Recently opened

Champagne Hospitality

Château la Commaraine

Name: Château la Commaraine
Address: Pommard, France

Royal Champagne's sister house, in Pommard

Pommard, France

Reserve

Now open — book direct on Champagne Hospitality's official site.

First look

A twelfth-century château in the village of Pommard, on the Côte d'Or, turned into a 37-room hotel with a spa, a pool and two restaurants by the owners of Royal Champagne. It sits in its own nine-acre vineyard.

Just opened — not yet scored. We publish a Fat Score once enough guests have stayed and written about it. Check back soon.

First look · gallery

Imagery courtesy of the hotel.

Sofie, who runs the Fat Voyage booking desk with Nicolas

Want us to book it for you?

It's bookable now, and we can handle it. We're Sofie and Nicolas; tell us roughly what you're after and we'll come back with a quote you can book yourself — and what we'd do with the rest of the trip.

You'll be dealing with the two of us the whole way through, which is why we only take on a handful of trips at a time — if we're full, we'll say so. We reply by email, usually within one working day. The hotel pays us, not you: your rate is the same as booking direct, and the perks come on top.

Open now

What you can book today

Château la Commaraine is open, but too new for a Fat Score. Meanwhile, here's what's already open and scored in our collection — more from Champagne Hospitality, and nearby in France.

Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa — Champillon, France

Fat Legend

Founders' Verdict

Champagne Hospitality

Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa

Champillon, France

The view sells the first night; the planning is why people come back with a proposal ring or a honeymoon booked months out. Rooms look over the vines from Champillon, and the pools and the Bellevue Abysse terrace get named as the best outlook in the region by people who've stayed at plenty of other places in it. What's harder to just book is the guest experience team: Anaïs spent four months building one couple's itinerary around Veuve Clicquot and Ruinart tastings and a private vineyard driver, and Lucile tracked the weather forecast for days to get a proposal moment right, then arranged the photographer herself. That's not concierge box-ticking, that's someone who remembers what she promised in January. Le Royal earns its Michelin star honestly: the pairings work with the food rather than around it, and the tasting menus get called some of the best in France by guests who've eaten around. At four-figure room rates, though, getting charged extra for an omelette at breakfast is a fair complaint, and the second restaurant's value gets questioned by more than one guest. The spa's layout feels oddly planned next to the polished Austrian wellness hotels it's otherwise being compared to, even with a genuine indoor-outdoor pool and vineyard views. Front-desk service occasionally misreads the room, mostly around breakfast pacing, and getting to Reims without the hotel car or e-bikes means expensive, sometimes unreliable taxis. None of that undoes the case. This is a hotel for a couple planning something months in advance, not a spontaneous weekend without a car arranged. Book it for the view, the restaurant, and staff who actually deliver on a plan made in January.

Fat Legend

Cheval Blanc

Cheval Blanc Courchevel

Courchevel, France

This is the hotel people go back to every year on purpose, not out of habit. Guests who've done the full circuit of Cheval Blanc properties around the world single out Courchevel as the favorite, and the reason is specific: it's not just a beautiful building on a slope, it's a building that runs like a machine built entirely around getting you out the door and back in again. Ski boots come off at the entrance and slippers go on before you've said a word. The ski room team clocks you coming down the mountain and has your gear ready before you've caught your breath. The food is where the picture splits. Le 1947, Yannick Alléno's three-star, is treated as close to essential by people who plan whole trips around it, meat-forward and technically serious. But the hotel's grill drew a sharp complaint about a €95 filet arriving with nothing on the plate and a €20 side that tasted like fast food, with the same guest pointing across town at a restaurant doing more for half the price. Nobody disputes the staff, even there: the same review that hated the value called the service across the board kind and professional. The spa, a Guerlain, gets treatment rooms with a slope view and a team that finds room for you even when the book is full. Book it for the ski-in, ski-out setup and the level of care that has people rebooking a year out, sometimes literally waiting a year for a room. Go in expecting Courchevel pricing throughout, including a grill that doesn't always earn its menu, and eat at Le 1947 at least once while you're there.

Fat Approved

Cheval Blanc

Cheval Blanc Paris

Paris, France

A room here starts above 2,000 euros a night in summer, and most of what people describe getting for it is real: a butler walking you to a balcony suite over the Seine, a bottle of Ruinart opened on arrival, gifts left at turndown most nights of the stay. The building itself, all glass and pale stone and a staircase people photograph more than the art, is genuinely one of the most striking hotels in Paris, though it splits opinion: some guests find it fresh and youthful next to the Ritz or Le Meurice, others think it feels more like a smart apartment building than anything distinctly French. Plenitude, the three-Michelin-star restaurant upstairs, gets talked about the way a trip highlight gets talked about, not just a hotel meal. The service is where the promise gets uneven. A concierge spent real effort tracking down an Hermes appointment for one guest; a birthday stay drew a spontaneous chorus of well-wishes from staff who had no reason to bother. But a July heatwave exposed a hotel with no working air conditioning in rooms, restaurants, or public areas, and instead of admitting it, staff reportedly told guests Europe just doesn't do AC, which is a strange line from an LVMH palace hotel charging Ritz prices. Rooms on the sixth floor sit under a rooftop restaurant with furniture that gets dragged around well past 1am, and more than one guest has lost a night's sleep to it. Langosteria, the Italian spot, comes up often as the weak link at dinner: slow, indifferent, food that doesn't match the room it's served in. None of this is enough to talk anyone out of booking, and it shouldn't be. Book it for Plenitude, the Dior Spa, and a room over the river that nobody who's stayed there seems to forget. Ask for a floor away from the seventh, and don't assume the AC will save you in August.

Fat Legend

Cheval Blanc

Cheval Blanc St-Tropez

Saint-Tropez, France

What you're paying for here is flat ground and a kitchen that never clocks off. The beach is level, no cliff steps or funicular to manage, which is why it keeps getting recommended over the clifftop Riviera names for anyone traveling with a baby or a stroller. Cheval Blanc treats young kids like actual guests, down to kid-sized robes. La Vague d'Or's three stars are the obvious pull, but the same discipline shows up in a pool sandwich or a room-service breakfast, which is the harder thing to sustain than one great tasting menu. Staff learn names fast, and one guest's write-up of the whole team lining up in the driveway to wave off a departing car says more about the culture here than any amenities list would. The trade-off is space. Rooms run small for what you're paying, a complaint that shows up from first-timers and from a guest on their fifth Cheval Blanc stay alike, and there's no bigger category to book your way around it. The property also goes quiet after 1am: the shuttle stops, and a late night in town means an Uber rather than a house car. Breakfast has been reported slow when the hotel is full, with guests asking two or three times for coffee and bread even as the food itself gets no complaints. One 2024 review described being turned away rudely as a walk-in at the bar, worth knowing if you're hoping to eat there without a room key. Book it for the beach and the kitchen, not the square footage. If more room in the same stretch of coast matters more to you than either of those, Byblos or the château at Airelles Messardière are the names worth weighing instead.

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Château la Commaraine just opened

It's too new for a Fat Score. We'll email you our verdict the moment we've scored it from real guest stays — no paid placements, ever.

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