It is in a sumptuous manor, just outside of Oxford, that the chef Raymond Blanc displays his sensory universe. For him, “if the work itself is transient, the memory of the flavour remains”. In his vast garden abounding with lavender, he grows almost ninety varieties of vegetables and more than seventy aromatic herbs which you are bound to find on your plate, in one way or another. If he swears only by “bio” and organic, it is because “good doesn’t interest him but sublime, does”. Sublime like the suites of this hotel, small lofts with evocative names: The exoticism of Opium, the sensuality of Mon Plaisir, the sobriety of Vettriano… Let yourself be enchanted, in the native land of Lewis Carroll and of J.R.R. Tolkien.