Au Cœur du Village, La Clusaz

A farm in the Aravis, sometime in the Middle Ages. The landlord's man arrives to measure the milk, because the rent depends on it. The farmer milks his cows, but only halfway. The inspector notes his figure and leaves. The farmer sits back down on his stool and milks again. That second milking is smaller, creamier and nobody else's business, and it becomes reblochon, from reblocher, to pinch the udder twice. The Aravis has kept the best for itself ever since. Au Cœur du Village is that trick, turned into a hotel.

On a map of the French Alps, half the resorts were born on a drawing board and poured in concrete in a single decade. La Clusaz grew the slow way: church first, farms around it, lifts much later. It is also a discreet bastion of old money. Families from Lyon, Annecy and Geneva have skied here for generations without ever feeling the need to tell anyone. In 2010 the Pollet-Villards, an Aravis family for as long as anyone remembers, put the valley's only hotel of this calibre right beside the church. A father and son built it. Locals, naturally.

From the street, it barely raises its voice, a big chalet of timber and stone that slips into the village. Inside, the volume goes up a notch. Blond wood, local slate, sixty rooms and suites with balconies aimed at the Aravis peaks, and on the walls the work of Ludovic Di Orio, an artist from just down the road. Families take the suites that sleep five. The cigar crowd takes the English smoking room after dinner.

The mountain is fifty metres away. Skis are fitted and boots laced in the basement, and two minutes later the first lift is already climbing. Coming back is just as fast: through the door, down to the Cristal Spa, themed on the crystals buried in these mountains, into the pool or the hammam, and finally up to the bar, where the fire finishes the job.

Then comes dinner, and the valley's second trick. At Le Cœur, reblochon arrives in every form, tartiflette included, a dish the reblochon makers themselves turned into a hit in the 1980s to sell more cheese. Upstairs at Le Cin5, executive chef Vincent Deforce, whose wife's family comes from Mauritius, smuggles in the Indian Ocean: smoked marlin with pineapple, langoustine in a Mauritian shellfish cream, sweet potato slipped into the tartiflette. A spice route in a cheese valley. The farmers would have approved.

Not everything here is so well hidden. The village sits low, at barely 1,100 metres, and in a mild winter the lower slopes show it. On Saturdays half of Lyon seems to arrive at once. Sixty rooms make this a bigger heart than the name suggests, and the interiors play it safe, handsome but never daring.

The landlords never found out about the second milking. Most of the skiing world still has not found out about La Clusaz. The crowds drive past on their way to the famous names, and the Aravis does what it has always done: keeps the richest part for itself, and says nothing.