Avize: Les Avisés

This is the last of a three-part series on the top tables in the Champagne region, all well worth the short trip from Paris for a memorable gourmet feast.

The champagnes of Anselme Selosse are renowned among wine lovers for their great purity and especially for their rarity. The perfectionist and passionate producer has no choice. His domaine, in Avize, south of Reims near Epernay, has just 19 acres, planted in chardonnay and pinot noir. He has no pinot meunier because his land is not suited for it. Selosse is in the haute couture champagne business.

He spearheaded a wine-making movement highlighting man’s relationship with nature. He was among the first in Champagne to wait long enough to harvest fully ripe grapes, and to insist that everything begins with the vines. For a long time he used biodynamic methods, but he later abandoned them, he says, because he felt prisoner to the system. Today he’s more in line with Japanese sustainable-agriculture guru Masanobu Fukuoka, whose theories are even more insistent on not exploiting or imposing on nature, but rather going with nature’s flow.

Born in Avize, Selosse not only produces unique wines, he’s an atypical and slightly dogmatic winemaker for whom the transmission of knowledge is almost an obsession. That fact helps to explain the nonconformist, yet warm and comfortable, character of the hotel-restaurant he and his wife Corinne have created.

Imagine an 19th-century residence, half-château, half-maison de maître, slightly austere, with an elegant facade, transformed into a bright, contemporary small hotel. The building, next to the Selosse winery, stood empty for some time, and the temptation to make something of it was too great to resist. After a year and a half of renovation, the little bijou opened in 2011, with 10 rooms and a restaurant with just 20 places—and not one more.

At lunch there’s a set menu with starter, main dish and dessert; at dinner there’s one more course. Both menus change every day. The chef, Stéphane Rossillon, rules alone, composing his menus according to the season and the market. His wife Nathalie serves the tables. Et voilà—it’s like having a meal at a friend’s home.

Chef Rossillon is far from a beginner—he started working nearly 30 years ago, and spent the last 13 with three-star chef Anne-Sophie Pic in Valence, who taught him all the workings of la cuisine gastronomique. How did he end up at Les Avisés? A chance meeting, a desire for a different experience. The kitchen was designed entirely to his specifications: one side is open to the dining room, the other has a spectacular view over the vineyard. It’s a courageous undertaking, preparing seven new dishes every day, especially since he works with just one apprentice. But the challenge was taken up with pleasure—the enthusiasm of the Rossillons is apparent, as is that of Corinne Selosse, who’s delighted with the design concept she worked out with interior architect Bruno Borrione.

The rooms, with identical colors, ceilings and bathrooms, all differ in their details: small pieces of furniture, an armchair, an objet d’art, curtains—all provide unique touches in each room. All the rooms have views of the garden or the vine-covered hills. Borrione perfectly grasped the Selosses’ philosophy. They wanted the place to be beautiful but not showy, modern but not cold, luxurious but not extravagant. Everything was designed to save energy and be kind to the planet. The main salon is full of books, deep sofas, vases, paintings and etchings, and a vintage mirror, monumental chandelier and fireplace add to its comfort. The room is large enough for guests to be alone in a cozy corner or to join in conversations with others, as if they were regular guests of friends with good taste in a home they know well. And that’s exactly how it feels.

59 rue de Cramant, Avize, 03.26.57.70.06. www.selosse-lesavises.com. Rooms €230– €380. Menus: lunch €35, dinner €55.

Originally published in the November 2012 issue of France Today