Travel → Vermont: The Green Mountain State →
The Most Expensive Night in New England
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I settle in with a glass of port and an early edition of Lewis's Babbitt and wait for my in-room massage. At this moment, I have to admit, it has become difficult to remain skeptical.
The interior of the perch, like many of the cottages, was designed by the late Jed Johnson, a rotégé of Andy Warhol's. Johnson's trademark was his ability to integrate fine art and antiques into comfortable spaces, and that philosophy extends to the rest of the inn. The decor can be exuberantly luxe -- behind the walls of the staid cottages lie interiors inspired by Moroccan desert palaces, Japanese ryokans, Scandinavian country estates, and Appalachian log cabins -- but the common areas express a more rustic, Federalist dialect, and you needn't tiptoe about or fear putting a glass down on a table. Still, though we have been informed that the atmosphere at Twin Farms is casual, we are nervous as we make our way up to the main house for our first cocktail hour. Are we underdressed? How does one behave at such a place? We need not have worried. We find the four other guests, the chairman of one recently merged banking colossus and his family, are casually dressed and friendly. Staff offer us drinks and hors d'oeuvres and chat easily as they lead us to our private dinner in the wine cellar downstairs.
Midweek winter nights aren't crowded, which is why we have the wine cellar to ourselves. During the busy summer and fall seasons, most guests eat in the dining room, which means that the dinner-in-a-meadow rumor is an exaggeration. But it's not unusual to stumble across a picnic lunch waiting for hikers atop the ski hill, and the kitchen can accommodate any dietary preference. One legendary regular guest subsists entirely on quail eggs and sashimi, weighed to the ounce and ready for her arrival.
Our first dinner is a Vermont-inspired five-course feast. The bread, butter, squash, game, mushrooms -- even our plates and some of the wines -- are local. We sit, rosy-cheeked and happy, on a banquette lined with down cushions, surrounded by 2,200 bottles of wine under a vaulted brick ceiling. This display is a small sampling of the inn's 26,000-bottle collection; if we want to grab a bottle and take it back to our room, we're welcome to do so. We end the meal with a sampler of eight Vermont cheeses and some more port, and when we step out into the cold night, the full moon is shining so brightly off the snow that, but for the call of our king-size featherbed, we nearly set off on a moonlit walk through the woods.
Mornings at twin farms can begin in one of two ways: in your room, where a breakfast of fresh fruit, muesli, yogurt, croissants, muffins, scones, grapefruit, broiled oranges, coffee, and freshly squeezed orange juice is delivered on fine china; or up in the main house, where an even more sumptuous display awaits. When a nearby guest jokes, "No Pop-Tarts, huh?" the waitress answers brightly, "No, but we can have them for you tomorrow, if you'd like." The British chef, Neil Wigglesworth, was lured to Twin Farms from the famed Point in the Adirondacks.
Once we've breakfasted, we opt for a snowshoeing trek, followed by some cross-country skiing. With few guests to care for, our rec staffer, Josh, acts as a private guide for the day. All of the equipment we need is kept on-site, and we pass a happy day along the marked trails. We don't have to worry over maps, mind the trail blazes, or keep track of time -- Josh has it covered. As we circle the property, I realize that there is something deeply soothing about confining your existence to just a few hundred acres. I also realize that I haven't felt this cared for since I was a child.
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