Verbier — 4 Vallées Chauffeur & Concierge4 Vallées

Verbier is the extrovert among Swiss resorts — a sunny balcony at 1,500 metres above the Val de Bagnes, facing the Combins massif, with the most serious lift-served freeride terrain in the Alps at its back. It became fashionable the modern way: not through Belle Époque hotels but through skiing itself, as the world's best riders made the Bec des Rosses the final stage of the Freeride World Tour and a generation of royals, financiers and entrepreneurs followed. Yet each July the resort changes key entirely, when the Verbier Festival fills the mountains with the world's great orchestras and soloists. Energy in winter, music in summer; the snow line is the only formality.

Geneva to Verbier is among the shortest of the great transfers: the A1 to Lausanne, the A9 up the Rhône valley to Martigny, then the climb through Sembrancher and Le Châble before the famous switchbacks to the village — under two hours door to door. The Range Rover is the natural choice for those final bends in a snowstorm; the V-Class VIP carries a family and a season's equipment with ease. Your chauffeur fits chains the moment conditions ask, watches the Val de Bagnes forecast from first light, and can instead set you down at Le Châble for the ten-minute gondola ascent. In a hurry, a helicopter from Geneva reaches Verbier in roughly half an hour.

The W Verbier anchors the village; the Experimental Chalet supplies its younger pulse. On winter evenings, ride a snowcat up to dinner at La Marlenaz or Chez Dany, lanterns in the trees and the valley lights far below. Ski Mont-Fort first thing: from 3,330 metres the panorama runs unbroken from the Matterhorn to Mont Blanc, and the early cable car spares you the crowds. In late March the Freeride World Tour finale charges down the Bec des Rosses; in July the Verbier Festival draws the great soloists to the Salle des Combins. Stay through a Sunday. Verbier's best hours are the quiet ones it keeps for those who linger.