Alpe d'Huez & Les 2 Alpes
Twenty-one hairpins. The most famous climb in cycling, where Pantani attacked and Hinault suffered. Alpe d'Huez is a shrine to the Tour de France — but the wine culture surprises everyone who arrives expecting only lycra.
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The resort wine cellar stocks 300+ labels with a focus on Rhône and Savoie producers. La Bamboche is the après-ski bar that locals keep to themselves — no reviews, no Instagram, just the staff from other restaurants drinking wine at cost after their shifts end. The Pic Blanc panorama at 3,330m reveals the Écrins National Park — France's highest national park, where ibex outnumber tourists.
Across the valley, Les 2 Alpes adds glacier skiing at 3,600m, the Grotte de Glace carved into living glacial ice (it moves 30cm per year, so the entrance changes every season), and La Folie Douce's freestyle atmosphere. The Vénosc gondola drops into a medieval village with zero cars and a Saturday market that sells Chartreuse from the monastery 40km away. Grenoble's Vin des Alpes workshop is a 45-minute day trip — a hands-on Savoie wine masterclass taught by the people who grow the grapes on slopes too steep to mechanise. The cycling pilgrims come for the hairpins, marking them with chalk messages on the tarmac. They stay for the wine. Some of them forget about the bike entirely.
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Stops
- 1⛰️
21 Hairpins Wine Challenge - Tour de France legend
Alpe d'Huez is cycling's most iconic climb - 21 numbered hairpin bends. Each July, the Tour de France creates a million-person party. Winter brings skiing and La Folie Douce, where cyclists and skiers unite in worship of the mountain that made both sports legendary.
adventure $$ - 2⛰️
Pic Blanc 3,330m — Wine Above the Clouds
The Pic Blanc cable car takes you to 3,330m — the highest point at Alpe d'Huez. On a clear day, you see Mont Blanc, the Écrins massif, and on exceptional days, the distant Rhône Valley where the wines you've been drinking are grown. The panorama covers a fifth of France. The viewing platform has a tunnel carved through the rock that creates a natural frame for the landscape. This is the vista reveal — the moment where geography becomes tangible and every wine region you've studied becomes a point on the horizon.
adventure $$ - 3⛰️
Sarenne — The Longest Black Run in Europe (16km) to Wine
The Sarenne run at Alpe d'Huez is the longest black piste in the Alps at 16km, dropping 1,800m vertical from the Pic Blanc (3,330m) to the village of Huez. The run starts above the treeline, traverses a glacier, and descends through every Alpine landscape zone. At the bottom, you've earned the most satisfying glass of wine in the Oisans. The combination of extreme vertical, changing terrain, and the sheer endurance required makes reaching the bottom an achievement worth toasting.
adventure $$ - 4⛰️
Historic wine cellar in cycling's cathedral
Au Chamois d'Or is Alpe d'Huez's historic hotel, hosting Tour de France legends since the 1950s. The wine cellar features photos of cycling heroes alongside Rhône and Savoie treasures. A meal here connects Alpine wine culture with sporting legend.
adventure $$ - 5🍷
Giant wine barrel people-watching on the main street
A massive wine cask sits outside Vins Marcon with stools arranged like theater seating for the parade of sunburned faces and ski boots. Order a glass of Chignin-Bergeron and watch the mountain comedy unfold. Julie Pers runs winemaker tastings here - producers drive up from the valleys and pour their own bottles while you sit on a barrel in the sun. Inside: a Chartreuse liqueur collection that belongs in a monastery.
tasting $$ - 6🍷
Natural wine + wood-fired pizza where locals actually drink
The first wine bar in Alpe d'Huez, and it refused to play by resort rules. 130 bottles rigorously selected for soul, not price. Wood-fired pizza by the slice. €10 corkage lets you drink €15 bottles from the shop with your food. The daily 6-wine tasting flight always includes grapes you've never heard of - Verdesse, Persan, Étraire de la Dhuy from winemakers 45 minutes down the valley who are saving them from extinction.
tasting $$ - 7🍷
Frogs legs poached in the wine you're drinking, next to landing planes
L'Altiport sits next to the resort's tiny airport where private jets land 50 meters from your table. The signature dish: frogs legs poached in Vin de Savoie. Ask the sommelier to pour you the exact wine they cooked with - the circular pairing is pure Alpine logic. Michelin-recommended, but the magic is the terrace where you watch planes touchdown while holding a glass of the mountains in liquid form.
dining $$$ - 8🗺️
Europe's highest medieval ghost town - where the Dauphin minted silver
The ski resort barely mentions that you're skiing over Brandes - a silver-mining village at 1,800m where 200 people lived from 1180 to 1339, mining silver for the Dauphin to mint his own coins. Walk among the ruins: parish church of Saint-Nicolas, fortifications, ore washing workshops. The Musée d'Huez (free entry) displays mining tools, actual coins minted here, chess pieces, belt buckles. This is the history that makes "sunny ski resort" feel too small a description.
tour free - 9⛰️
Jandri Express — Europe's Longest Gondola to Wine at 3,200m
The Jandri Express carries you from 1,650m to 3,200m in stages — one of Europe's longest connected gondola systems. The 30-minute journey crosses landscape zones: green valley, treeline, rocky moonscape, snow, glacier. Each zone has different light, temperature, and atmosphere. At the top, Le 3200 restaurant serves wine that adapts differently at every 500m you just traversed. The ascent IS the experience — watching the world transform beneath you as you rise 1,550 vertical meters.
adventure $$ - 10🍷
La Folie Douce Les 2 Alpes — Après Where Freestyle Was Born
Les 2 Alpes was one of the birthplaces of European freestyle skiing in the 1980s and 1990s. That rebellious DNA lives on at La Folie Douce, where the après-ski combines wine, music, and the kind of energy that only exists when a resort attracts riders who care more about airtime than groomed pistes. Order a Savoie wine, watch the sunset, and understand why Les 2 Alpes has always attracted the unconventional.
tasting $$ - 11⛰️
Grotte de Glace — Wine Tasting Inside a Glacier at 3,200m
At 3,200m on the Les 2 Alpes glacier, an ice cave is carved fresh each year into the glacier itself. Walk through tunnels of blue ice, see ice sculptures, and feel the glacier's ancient cold on your skin. The cave temperature hovers around -2°C year-round — nature's perfect wine cellar. Emerge into sunlight, walk to Le 3200 restaurant, and order a glass of wine that was stored at altitude. You just walked through frozen water that fell as snow centuries ago.
adventure $ - 12⛰️
Écrins National Park — France's Wildest Wine Picnic
Les 2 Alpes sits on the edge of Écrins National Park — 918 km² of wilderness with 150 peaks over 3,000m, glaciers, ibex, and zero ski lifts. In summer, hike from the resort into the park with a bottle of Isère wine and local saucisson. Find a spot overlooking a glacier lake. You're in one of France's last truly wild places, 30 minutes from a resort with 50,000 beds. The contrast between civilization and wilderness is the entire experience.
adventure $ - 13⛰️
La Meije — The Last Great Alpine Peak to Be Climbed
La Meije (3,983m) was the last major Alpine peak to be summited — Emmanuel Boileau de Castelnau and Pierre Gaspard finally conquered it in 1877, decades after Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn fell. The reason: La Meije has no easy route. Every approach is technical. From the Les 2 Alpes glacier at 3,200m, you see La Meije's terrifying south face — a wall of rock and ice that defeated climbers for generations. The village of La Grave on the other side has no groomed runs, just raw mountain — the antithesis of resort skiing.
adventure free - 14🗺️
Venosc — The Secret Village Accessible Only by Gondola
While Les 2 Alpes is a purpose-built resort, a gondola ride down takes you to Venosc — a medieval village of stone houses, artisan workshops, and zero tourist infrastructure. This is the real Oisans. Find the local restaurant, order ravioles du Dauphiné with a glass of Vin de Pays de l'Isère, and realize you've time-traveled 500 years in a 7-minute gondola ride. The villagers have watched the resort above grow for decades without letting it change their way of life.
tour $ - 15🍷
Le Diable au Coeur — Fine Dining at 2,400m on the Slopes
Perched at 2,400m on the ski slopes, Le Diable au Coeur serves refined mountain cuisine with a wine list that rivals valley restaurants. Ski in for lunch, order the lamb from Écrins with a glass of Crozes-Hermitage from the Rhône Valley visible in the distance. The restaurant proves that altitude dining doesn't have to mean overpriced cafeteria food. This is what happens when a serious chef decides to cook at 2,400m.
dining $$$ - 16⛰️
Summer glacier wine tasting at 3,600m
Les 2 Alpes operates Europe's largest skiable glacier with summer skiing from June to August. The terrace at 3,600m serves wine with views across Écrins National Park. Summer morning skiing followed by afternoon wine on the glacier is a bucket-list experience.
adventure $$ - 17🍷
The only wine shop in the world specializing in Alpine wines
Le Vin des Alpes in Grenoble is where Eric Esnault stores 150 wines from mountains most sommeliers can't find on a map - France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia. His discovery workshops run 27 different themes. Book "Les vins de l'Isère" and you'll taste 6 wines from grapes that have fewer acres than your neighborhood: Verdesse, Persan, Étraire de la Dhuy. An hour from Alpe d'Huez, this is the Alpine wine master class you didn't know existed.
education $$ - 18🍷
Drinking extinction: Persan from the last 10 hectares on Earth
In the 18th century, Persan was considered one of France's best red wines. By the 21st century, only 25 acres existed in the entire world. Nicolas Gonin owns part of the last 10 hectares and spends weekends hunting old vineyards for cuttings. Sixty minutes from Alpe d'Huez, he'll pour you 100% Persan while explaining why some grapes deserve to be saved. You're drinking wine as archaeology, conservation, and obsession.
tasting $$