This Handcrafted Chalet in the Alps Made Me Rethink the Meaning of Home

The German word Gemütlichkeit means geniality, coziness, and comfort—essentially hygge, but with an added dash of hospitality. At Eriro, a new lodge high in the Austrian Tyrol, the object that best embodies that word is the pair of thick, hand-knitted wool socks given to every guest on arrival. They’re meant to be worn as you pad around the lodge. “Be at home,” general manager Henning Schaub told me and my husband shortly after we arrived.

And what a home it is. Though Eriro’s exterior is classic Alpine chalet, the interior is beautifully modern. Everything is framed by warm wood, including the huge windows and balconies of the nine guest rooms. Hand-hewn faucets, also made of wood, resemble tree branches. Egg-shaped banquettes in the dining room, carved from tree roots, are at once sculptural and cozy. 

Opened in August, Eriro is a labor of love by three families who grew up together in the nearby town of Ehrwald. The name is derived from an Old High German word for origin, hinting at the innkeepers’ respect for the region’s traditions, the delicate Alpine ecosystem, and its bounty. Nearly all the materials used to build the lodge were sourced locally: pine harvested sustainably from the surrounding forests, wool sheared from the sheep that graze in the pastures outside, stone from nearby quarries. 

To safeguard this nature preserve, local authorities prohibit new developments—the construction of Eriro was possible only because an abandoned inn once stood on the site. Artisans dismantled it, salvaging wood from the old structure to panel the ceilings of the new one.

That philosophy continues in the restaurant. Nearly every ingredient is sourced from within a 30-mile radius. The three exceptions, I was told, were coffee, Coca-Cola, and some wine (though most is Austrian). Instead of orange juice, we were offered apple or quince. Many cheeses are produced in-house. Even my G&T was made with local gin, garnished with handpicked red currants.

I asked for a pantry tour, and the chefs happily obliged. Down in the basement, tidy racks held more than 15,000 glass jars: marmalades, pâté made from the meat of black Alpine pigs, and many vinegars—some flavored with white currants, others with spruce shoots or lavender. I spotted bottles labeled ginger syrup and thought I had found another exception, since ginger typically grows in tropical climes. One chef smiled and said a local farmer had figured out how to grow some, just for Eriro. Another jar contained what looked like capers, which come from a Mediterranean plant; they were actually pickled elderflower buds.

That’s not to say that the cooking is restricted to Austrian dishes. The pork chop I ordered was accompanied by an “XO sauce” with all the savory depth of the Cantonese original, but the umami came from a pumpkin that had been charred and smoked, rather than dried scallops. At another dinner, the star of a seven-course tasting menu was a small onion braised in black beer and served with béchamel. It was wildly inventive, and deeply delicious.

I found the same attention to detail in the spa. My masseuse, Andrea Memmersheim, used an oil infused with Johanniskraut—St. John’s wort—that she had foraged herself. Another day, she took me on a hike down a gently sloping meadow, which, in winter, becomes a ski slope. When we came upon a stream running across our path, she invited me to stand in the water, close my eyes, inhale the crisp air, and listen to the burble. “This is nature,” she said. “Every day, it’s changing. Every day, how you walk through this water is changing.”

That afternoon I went to the crafts room, where guests are invited to paint, draw, or carve wood. Schaub had asked a local woodworker, Christoph Gundolf, to be my teacher. Gundolf is known for the monstrous masks he creates for Krampusnacht, a festival held before St. Nicholas Day, when a demon called the Krampus emerges to punish misbehaving children. 

My assignment was much less frightening: to carve the edelweiss, Austria’s national flower, out of pine wood. Gundolf demonstrated how to use a chisel to gently scrape slivers of pine to form petals. I thought mine looked pretty good, but when I showed my handiwork to my husband, he said, “Is that a mushroom?”

We’re avid hikers, and we’d hoped to venture farther into the mountains. But the weather had been unpredictable. Though it was early autumn, an unexpected snowfall had forced the farmers to bring their cows down to lower elevations. Instead of verdant meadows, the lodge was surrounded by an apron of white. For two days, the fog rolled rapidly through the mountains, the shifting shadows and light like an Ansel Adams photograph come to life.

On our last morning, though, the sun finally emerged, melting the unseasonable snow. We pulled on hiking boots and trekked uphill from Eriro into the forest. An hour later, we emerged into a valley with a shimmering lake, the Seebensee, at its center. The air was tranquil, the lake’s surface nearly still. In the sunshine, it seemed as if a giant had dropped a mirror onto the valley floor so that the mountains could regard their own beauty. 

After we made our way back to the lodge, I shed my boots, grabbed my woolly socks, and installed myself in front of the fire that was blazing in the living room. Just one word came to mind: Gemütlichkeit.  

A version of this story first appeared in the May 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Elements of Style.”