Bkerzay

Most mountain hotels sit on the land. Bkerzay sits down inside it. A scatter of stone houses on a shoulder of the Chouf, built low among the pines and oaks so the forest keeps its canopy over the roofs, it began as a conservation project and still reads as one.

The houses are the old Chouf vernacular brought up to date: honey-coloured limestone, arched windows, red-tiled floors, a wood stove for the cold months. Each one is turned a different way, so from a Maisonette you look into the trees and from a Terrace room straight down the valley, with Beirut a low glitter some twenty-five kilometres off. Between them run gravel paths and courtyards and a pair of outdoor pools; there is a hammam under a skylit dome, a sauna, and rooms kept for massage. The whole place is BREEAM certified and runs largely on the sun, which in a country that lives with the power cutting out is not a small claim. It was laid out, its founders like to say, without clearing the ground it stands on.

The table

Meals move around the site through the day. The main restaurant keeps tables indoors and out and a menu that runs from Lebanese mezze to plainer international cooking, open from morning until late. The Piazza, set in the central courtyard, is the sociable room, with a bar that catches the sunset through the summer; Café de la Place does the coffee and the homemade cake in between. None of it is trying to be a destination kitchen. It leans on the region's produce and the mountain air, and on most evenings that is enough.

Why it's in VANE

Two things set it apart. One is the pottery studio, where the Chouf's craft of glazed earthenware is kept going, kiln and wheel and all, a few metres from where you sleep. The other is the argument behind the whole thing: that a Lebanese mountain can be developed gently, in local stone and native planting, and still pay its way. It is only honest to add that Bkerzay also takes weddings and company retreats, so it is not always the hermitage the pictures suggest. Come midweek and out of season and you get the version we would send you for: quiet houses in the trees, a cold pool, the cedars and the palace at Beiteddine within reach, and Beirut close enough to forget. If you are stringing the country together, our other Lebanese house, Beit al Batroun, is a couple of hours north on the coast.