THE Hotel Armes de Champagne is one of those places you'd never discover on your own. Drive through L'Epine - a village in the Champagne region - and you would probably go straight past it, hypnotised by the sight ahead of you. The Basilica of Notre Dame dwarfs the whole village; divinely out of proportion to everything around it.
Yet the single-storey hotel also has a reputation beyond its size. It was founded in 1908 as a coaching inn with the slogan, ''We put you up, on foot or on your horse''. A fire in 1963 proved more of a stimulus than a setback and the new hotel now rates three stars, with 17 rooms in ''French country-house'' style, starting at #32 for a double and #134 for a suite with Jacuzzi bath. The rooms run off corridors lined with original paintings, old prints of the area, antiques and carved shutters. Outside, terraced gardens lead to an ornamental pool and tennis courts. Guests arriving in open cars have their own garage. The place breathes personality; the antithesis of tower-block hotels.
Owner Jean-Paul Perardel, whose family has farmed here since 1663, runs the hotel with his wife, Denise, and you only have to step into the restaurant to discover why the Armes is known throughout France.
The chef is 32-year-old Gilles Blandin, who with designer-stubble and close-cropped hair looks like an Eric Cantona of the kitchen. The top Gault-Millau Guide describes his cooking as ''Faultless full-flavoured and sparkling with freshness'', awarding 16 points out of a possible 20 and two ''chef's toques'' to add to his Michelin star.
French gourmets don't need to be told that a chef with a single Michelin star will keep cooking like an angel until he gets a second. Though Gilles says, ''You must work for the guest, not the star''.
Main courses begin at around #11 for foie gras with a dish of sea salt at the side, sweetbreads with potato galettes, pigeon accompanied by a copper pot full of vegetables and 20 cheeses on a wickerwork trolley. Full menus start at around #13 for lunch and #23 for dinner. On Sundays there's not a spare seat for the #50 gourmet lunch of five courses, accompanied by three selected wines.
With their hotel, restaurant and wine store, the Perardels run a virtual ''Champagne theme park''. The wine shop, which stocks 100,000 bottles, is one of six Perardel stores stretching from Calais to Strasbourg which knowledgeable British holidaymakers mark on maps as ''worth a detour''.
They're top of the best-cellar list, having been voted ''The best-stocked caves in France'' by British and French wine writers. M Perardel has tasted all 500 wines in stock: ''Though not all at the same time'' - from ordinaires under #2 a bottle to the 1928 Pomerol at #215.
But his advice is down to earth. I sampled a #2.60 claret alongside another vintage marked at #15. ''The cheaper one is just as good,'' he decided. ''I made the mistake of not sampling the expensive label before I bought it.''
L'Epine - five miles from Chalons and perfectly placed for touring the Champagne area - consists of a single street. Which makes the Basilica, started in 1400 and completed in 1527, appear even more eccentric in its immensity.
Modelled on Rheims Cathedral, it commemorates the discovery by a local shepherd of a miraculous statue of the Virgin concealed in a thorn bush. The villagers spent every franc they had on building the church, defying the Bishop of Chalons who took them to an ecclesiastical court in an attempt to stop them. The original statue is preserved in the basilica, so is the well whose water is said to make women fertile. The priest sends bottles of it as far as the US.
n L'Epine is 206 miles from Calais, almost all by motorway. Toll charges each way: #11. The hotel can be booked direct: telephone 00-33-3-26-69-3030, fax 00-33-3-26-66-9231. It also features in VFB Holidays' programme (01242 240310).
Perrott Phillips
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