a lavish bar and winter garden, and a library alcove with more than a thousand rare books, pre-dating Proust’s death, arranged beneath a domed gold-leaf painted ceiling that nods to the Opéra Garnier. Upstairs, impressionists, writers, socialites, and painters who moved in Proust’s orbit, from Sarah Bernhardt to Emile Zola and Claude Monet, lent their names to a room or suite. All are appointed with plush carpets, moulded ceilings, period artwork, and bathrooms lined in Córdoba leather, with lampshades bearing excerpts from In Search of Lost Time.
Best amenity: The sexy Moorish-inspired La Mer spa, with its 20-metre heated pool, hammam, and sauna, can be privatised for an hour each day of a stay. Not into a swim? There are three treatment rooms for personalised massages and facials.
Can’t-miss experience: A few Friday evenings each month, Colin Field, the Hemingway Bar’s legendary mixologist for 30 years, returns to shake a short menu of his own cocktails and hold court with devoted regulars.
From $2,198
Peninsula Paris
Photo : Peninsula Paris
Awards: Best Eiffel Tower views / best rooftop
If grandeur and luxury were measured in gold leaf, crystal, and contemporary art per square metre, the Peninsula Paris would set the standard. The 1908 Beaux-Arts building on Avenue Kléber, steps from the Arc de Triomphe, carries a remarkable history: Gershwin composed An American in Paris within its walls, and the Paris Peace Accords ending the Vietnam War were signed here before it became the Peninsula in 2014. It has delivered a master class in service and contemporary comfort ever since, with its own blinged-out fleet of limos, a Rolls-Royce Phantom II and Mini Coopers, and 200 sophisticated rooms and suites, each dotted with works of art. Bonus: they are also the most generously proportioned in Paris, with five of the 34 suites boasting private rooftop gardens. Dining and summer imbibing on the rooftop (panoramic views guaranteed) are a big draw for well-heeled Parisians. You’ll find them packed into the Kléber bar made historic by Henry Kissinger, digging into refined Cantonese fare at Lili, and indulging in tea time at Le Lobby. But the standout is the double-Michelin-starred L’Oiseau Blanc, a showcase for chef David Bizet’s contemporary French cooking, with unobstructed skyline views.
Best amenity: Luxury is in the details, like the nail polish dryer hidden in each room’s vanity, and personalized accessories for furry guests.
Can’t-miss experience: One of several food-focused experiences run through the Peninsula Academy, from a rooftop garden tour with chef David Bizet to a family-friendly pastry-making class with chef Anne Coruble.
From $2,681
Cheval Blanc Paris
Photo : Oliver Fly
Award: Biggest ‘wow’ factor
When LVMH opened Cheval Blanc Paris in September 2021, it completed the transformation of La Samaritaine—the Belle Époque department store the group restored on the banks of the Seine—into one of the most architecturally ambitious hospitality projects in Parisian history. The 72 rooms and suites, designed by Peter Marino, right down to the armchairs and coffee tables, showcase tone-on-tone residential luxury, each drawing its color palette and textures from jaw-dropping river views through every bay window. There’s more color and character in each of the four on-site restaurants, including the three-Michelin-starred Plénitude, led by chef Arnaud Donckele (with a year-long wait list and menu built around sauces); the modern bar-brasserie Le Tout Paris and Langosteria, both with wraparound balconies, and a mindblowing kaiseki experience at Hakuba.
Best amenity: In-room: the walk-in hammam showers. Everywhere else: the baked goods, pâtisseries, and chocolates prepared by one of the city’s most talented chefs, Maxime Frédéric, and his team. If given the choice at breakfast, get the waffle.
Can’t-miss experience: Don’t fret if you can’t get into Plénitude. You can indulge at the Dior spa instead by booking one of 48 different treatment options and taking a dip in the 30-metre infinity pool—the largest of any Paris hotel by most measures.
From $3,386
Le Bristol
Photo : Le Bristol
Award: Most Parisian
Judging by the Parisians who regularly hold court at Café Antonia, come for cocktails after dark, and book treatments at Spa Le Bristol by La Mer, it’s indisputable: Le Bristol is the most Parisian of the city’s Palace hotels. Yet it has always attracted the foreign and famous: Charlie Chaplin and Rita Hayworth spent a few nights. Now it’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Gillian Anderson checking in, along with smart travellers from around the world enchanted by its old-world grandeur, picturesque English-style courtyard garden, and famously good service. Named for the 18th-century Bishop Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, it has been setting the standard for luxury since it opened in 1925 (and has been privately owned by the Oetker Collection since 1978). The 190 rooms and suites are done up with 18th-century French aesthetics and antique furnishings. No room is the same, but most lean into the house palette of blush and powder blue, and all are generously sized (at least 30 square metres) with oversized beds, showers, and bathrooms. That classic vibe extends to the three-starred restaurant Epicure, now run by chef Arnaud Faye, a charming kids’ club, and plush seating areas where you might catch Socrates, the resident Burmese cat, on the move toward his next comfortable spot to sleep.
Best amenity: The stunner of a rooftop indoor (and heated) pool, wrapped in wood panelling like a 1920s luxury liner. Expansive windows bring you sweeping views over Paris as you lounge in your robe or flex with a few backstrokes.
Can’t-miss experience: Artisanal craft is taken very seriously here: the baking team mills their own flour, chocolate and bread are made in-house, and cheese ages on site. Sample it all at one of the hotel’s restaurants, pick up provisions at the adjoining gourmet shop, or head into the cellars for a private tasting, where sommeliers preside over more than 10,000 bottles, many of them rare.
From the Kimberley to French Polynesia, PONANT EXPLORATIONS is redefining expedition travel through small-ship access, immersion and quiet sophistication.
The Swiss watchmaker just unveiled its new Constellation Observatory Collection today, the next step in its Constellation lineage and the first two-hand hour and minute timepieces to ever earn Master Chronometer certification. And if you were paying attention to any of the dazzling watches spotted at the Oscars this year, you would’ve caught a glimpse of the new line already: Sinners star Delroy Lindo rocked one of the models on the Academy Awards red carpet, giving us a pre-release preview of the collection.
Developed at Omega’s new Laboratoire de Précision (its chronometer testing lab open to all brands), the collection houses a set of nine 39.4 mm watches. The watches underwent 25 days of scrutiny there, analysed via a new acoustic testing method that recorded every sound emitted from the timepiece to track irregularities, temperature sensitivities, and more in the name of all things precision. (Details such as water resistance and power reserve are also thoroughly examined.) This meticulous process is all in the name of snagging that Master Chronometer label, meaning that the timepiece is highly accurate and surpasses the threshold for ultra-high performance. The Constellation Observatory Collection has now changed the game, though, thanks to its lack of a seconds hand.
A watch from the Constellation Observatory Collection, with the Observatory dome on display. Omega
“Until now, precision certification has required a seconds hand,” Raynald Aeschlimann, president and CEO of OMEGA, said in a press statement. “The development of a new acoustic testing methodology has made that requirement obsolete. It is this breakthrough that has enabled us to present the Constellation Observatory, the first two-hand watch to achieve Master Chronometer certification.”
In addition to notching its place in history, the collection also debuted a new pair of movements: the Calibre 8915 and the Calibre 8914, each perched on a skeletonised rotor base. The former’s Grand Luxe iteration will appear on the 950 Platinum-Gold model in the collection, which offers up that base in 18-karat Sedna Gold alongside a Constellation medallion in 18-karat white gold with an Observatory dome done in white opal enamel surrounded by stars. The second Calibre 8915, the Luxe, will find its home on the other precious-metal models in the line, either made with the brand’s 18-karat Sedna, Moonshine, or Canopus gold seen across the case, the hand-guilloché dial, and, of course, the movement itself. (Lindo chose to rock the Moonshine Gold on Moonshine Gold iteration, priced at approximately $86,000, for Sinners‘s big night at the Oscars.) As for the Calibre 8914, it can be found in the collection’s four steel models.
A look at a gold case-back from the collection. Omega
Each model is a callback to myriad design features on past Omega models. That two-hand dial, for one, comes from the 1948 Centenary (the brand’s first chronometer-certified automatic wristwatch), while the pie-pan dial (seen in various blue, green, and golden hues throughout the line) and that Constellation medallion caseback both appear on watches from 1952. The star adorning the space above 6 o’clock also harks back to 1950s timepieces from Omega. And to finish off the look, you can opt for alligator straps in a variety of colours, or perhaps a gold iteration to match the precious-metal models; the brick-like pattern on the 18-karat Moonshine bracelet was also inspired by Omega watches from the ’50s.
We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for any other Constellation Observatory timepieces (or any other unreleased models from the brand) at the rest of the star-studded events headed our way this year—perhaps the Met Gala?
Colorado’s barely known San Juan Mountains do a fine line in bespoke skiing experiences, luring alpine-sports cognoscenti and billionaire thrill-seekers alike.
“Though no one currently on staff is at liberty to say, billionaire actor Tom Cruise is a very average heli-snowboarder. But although no one currently on staff is at liberty to say, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—the world’s second richest human—makes up for Cruise’s inability with his off-piste prowess. The pair have been clients of Telluride Helitrax, a heli-skiing outfit operating in the backcountry behind Telluride Mountain Resort, in remote south-west Colorado, since 1982. My source, a former guide who prefers to remain anonymous, admits he’s entertained a host of household-name One Percenters over the years.”
“Power billionaires aren’t going to the popular resorts any more,” he reveals over a happy-hour drink at a Telluride bar. “Luxury skiing these days, it’s all about exclusivity. No one with any clout shares snow, and at every resort, no matter how fancy, you have to share the slopes. But nowhere is more exclusive than the backcountry. That’s your billionaire’s playground. And no backcountry is more exclusive than San Juan backcountry.”
Conditions match those found in Alaska, according to those in-the know.
Which is precisely why I am here. Australia’s considerable brigade of free-spending, snow-crazed executives may jet off to Vail and Aspen each northern winter for thrills, but it turns out some of the world’s most choicest ski experiences have been right under their noses—only a short helicopter ride, car journey or private jet flight from said resorts.
Packed into the ultra-rugged southern end of the Rocky Mountains, the San Juans are a little chunk of the Swiss Alps in the US—young, ridiculously spectacular formations known for their steep slopes, deep powder snow and Disney-esque triangular peaks, all bathed in 300-plus days of sunshine a year. And the region is augmented by unique, and select, backcountry options that rival anything currently in the upscale ski orbit.
Carving clouds in Silverton backcountry terrain.
Case in point: North America’s highest skiing setting, Silverton Mountain. Located in the heart of the San Juans, outside the tiny town of Silverton, the 4,111 m peak boasts 736 hectares of chair-accessible terrain set among what is reputedly the deepest, steepest snow in the nation. It also offers a further 10,000 hectares of private terrain, serviced by heli-ski operation Heli Adventures. This is the Shangri-La of skiing: every slope connoisseur has heard of it, though most wonder if it actually exists.
We arrive via the treacherous Million Dollar Highway, where a disturbing lack of guard rails sometimes causes travellers to plummet into the valley floor (the death toll, grimly, averages eight people per year). Silverton Mountain was bought in 2023 by Heli Adventures’ young co-founders Andy Culp and Brock Strasbourger. While private punters can book the hill in its entirety, starting from around $14,000 per day, plus extra for single heli-skiing runs, the destination is also open to the public from Thursdays to Saturdays through winter.
“Silverton is a bastion for the pure ski experience,” Culp says. “All that corporate consolidation that happened when ski resorts all over the world developed condos and real estate and got super-busy… well, it never happened here. You’re able to access Alaska-like terrain from an old rickety chairlift, but you’re an hour’s drive from a pretty major airport [Montrose]. And you can access snow that’s even better than most heli-skiing straight off your lift.”
There’s no radio-frequency lift passes when I arrive. In fact, I don’t get a lift pass at all. A discarded school bus doubles as the “second chairlift”; it picks me up and returns me to a yurt which serves as a restaurant and bar. “There’s a time and a place to hang out at The Little Nell [Aspen’s legendary après-ski bar] and the world doesn’t need more of that,” Culp says. “This is the new luxury. We also run a heli-ski business out of Aspen [Aspen Heli-Skiing] but this is where we come. You can’t put a price tag on what we have here.”
I drive away from the mountain, back along the perilous Million Dollar Highway, park my car and disappear into the San Juan National Forest with guide Kaylee Walden. This white-coated outback between Silverton and Ouray, dubbed “the Switzerland of America”, offers swathes of primo backcountry skiing terrain. The ski touring here is often likened to Europe’s iconic Haute Route—an emblematic trail between Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.
The operator Mountain Trip offers a Colorado version of that feted circuit, on a multi-day traverse between secluded huts. All in all, there’s nearly 8,000 km² of national forest and 2,500 hectares of wilderness to explore, frequented only by the occasional intrepid enthusiast.
A wood-burning sauna is being prepared as I arrive at Thelma Hut, 4,500 m above sea level. Traditionally, US Forest Service huts were humble affairs, with rudimentary bunks, self-service kitchens, and food supplies brought in by skiers. This evening, however, a chef is preparing local bison across from an open fireplace as the sun sets through a floor-to-ceiling window against a horizon of white mountains. As he works, I walk out into the snow to study the twilight sky; beaming planets shine down on me, necklaces of tiny stars sparkle.
Thelma Hut, in the San Juan National Forest.
Back down to earth, upon my return to “civilisation”, we take a two-hour car ride to Telluride, probing through the San Juans. The small town is picture-postcard pretty, wedged at the end of a box canyon surrounded by Colorado’s tallest waterfalls, and hosts the highest concentration of 4,000-m-plus peaks in the state. Most of its buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places, including a bank that was robbed in 1889 by the outlaw Butch Cassidy.
While the locale offers everything from luxurious on-mountain dining options to 7-km-long runs, it’s the heli-ski enterprise that’s lured me. Telluride Helitrax holds sole rights to over 500 km² of completely deserted ski terrain, a few minutes’ flying time from town. The company runs a range of Eurocopters which guests can charter into Colorado’s best alpine basins, cirques and couloirs. “The range mightn’t be as expansive as Alaska,” says Telluride Helitrax program director Joseph Shults. “But the views, the terrain, the snow depth and quality is as good.”
I’m staying in a privately owned three-bedroom penthouse apartment, where a helicopter takes off each morning for convenience (when I’m done carving clouds, I move a kilometre up the mountain to the seven-bedroom, three-storey mountain retreat Hood Park Haven, valued at around $42 million). Telluride Helitrax uses an abundance of drop-off locations, all above the tree line, meaning everyone from intermediates to experts can be catered for.
Telluride Helitrax offers a multitude of drop-off points.The $42 million Hood Park Haven retreat.
During my three-day odyssey, I don’t cross a single other ski track, but it’s the peace that is most startling. In this pocket of montane paradise, there is, literally, not a single sound—a stark contrast to the whirling fury of the chopper that transports me. My experienced guide Bill Allen won’t reveal who’s come before Robb Report. “You’d know their names,” he says, grinning.
And so the San Juans remain a secret to all but a fortunate few. Of all the luxuries the ultra-wealthy enjoy in the skiing ecosphere, the promise of untouched snow is by far the most enviable. Here in Colorado is where the white gold truly lies.
Photography: Kane Scheidegger (heli-skiing); Patrick Coulie (hut); Courtesy of Colorado Tourism Office (Hood Park Haven).
This article appears in the Autumn issue 2026 of Robb Report Australia New-Zealand. Click here to subscribe.
A modern classic in the making, combining naturally aspirated power with elegant restraint to deliver performance that feels as refined as it is visceral.
In a year when carmakers of all persuasions sheepishly extended hyperbolic electric targets, it’s fitting that the monastic puritans of Maranello—who, lest we forget, won’t finally yield to the sin of battery power until October with the Elettrica—opted to make combustion their major power play.
As an uncertain future of AI omnipresence barrels towards us, the 12Cilindri—an analogue, open-topped tribute to Ferrari’s late-’60s/early-’70s grand tourer, the Daytona—represents a defiant fade into the past, a pause for breath, a fleeting return to The Good Times when nascent technology provoked excitement rather than existential dread.
Guiding this automotive nostalgia trip is, as the nomenclature suggests, a naturally aspirated 6.5-litre V12 engine, generating an unceasing wave of power as it sears towards the 9,500 rpm redline with relative nonchalance. That’s because the 12Cilindri is not a mouth-foaming attack-dog. It scales performance heights with the refinement of the finest Italian works of art; its “Bumpy Road” mode facilitates comfy al fresco GT cruising, and even the imperious powerplant is mannerly at most speeds.
For all the yesteryear romance, progressive technologies and engineering, such as a world-class 8-speed transmission, advanced electronic aids and independent four-wheel steering, are baked into the deal. The 12Cilindri’s clean, stark design somehow toggles between retro and modern; and while vaguely polarising, one can’t ignore its magnetic road presence.
In terms of aesthetics, Ferrari describes the 12Cilindri as being “ready for space”; in many ways, a fantasy vehicle that transports users to another dimension is probably what the world needs right now.
At Le Bernardin, Aldo Sohm oversees one of the most formidable cellars in fine dining. But on the beach, he’ll happily drink a cheap rosé. The world-class sommelier explains why taste—and humility—matter more than price.
Aldo Sohm is one of the most accomplished sommeliers in the world. The 54-year-old Austrian heads up an oenophile’s empire on New York City’s West 51st Street, where he both serves as wine director at Michelin three-star Le Bernardin and leads his namesake wine bar, just across the road from the fine-dining institution. (He spends his time literally running back and forth between the two.) So it may come as a surprise that this man, who sips prized varietals all day, admits to the joys of a glass of Whispering Angel, a ubiquitous rosé that retails at stateside Target stores for US$22.99 (around $30) a bottle.
The context here is important; the aptly named Sohm is quick to clarify that he’s not about to start serving Whispering Angel as one of the pairings with chef Eric Ripert’s US$530 (around $750) eight-course tasting menu. But during a trip to the Caribbean for the Cayman Cookout food festival, Sohm’s wife requested a glass of rosé on the beach. When he went to fetch it, she specified that she wanted a cheap drop, not the fancy stuff that he likely would have grabbed. “I felt kind of gobsmacked, right?”
Sohm says as we’re sitting in the tasting room at Aldo Sohm Wine Bar. “Now, rather than just criticising, I have to admit: I got out of the water, and I tried Whispering Angel, too. It was delicious.”
Aldo Sohm Wine Bar, across the street from Le Bernardin in midtown Manhattan.
Unlikely as it may be, this humility is perhaps the key to Sohm’s success. His lack of self-seriousness makes him an anomaly in the oftentimes highfalutin world of fine wine. Rather than shaming you for your preferences, Sohm will indulge your desires. Maybe, as in the case of his wife, you’re going to be right. More likely than not, you’re going to be wrong. He won’t simply tell you that, though; he’ll use his encyclopedic knowledge of wine to subtly steer you in the right direction, allowing you to come to that conclusion on your own. “You just wake up from your dream—and mistake—and realise that, ‘Oh yeah, he’s right,’” says Ripert, who has worked with Sohm for almost two decades.
Sohm intended to move to New York for only 18 months. Growing up in Innsbruck, in the Austrian Alps, he wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Like many childhood fantasies, that didn’t come to fruition, and he settled on something more practical, becoming a teacher at a hospitality school. Having overcorrected—“That was way too boring for me,” he admits—he switched to the more public-facing side of the industry, getting a job as a restaurant server. It was then, when he was about 21, that Sohm fell in love with wine. (Prior to that, he was a self-proclaimed Bacardi and coke guy.)
The menu’s croque monsieur
After studying wine on his own time, he began his formal sommelier education in 1998. He rose quickly through the ranks and was named the best sommelier in Austria in 2002, a title he defended the following two years and reclaimed in 2006. Amid that stretch, he sojourned to New York in 2004 with the goal of improving his English to compete in international competitions. It paid off: four years later, he won the top prize from the World Sommelier Association. But more than the accolades, Sohm had discovered a career. By then, he had joined Le Bernardin after stints at Wallsé, Café Sabarsky and Blaue Gans—all Austrian restaurants in Manhattan.
“Back then we had a very strong French sommelier community, and they controlled everything,” he says. “And it was an uproar because how come an Austrian sommelier came to one of the most French restaurants?” He proved his bona fides, and in 2013 Ripert and Maguy Le Coze, the co-owners of Le Bernardin, approached him with the idea of partnering with them in a wine bar. It was Ripert who suggested putting the connoisseur’s name on it.
Aldo Sohm Wine Bar debuted the following year, with a team that Sohm handpicked. Sarah Thomas was part of that opening crew, after meeting Sohm during a fateful dinner at Le Bernardin with her cousins. When her relatives divulged to him that she was a sommelier in Pittsburgh, he proceeded to serve a blind tasting to Thomas. “He didn’t say what I got right or wrong. He didn’t care about that,” she tells me. “He just wanted to hear me talk about wine, I guess. So I did.”
When he offered her a job at the end of the meal, she laughed. Sohm didn’t. Thomas promptly packed up and moved to New York. After she spent about nine months at the wine bar, Sohm promoted her to Le Bernardin, where she worked for another five years. When she decided to start her own business—Kalamata’s Kitchen, which aims to teach kids about other cultures through food—Sohm was one of her earliest investors. He may have found full-time teaching to be too banal, but it’s still a huge part of what he does now, identifying the next generation of stars and giving them the guidance to grow into their own—whether that takes them into the upper echelons of fine dining or beyond the white tablecloths altogether.
Sohm’s side hustles include a line of wineglasses, a Grüner Veltliner produced in his native Austria, and books such as Wine Simple: Perfect Pairings.
Overseeing two teams, at two very different spaces, feeds Sohm’s prodigious ambition. He’s on a mission to completely reshape the world of wine, from what’s in your glass to the glass itself to what you enjoy it with—say, Champagne with eggs. Along with his day jobs, he has partnered with the Austrian brand Zalto to create his own wineglasses. “As a sommelier, you criticise only, but you make nothing,” Sohm says. So, he also now wears the winemaker hat, producing a Grüner Veltliner under the Sohm & Kracher label, a relatively accessible quaff that’s a collaboration with his fellow countryman Gerhard Kracher. And in 2019 he added author to his résumé, releasing Wine Simple, a “totally approachable guide”, as the book’s subtitle puts it. He followed that up with Wine Simple: Perfect Pairings, to help you pick the right bottle for the right meal and the right moment.
“In wine pairings, you have three possible combinations,” Sohm says. “There’s the perfect pairing. Then sometimes you have flavours just going along… it’s like humans—they talk, they interact, but they never connect. And then there’s conflict.” It’s that first one he’s after every time.
“Sohm fell in love with wine when he was about 21. Prior to that, he was a self-proclaimed Bacardi and coke guy.”
Outside of the restaurant, the wine bar and the cellar, Sohm is an avid cyclist who owns six bikes, a number he admits is excessive—especially in New York City. Riding is what he credits with keeping him healthy, when so much of his time is spent eating and drinking—and drinking some more.
Still, despite the 18-year career at one of the world’s best restaurants, despite the top honours from his peers, despite the wine and the wineglasses and the wine books, Sohm doesn’t consider himself successful. Every day, he’s trying to figure out how he can self-correct. “I like what I do, so I go back home that night, think of things which I can improve,” he says. “I get annoyed when I make a mistake, but I improve the next day.”
His quest for perfection may never be over, but Sohm does concede that he’s happy—its own type of success. Sometimes he finds that happiness while sipping a glass of 1980 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche, a bottle now so rare and coveted that he calls it “unattainable”. And sometimes, if to his chagrin, he finds it while drinking a mass-produced rosé on the beach.
Photography by Tori Latham
This article appears in the Autumn issue 2026 of Robb Report Australia New-Zealand. Click here to subscribe.
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This article appears in the Autumn issue 2026 of Robb Report Australia New-Zealand. Click here to subscribe.
