Auberge La Coste

I took a roundabout way of reaching Auberge La Coste. I had done something very unlike me — I booked a hotel months in advance. Usually, I travel on instinct, chasing the next plane or a whim from a magazine clipping, but after reading about a small hotel on the Giens coast, I pressed book now and promptly forgot. When the date crept closer, I realised I had three nights on the French Riviera written into my diary and decided to stretch them into a proper little holiday.

The first chapter was Paris with a friend. A last-minute Eurostar, a flurry of restaurants from my saved list, a dig around at Les Puces de Saint-Ouen at Porte de Clignancourt, and drinks that ended in a dance at Silencio. Then she flew off and I boarded a train to Toulon for my seaside interlude. I swam, read, ate, and took a boat to Porquerolles, a car-free island of pines and beaches that feels like a quiet Caribbean daydream.

With a few days left before my flight home from Marseille, I wanted something more. Château La Coste had been sitting on my wish list for years, a vineyard where art and architecture scatter the hills. Villa La Coste, the grand hotel, is legendary but not exactly attainable. Recently though, it added Auberge La Coste, its younger, more approachable sibling. Affordable is relative, but I was curious.

I BlaBlaCar pooled from Hyères to Aix-en-Provence, then took an Uber through the Provençal countryside. My arrival at the estate was a stroke of luck, just in time for golden hour. The sky ran peach to violet, the vines glowed, cedar trees scented the warm air. It was like stepping into a Cézanne painting, not the muted watercolours, but the blazing oils, thick with colour.

My Calade Garden room looked directly onto the vineyards, with a little bistro table outside that begged for a glass of rosé. Inside, things were calm and modern: white walls, wooden floors, photographs of the estate, two jam-filled madeleines waiting on the desk. The bedlinen had a thread count of the gods, the kind that makes you want to apologise to your own sheets at home; and a bathroom lined with black marble was on hand with a powerful hot shower to blast away the dust of the road.

Dinner was at L'Italien. The waiter pushed the mushroom pizza. I was doubtful. Provence is for bouillabaisse and pissaladière, not pizza. But he was right. A thin crust with shiitake mushrooms, thinly sliced potato, mozzarella and Comté — it was salty and earthy in a way that made me forget Naples and fall in love with Provence all over again.

Breakfast the next morning was on the terrace: brioche, fruit, French toast, eggs and coffee with a view over vines already alive with workers. It was simple but luxurious.

Then came the art. The trail weaves through olive groves and woodland, past monumental works that appear without warning. A Louise Bourgeois spider crouches over a pond, eerie and delicate. Prune Nourry’s Mater Earth lies across the hillside, a giant pregnant figure you can step inside. Damien Hirst’s colossal anatomy lesson strips back skin to reveal muscle and bone. Annie Morris’s colourful orbs stack like a teetering rainbow. Sean Scully’s hulking Wall of Light Cubed broods on the grass. Richard Rogers’ vivid orange gallery juts out over the slope, framing the hills beyond like a cinema screen. Add Richard Serra, Ai Weiwei, Giuseppe Penone, Bob Dylan and Tracey Emin. It is not an art walk so much as a dreamscape stitched into the land.

The only thing missing was a pool. Auberge guests cannot swim at Villa La Coste’s, and the idea here is to keep things about art and wine, not sunloungers and spritzes. Fair enough, but after three hours in the Provençal sun, I would have gladly dived into anything.

By afternoon I was ready for wine. The cellar tour was not the usual damp cave with cobwebbed barrels. Here the winery is a warehouse cathedral of stainless-steel tanks and walkways, fit more for a Bond villain than a rustic vigneron. We learnt about biodynamic farming and how the moon tugs at the sap. We tasted five wines in tiny pours, enough to fall in love with the rosé and wonder how many bottles I could wedge into my suitcase.

Afterwards I went up to the extraordinary Villa La Coste, which is less hotel, more private gallery. The lobby has design classics by Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé, sculptures you want to touch but shouldn’t, Tracey Emin’s work quietly confessional on the walls. Corridors turn into mini exhibitions. Then you step outside onto a terrace overlooking the pool and vineyards, the sunset arranged like a set designer had ordered it. It is absurdly beautiful. The mosquitoes, however, are feral and there is not a bottle of repellant to be found, a rare oversight in a place that otherwise anticipates every desire.

Dinner that evening was at Francis Mallmann’s Argentinian restaurant. Mallmann himself was there, which made the theatre of fire and smoke even more delicious. His steak and potatoes, paired with a dark Argentinian red from Château La Coste’s Mendoza collection, was indulgence at its best, the sort of meal that makes you smile at strangers across the room.

The next morning, I woke to the hum of tractors in the vines, a reminder that Château La Coste is first a working vineyard, with art and accommodation woven around it. I ate breakfast on the terrace again, stocked up on bottles and left for Aix, where Cézanne was waiting at the Musée Granet. It felt like the right conclusion after living inside one of his paintings for two days.

Auberge La Coste may be the little sister, but it is not a consolation prize. If Villa La Coste is haute couture, Auberge is prêt-à-porter. Still elegant, still full of magic, but easier to slip into.