But, this year, there was a new challenger to that title, courtesy of Pimlico owners the Stronach Group, who set up their own VIP "chalet" next door.
The doors of Chalet Gardenia opened, and out strutted Cara Delevingne in wide windowpane-checked wool trousers with matching silk skirt and trilby, under a tweed houndstooth coat.
The Front Door's 13 chalets sold for around $2,500 a square foot, and two-thirds of the Ritz-Carlton residences, not scheduled to open for another 18 months or so, have sold for up to $1,900 a square foot.
The information officer at the Wengen train station who gave us directions to the chalet quickly set me straight: "In the door, of course," he said, laughing at such a ridiculous question.
In his essay, Thompson refers to "a big pair of elk horns over the front door" in Hemingway's "comfortable-looking chalet".
With less money coming in the door, UBS is kicking people out of the chalet.
Traversing the first floor, we encounter a timbered sitting room with a woodburner, cosy as an Alpine chalet, and a turret with false bookcase which is really a door into the library, then descend a broad staircase.
A small child's playhouse survived in the middle of the mostly charred garden, but the chalet-style home that Mr. Sernoff's son had built next door was destroyed.
The impressive three-storey main lodge – a European chalet blended with an American log cabin – features an iron-studded castle door.
It set us up nicely for more conventional sipping in the cellar door sales area, which had the feel of an Alpine chalet.
