James Bond loves a ski chase. Throughout the franchise, 007 finds himself pursued down pistes by all manner of adversaries, from paragliders with machine guns to the KGB. Fortunately there were no brushes with the Austrian border police – which Timothy Dalton evades on skis in The Living Daylights – during my recent trip to the chocolate-box village of Lech am Arlberg, but I did get ‘Blofeld’s lair’ vibes from Pepper Collection’s Chalet Mimi, where we stayed.

You enter Chalet Mimi through a subterranean, sliding-door garage full of SUVs and snow ploughs, which leads into a long concrete corridor with an elevator at the end. After ascending through the mountain, the doors open to something that looks nothing like a sinister research establishment.

Chalet Mimi

No; Chalet Mimi – an 830-square-metre, five-floor residence – is warmth and cosiness embodied, decked out in the requisite Alpine pine with modern glass fireplaces and antique wardrobes. A 14-metre, brutalist-style pool, underlit in green to create a cave-like ambience, is joined by a steam room, sauna, and treatment rooms, where massages prove restorative for those infamous ‘ski legs’.

Chalet Mimi presents guests (up to eight adults and six children) with a choice of lounges, a bar, a cinema, an outdoor hot tub, and access to two butlers – specimens of the Teutonic stock, both called Mauritz – who are available 24/7 to provide everything from late-night snacks to chauffeur services in snow-ready four-by-fours.

They’re joined by chef Toni Urban, a man of few words but many talents, who prepares traditional Austrian dishes like kaese spaetzle and wiener schnitzel, as well as breakfast spreads of pastries and cold cuts eaten in front of a silver-blue mountainscape.

Our chalet is one of six, along with three hotels, that make up the Pepper Collection, a group run by Axel Pfefferkorn (German for ‘peppercorn’), a polished hotelier with, fittingly, slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair. His first property, Hotel Aurelio, which resides in Lech proper (Chalet Mimi is in Oberlech, 200 metres above), is home to three alpacas – cloud-like caricatures with fluttering eyelashes. When Pfefferkorn first brought them here, they would spit at him constantly, but he managed to break the habit by spraying them with water to establish himself as the pack alpha.

The alpacas are surely the only ones to ever have taken issue with being accommodated at Aurelio, a ten-room hotel housed in a traditional pitched-roof chalet. Inside, contemporary design is complemented by a roaring fire with an enormous pair of antlers hanging over it. Dinner yields seasonal and regional flavours of lingonberries, fennel and praline.

We also spend an evening at The Barn, a seven-bedroom Pepper Collection chalet which, with its tartan bed linen, red walls, and nods to the owner’s love of Western films, dares to deviate from the minimalist aesthetic of many of the premium accommodations in these parts. There’s also The Falcon, another wood-scented haven of rustic touches mixed with fixtures and amenities of the highest specifications.

The Barn

That I’ve waited until half way through this article to mention skiing is testament to both the quality of the accommodation and, unfortunately, my abilities in the sport. You ski in and out of Chalet Mimi, with a gentle gradient connecting the garden gate to a button lift. Although I struggled to get my head around leaning towards the valley when turning (it’s just so counterintuitive), under the tutelage of Bernd, whose years of cruising UV-reflective slopes have left him browned and reassuringly wizened-looking, I found myself slowly but surely making my way down a blue run by the end of day two.

The Arlberg area is suited to all ability levels, home to slopes populated by conga lines of children bombing it down with the kind of confidence I could only dream of and, at the other end of the spectrum, spots for heliskiing (this is the only place in Austria where you can do it). It’s a spirited day out for the competent skier, but those seeking thigh-shredding excursions might be better off taking the gondola to Warth-Schröcken’s black runs. At €75 a day for a pass, Lech isn’t cheap, but what do you expect of a resort that draws the Dutch royal family annually, and where Princess Diana once skied?

Although the après-ski is lively, with slopeside terraces bustling with skiers in rolled-down salopettes ferrying hot chocolates and cold beers, Lech is considered the calmer alternative to the (boozier) St Anton. It has managed to keep the bling at bay by restricting its nightlife largely to restaurants and hotels rather than bars and clubs – especially those of the table-dancing variety.

At the Pepper Collection, plush surfaces abound, the rooms are cosy enough to warrant cracking a window on a minus-ten-degree morning, and touches like heated racks in lockers ensure you never have to endure forcing your foot into a damp ski boot. Comfort is king. When you’re spending six hours a day channelling every ounce of core strength you have into remaining upright, that juxtaposition is more important than you know.

Chalet Mimi starts from €25,700 per night in high season, visit peppercollection.com

Read more: The best ski resorts in Austria