Oberradein / Redagno di Sopra, Italy

Der Zirmerhof (Familie Perwanger)

A 4-star-superior historic mountain hotel on the Radein high plateau at 1,538 m in the Gemeinde Aldein, in the far south of South Tyrol, run by the Perwanger family. The estate goes back to the 12th century as a farm; Anna Wieser Perwanger opened it to travellers in 1890, and it has taken paying guests ever since. Sepp and Sandra Perwanger are the fourth generation to run it. The house trades as ZIRMERHOF KG des Perwanger Sepp & Co., VAT IT02655110217, CIN IT021001A1NF8O2PS9; the winery is published by a second entity, the sole proprietorship Perwanger Sepp, VAT IT02860780218, REA BZ-211796. 35 rooms and suites plus 3 mountain huts, and off the plateau a one-apartment residence in the 1431 Ansitz Grünweinhof at Pinzon in the Gemeinde Montan, next to the family's own vineyard, with its own CIN (IT021053B4IBGZKN3L). A group of houses on the meadow — the Häuser der Wiese — was designed by Michele De Lucchi / AMDL CIRCLE and built from timber felled by Storm Vaia, with De Lucchi's written statement on the project dated June 2020. THE OPERATING CALENDAR IS THE DEFINING COMMERCIAL FACT. The hotel and restaurant open 12 May to 8 November 2026 — 180 nights — and the house is closed for the other 185. Out of season only the Häuser der Wiese, the Berghütte Sommerstall and the Residenz im Grünweinhof are let, on a self-catering basis. This is a Sommerfrische house, not a ski hotel, and the whole business is compressed into six months. It is an estate rather than a hotel. A working farm supplies the kitchen with meat, speck, sausage, vegetables and herbs, and runs highland cattle in suckler-cow husbandry on woodland pasture. A 120 ha forest heats every building with biomass and has done since 2002; photovoltaic has covered nearly all electricity since 2012; the house states the forest absorbs 411 tonnes of CO2 a year. Two of the family's own pages give the forest as 120 ha and about 100 ha respectively. RADOIN 1560 is the winery, named for the 15th-century name of the place and for 1,560 m of altitude, and described by the family as the highest-altitude wine cellar in Europe. Sepp Perwanger revived it in the tracks of his grandfather Josef Perwanger III, who pressed grapes at the farm in two barrels in the 1930s; the original Kühmösl vineyard in Montan has stayed in the family through both wars and now grows Gewürztraminer and Chardonnay, with two further plots at Glen supplying a Pinot Noir Riserva. Wine is vinified and cellared at 1,560 m and sold in 6-bottle cases at €288–378 and 3-bottle magnum cases at €399–429. THE WINE IS GENUINELY DISTRIBUTED OFF-PROPERTY, WHICH IS RARE FOR A HOTEL-OWNED LABEL. radoin.com publishes a named 'Ambassadors' page listing twelve external stockists: Gasthof zur Post in Neumarkt, Hotel Alpenschlössel in St. Martin in Passeier, the Steigenberger Herrenhof in Vienna, Enoteca Rinaldi, La Taverna di Vagliagli and Osteria La Terrazza in Chianti, Camana Veglia in Livigno, Hotel Erika in Dorf Tirol, Hotel Das Gerstl in Mals, Naturhotel Lüsnerhof in Lüsen, Valentini Enoteca in San Marino and Enoteca Gandolfi in Bozen — and the page openly recruits more. The family also operates Idyllic Places, a seven-member cross-brand cooperation of alpine hotels, wineries and makers. It is not an outside body: idyllicplaces.com is registered to 'Idyllische Plätze Zirmerhof KG d. Sepp Perwanger & Co.' on the SAME VAT NUMBER and the SAME PHONE NUMBER as the hotel, and three of its seven entries — the Zirmerhof, the Residenz im Grünweinhof and Weingut Radoin 1560 — are Perwanger businesses. It publishes joint multi-house packages and sells a shared gift voucher redeemable across member hotels, wellness treatments, shop products, restaurants and wine. There is also a members' club that predates every piece of software in the building. The Kranewitter Gesellschaft was founded at the Zirmerhof in 1891 by six people, admitted 102 members between 1891 and 1910, and its modern roll publishes 42 named members inducted between 1999 and 2011, each with an individual honorific, from Frankfurt, Berlin, Milan, Rome, Parma, Trento, Hamburg, Münster, Würzburg, Bozen and Santa Barbara. Sepp Perwanger is its president and master of ceremonies. No member has been admitted since 2011, and the roll is a static web page: there is no login, no benefit, no balance and no record of what any member has ever spent. COMMERCIALLY THE ESTATE RUNS ON FOUR UNCONNECTED SYSTEMS AND SELLS STORED VALUE IN THREE PLACES AT ONCE. The hotel site is TYPO3, built and hosted by atlana in Lana, with the HGV's Booking Südtirol widget as the booking engine and ADDITIVE+ supplying both newsletter and vouchers on a tenant called zirmerhof-com. The consortium site is a SECOND ADDITIVE tenant, idyllicplaces-com, with its own separate voucher and a newsletter widget on a different host again. The winery shop at radoin.com and the farm shop at hofladen-suedtirol.com are two independent Wix stores with their own checkouts and their own customer accounts, and the farm shop sells its own Wix gift card at €25/50/100/150/200 with no connection to either ADDITIVE voucher. Restaurant tables are booked on a plain web form. On top of that, the terms and conditions promise that a guest who cancels more than 21 days out has the balance of the 30% deposit credited against their next stay — a stored-value obligation recorded, as far as anything public shows, nowhere at all. Payments run through the HOGAST cooperative's Smartpay widget for the 30% deposit and the optional Europäische Reiseversicherung cancellation cover; cash, EC card, Visa and Mastercard on site. Named 'Historischer Gastbetrieb des Jahres' in 2010 by the Stiftung Südtiroler Sparkasse with the Landesdenkmalamt and the HGV.

Hotel website ↗