We are so psyched to have been featured in the Wall Street Journal this week! We are flattered to represent Southern VT amongst such great company!
THE AREA OF south-central Vermont around Stratton Mountain is a rural landscape of white-clapboard farm houses and rolling hills forested with tall pines and silvery birches. Indisputably beautiful countryside, to be sure, but with poor cellphone coverage, stringent restrictions on development and the native Vermonters’ inclination to keep a good thing to themselves, it hasn’t exactly been on the jet-set’s radar.
That’s largely what compelled me and my husband to buy a weekend house there in 2014—a spontaneous indulgence in that clichéd real estate fantasy of “getting away from it all.” We were eager to flee our Brooklyn home on winter weekends and take advantage of Stratton’s ski slopes, a 41⁄2-hour drive north of New York. Little did we know that our pokey winter retreat would morph into a stealthily fashionable destination where foodie restaurants are slowly supplanting diners with sticky booths and stylish hotels edging out doily-infested B&Bs. Increasingly, the area has enough going on to make it an attractive summer spot too.
In 2011, New England’s first private-club ski resort, the Hermitage Club at Haystack Mountain, opened outside the town of Wilmington; in 2015, it completed a 90,000-foot post-and-beam lodge. Mercedes-Benz buses whisking its guests to the mountain from the nearby small airport have become a common sight on the country roads. Nonmembers are welcome to stay at the club’s six inns—all renovated historic properties scattered around Wilmington and adjacent town Dover—enjoying nearly full access to the ski facilities in winter
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A Discreetly Fashionable Getaway in New England – WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-discreetly-fashionable-getaway-in-n…
and swimming and boating amenities on the club’s lake come summer.
In late 2015, the Kimpton hotel group opened the Taconic, its first Vermont property, in the historic village of Manchester. With a firepit on the big front porch, the inn puts a local twist on the boutique-hotel model. Bigger changes are afoot too: Aspen Skiing Co. is currently executing a deal to buy the company that owns Stratton and other resorts, which observers say would usher in more high- end development. “Aspen’s acquisition of Stratton means there’s going to be a lot more happening here in a short period,” said Meridith Dennes, a former investment banker from Manhattan who moved to the area full time in 2014. Ms. Dennes recently launched an online regional travel-guide, VisitStratton.com, to help newcomers keep up.
Until recently, southern Vermont’s summertime appeal revolved around its country pleasures: jumping 35 feet from a marble cliff into the Dorset Quarry; splashing beneath the waterfalls at Pike’s Falls swimming hole; riding at Mountain View Ranch in Danby; or picking blueberries over by Emerald Lake State Park, at Wildwood Berry Farm.
But even the outdoor diversions are revving up. Every June, a dogged group of jocks clamber over 20 mud-covered obstacles during the Tough Mudder race on Mount Snow. Cyclists careen down Okemo Mountain, where the lifts can now carry bikes. Alpine slides zip down the face of Bromley Mountain, a small ski resort whose Bromley Fun Zone was a pioneer of mountain summer activities in the 1970s. Bromley’s Aerial Adventure Park strings five courses of zip lines and obstacles through the treetops, at challenge-levels that range from child- friendly to adult-terrifying.
FARM CHARM SoLo Farm & Table. PHOTO: EVA DEITCH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Weekenders not up for mud-covered obstacles or zip-lining can opt for small-
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A Discreetly Fashionable Getaway in New England – WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-discreetly-fashionable-getaway-in-n…
Visitors to the Dorset Quarry can be seen jumping off of rocks at various heights. PHOTO: EVA DEITCH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
town culture and style instead. Siblings Tim and Tyne Daly are on stage together for the first time at the Dorset Theatre Festival this season. The rambling Northshire Bookstore in Manchester hides a treehouse reading nook for children and a clothing section of flowing hippie caftans among the new, used and rare books. The Armani Outlet in Manchester offers Armani Black Label and Collection items for as low as 90% off (I have the fur coat to prove it). The only Marimekko outlet in America is down the street.
Traditionally, all this fun hasn’t been matched with sophisticated places to stay and eat, but no longer. The region’s first modern fine-dining option, SoLo Farm & Table, in the small town of Londonderry, about 20 minutes north of Stratton, opened in 2011. It was an act of madness or kismet by Chloe and Wesley Genovart, a young married couple who were both working in the restaurant industry in New York City, she as the maître d’ at Manhattan’s Per Se, and Wesley as the chef at cult-following tapas bar Degustation. On a trip to visit Ms. Genovart’s parents in Manchester, the couple impulse-bought an 18th-century farmhouse at a foreclosure sale.
Now it’s the kind of destination restaurant people plan their weekends around, with a seasonal menu sourced from nearby farms and enhanced by SoLo’s own gardens. Last year, the couple debuted a second restaurant, Honeypie, on Route 30 just past the Stratton Access Road, turning a “rundown, nasty gas station” into an industrial-styled family place for burgers and sausage rolls, using high- quality, whole-animal ingredients. “It’s a burger joint, but a badass burger joint,” Ms. Genovart said.
The Downtown Grocery, a bit further north in Ludlow, is also a farm-to-table spot, and on a recent visit had a notably mixed crowd of old men in seersucker and young people with beards and tattoos. The Williamsville Eatery, established in 2014 by a father-son team in Williamsville, a white-clapboard small town, extols its farm-fresh ingredients, too, along with craft beers and small-batch wines in a dining room that was once the town’s general store.
Another local culinary trend is the elevation of ye-olde-taverns, whose dank interiors and questionable attempts at modernization are legendary in this part of Vermont. At the White House Tavern, the restaurant at the Hermitage Club’s graceful, century-old White House Inn in downtown Wilmington, diners dip fries into bone-marrow mayo and nibble on pigs ears from nearby Ephraim Farm. The Cask & Kiln Kitchen is also in Wilmington, but the dining room, with its exposed wood and filament lights, looks like it could be in Manhattan, as does the upstairs bar, known for its cocktails. The Taconic Hotel’s Copper Grouse serves updated classics like cheddar-ale soup and cider-brined chicken in a room
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A Discreetly Fashionable Getaway in New England – WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-discreetly-fashionable-getaway-in-n…
Rocking chairs line the the patio of the Taconic Hotel. PHOTO: EVA DEITCH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
that quotes tavern style with wood paneling and cozy wallpaper. In the summers, you can dine al fresco on the hotel porch, another Vermont tradition.
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owners of ‘Another culinary trend is the elevation of ye-olde-taverns. ’ the two- year-old
Homestyle Hostel in Ludlow have done a hip update of a different traditional concept, this one the skiier-focused hostel, popular in Europe but uncommon in New England. Like their friends the Genovarts, Eliza Greene and boyfriend Justin Hyjek, were just visiting the area when they came across a deal they couldn’t refuse on an 1832 doctor’s residence with a horse stable on Ludlow’s charming main street. Five months later, they opened the doors on clean and serene bunk-style lodging (some private rooms available) with a good restaurant. The couple recently bought the motel across the street, and plan to renovate and relaunch it in 2018 with a cocktail bar.
Even for visitors with no intention of opening businesses in the area, the allure of the country-house fantasy is strong and getting stronger. “Over the past three years I’ve seen a tremendous number of people buy and gut-renovate houses here,” said Ms. Dennes. “You can still get a good deal but I don’t know how much longer that’s going to last.” Longtime locals laugh at this. I have to laugh myself, since the farmhouse our family bought needed a new foundation and a new roof and certainly didn’t feel like a bargain by the end. Still, these small towns and country lanes are so idyllic, you can’t help but eye the “for sale” signs in yards as you pass by. These might be famous last words, but there’s no harm in looking.
A Discreetly Fashionable Getaway in New England – WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-discreetly-fashionable-getaway-in-new-england-1498751252
