The Sibuet family adds their latest Provençal property, Le Mas Vermentino, to their stylish portfolio
While the rooms in the traditional farmhouse are small rather than spacious, there is plenty of outdoor space to enjoy the foggy and lazy Provencal summers. It includes a swimming pool and a charming courtyard, with an outdoor lounge and kitchen.
The six bedrooms are all private, some overlooking the medieval abbey. The one Nicolas designed for himself has a bathtub in the bedroom. Marie’s, in pink and terracotta, has a private terrace and a boudoir just big enough to hold an antique dressing table.
But the bedroom she covets really stands out with its yellow walls and enormous gold leaf-patterned headboard. “I wish this one was mine,” she sighs, adding that although she chose the fabrics, the mirror was from an old hotel; Jocelyne chose the armchair and Nicolas bought the lamp. The result is a wonderful example of how the Sibuets collaborate on their projects.
It’s a family saga that began in the 1980s, nearly 400 kilometers from Ménerbes, in the pretty ski resort of Megève, first made popular by the wealthy Rothschilds.
It was here that Jocelyne and her ex-husband, Jean-Louis, decided to create something totally different at the time: a hotel built from a hamlet of chalets.
After buying and dismantling old haylofts, granaries, barns and stables in the surrounding countryside, Jean-Louis made a new puzzle from the pieces. Meanwhile, Jocelyne designed the rustic chic interiors using wood, stone and lots of style.
The hamlet has grown over time, adding this season a 10th chalet to its 70 rooms, restaurants, children’s club and ski shop. It also houses an elegant spa with Japanese baths, two swimming pools and beneficial treatments using the range of Pure Altitude products developed by the talented Jocelyne. The range incorporates the rejuvenating qualities of the edelweiss mountain flower.
A five minute walk along the river into town and you reach the legendary Hotel Mont Blanc, the family’s next project in Megeve, which they bought in 1994. This hotel was brought into fashion by the author and French artist Jean Cocteau and his friends in the 1950s. Its decor plays on its name and its history.
The salon is a symphony of white and the spa is reminiscent of an igloo. But Les Enfants Terribles restaurant features Cocteau’s original artwork behind the bar, his trademark designs etched into the ceiling, and photographs of visiting movie stars on the walls.
It couldn’t be more different from Lodge Park, the Sibuet’s third hotel in Megève. With its animal skins and heads, tartan wallpaper and heavy log furniture, Lodge Park looks like a mixture of a Canadian trapper’s lodge, a Scottish baronial mansion and a Outside of Africa film set. It’s eclectic but it works.
Beyond the trio of hotels, you’re never far from the Sibuet influence in this chi-chi alpine town. Even the local McDonald’s looks like a ski lodge, with an open fire inside. The window display of the pharmacy showcases spa products from Pure Altitude, while at the end of the street is L’Épicerie Familiale.
It sells everything from local cheese to tea for each hotel in the group. This includes a variety of peach, apricot and lavender for La Bastide de Marie, which the Sibuets bought with an attached vineyard in 1999.
Back at Les Fermes de Marie where it all started, it’s a bit surreal to sit outside with its namesake, sipping a glass of rosé from Domaine de Marie while enjoying a dish of pasta with truffles. Like the hotel, the food is superb in its simplicity.
“I grew up there,” Marie says, pointing to the five-bedroom Chalet des Fermes des Maries. It is one of the twelve rental properties scattered around Megève that her husband, Maxime, now manages.
She never intended to go into the family business. But, like her brother, she rose through the ranks so that when the company’s CEO left, they took over together. Now Nicolas’ partner also works with them. Do they all get along, I wonder? “We fight but we make compromises,” smiles Marie. “My mother has the experience and I have new ideas, and we try to adapt them. We all have the same tastes.
Although her parents are no longer involved in the day-to-day running of the business, the family makes decisions together. In 2019, when they bought Le Mas, they decided to sell several hotels in a group that had grown to 13, so they could focus on their core properties.
“We had to choose between growing the business and buying new hotels with investors or focusing on fewer places,” says Marie. “We wanted to work with emotion, not with numbers.”
The next chapter in the Sibuet saga is set in the middle of the hills of Provence, where they aim to develop more land on an adjoining property they purchased at the same time as Le Mas. Here, they plan to create a family hamlet with about fifteen rooms, a swimming pool and a spa as well as a farm to supply a restaurant on the estate to the plate in the wine cellar.
“We introduced guests to the art of living in the mountains, and now we do it in the Provençal countryside,” explains Jocelyne. This means experiencing the joys of cycling through lavender fields, visiting local markets, going truffle hunting and visiting the wine estate which produces 90,000 bottles of red, white and rosé a year.
And if you’re interested in being invited to her own home in Ménerbes, the four-bedroom Villa Syrah, she says it’s only a matter of time before she joins Le Mas as an exclusive rental.
Fine details
- Seven nights at the Mas from $11,265 including breakfast, afternoon tea and concierge services.
- The house can accommodate up to 12 people in six bedrooms.
- All based on twin beds, rooms at La Bastide de Marie are from $679 a night, half-board, with drinks at dinner. Rooms at Les Fermes de Marie start from $600 a night in the summer and from $980 a night in the winter, both B&B.
- For more information, visit the Sibuet website.
The writer was the guest of Maisons et Hôtels Sibuet.