EUROPE - FRANCE : VINOTHERAPY - I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE
by Richard Gilbert



A young French woman called Celine led me to a private tiled room and asked me to stand against the far wall, take off my bathrobe and hold on to a metal bar. Picking up a hose, she fired a powerful jet of warm spring water at me. The first gush almost knocked me over. I felt as if a police water canon has been aimed at me during a violent riot. But I gripped the bar and certainly felt invigorated.

I was enjoying my first Vinotherapy experience at a spa in a magnificent Bordeaux wine estate called Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte

Spa holidays are big business these days and you can choose from a bewildering mixture of treatments. How about a coating of seaweed with thalassotherapy, the vigorous four-handed Balinese massage or the Thai massage where a therapist walks all over your back? For enthusiastic pampering, how could you resist the Javanese Lulur Bath where you are scrubbed with rice powder, cloves, ginger and yoghurt? Personally I would rather drink it than bathe in it.

As spa novice and a wine lover, I had always assumed that health spas were just for people who wanted to abstain from the delights of the grape. So I was delighted to find my ideal treatment in a historic estate in Bordeaux which dates back to the Middle Ages.

Smith Haut Lafitte is today famous for its classy Grand Cru Graves wines which owe their high reputation to the deep pebbly soil of the vineyards and the combination of traditional and progressive viticultural methods used by the owners, former French ski champions Daniel and Florence Cathiard. They have owned the estate only since 1990 and have transformed it. High praise from many wine critics, including Robert Parker, have certainly helped them. But it has now branched out with the world’s first Vinotherapy spa among the vineyards, along with a four-star hotel and two top restaurants. Here you can drink wine, get wrapped in grape seed extracts, and soak in baths filled with a powder of grape pips and wine yeast.

Only the French would pioneer a spa based on the healing properties of wine and the grape. The medical world is familiar with the famous French Paradox. This refers to the mystery of why the French have a much lower heart disease rate than the British and Americans despite their rich diet. One survey suggested that the French eat 30% more fat than Americans yet suffer 40% fewer heart attacks. Answer to this conundrum? The French drink much more, and better, wine than we do.

So it took me only five seconds to decide that Vinotherapy was my kind of spa. Ten miles outside the centre of Bordeaux I found the elegant vineyards of Smith Haut Lafitte in a village called Martillac. The grapes had just been harvested and the immaculate rows of vines stretched out across 130 acres. Beyond the vines I saw the Chateau where the wines are produced and a cedar-wood building, modelled on a traditional tobacco-drying barn which houses the spa. Next to it is a 49-room hotel called Les Sources de Caudalie designed with antiques and materials dating back to the 18th century and the 49 rooms overlook a beautiful pond filled with swans.

Tell your friends you are going to a Vinotherapy spa in Bordeaux and they will cackle and assume you are going to be massaged and bathed all day with bottles of Chardonnay or St. Emilion. In fact the treatments don’t use fermented grapes or magnums of wine. This ensures that you don’t end up smelling like an overcooked coq au vin.

At the spa you can have treatments during a day visit or stay at the hotel for a more leisurely programme. I was given my timetable of body care treatments when I checked in. The next morning I strolled past the vines to the serene spa and was met by Celine. She was wearing a chic claret-coloured uniform and said: "Monsieur, it is time for your first treatment, the Jet Shower".

The hosing down is a tonic treatment for the skin and improves blood circulation. It set me up for a honey and wine-yeast wrap from Sandrine, my next vinotherapist. As I lay on a bed, she showed me a bowl of Bordeaux honey, some wine yeast and organic oils. She basted this mixture all over my body and wrapped me up in clingfilm like an Egyptian mummy. As it heated up, I felt I was the filling in a honey and wine sandwich. But this gentle marinating apparently does wonders for the skin and anti-ageing.

I strolled to a lounger by the pool and was offered a choice of organic herbal tea with vine extracts or fruit juice. I looked longingly at the vines that surrounded the spa but settled for tea.

The spa’s most popular treatment is the Barrel Bath. This is a huge oak barrel converted into a luxurious bubble bath with powerful hydro-massage jets of spring water. As I slid into the oak barrel, Sandrine sprinkled a powder of crushed grape products – seeds, stalks, pulp and skin – plus organic oils into the bath. The water turned a reassuring purple and I felt rejuvenated as I gazed through the wooden windows at the vines outside the spa.

The menu of health and beauty treatments here is mouth-watering. You can select from a crushed Cabernet body scrub, a Sauvignon massage with grape-seed extracts, a Merlot wrap and an underwater grape-seed oil massage. There’s an anti-ageing package using a new treatment called Vinolift using vine extracts called Resveratrol. Apparently the vines naturally produce this molecule to combat parasites and recent research shows that it’s a powerful anti-oxidant.

If you are seriously into grapes, you should take the Grape Cure. This is a 3 – 6 day detox programme during which you eat nothing but grapes while being pampered with relaxation treatments, thermal baths and wraps. Naturally this is available only during the grape harvest season from September to late October. When I asked how healthy this diet was, I was informed that the "king fruit" is rich in sugar, vitamins C, A, B1, B2, B5, E, etc. not to mention trace elements of potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper and no doubt fragments of the kitchen sink. The cleverly named Pulp Friction Massage which uses fresh grapes on the body is also limited to the harvest season.

This innovative spa is a family affair. It was the owners of the vineyard who encouraged their daughter Mathilde and her husband Bertrand to develop it. The young couple were already very successful with their Caudalie beauty care and anti-aging products, based on concentrated grape seed extracts. Their A-list of devotees of Caudalie products apparently includes Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Princess Caroline of Monaco and French stars like Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Adjani. The idea of a spa using wine products seemed an ideal development for the estate, especially after the Cathiards discovered a natural warm mineral spring in their vineyards 540 metres below ground.

A pharmacology professor from Bordeaux University called Joseph Vercauteren planted the original idea of using the grape for skin-care products. During a visit to the Chateau to see wine being made, he asked why the winery was throwing away the most nutritious and beneficial parts of the grapes – the grape seeds and skins left over after the pressing. His research had shown that these contain anti-oxidants called polyphenols which are 10,000 times stronger than Vitamin E and 50 times more effective. They can reduce 80% of the free radicals which are responsible for wrinkles and skin ageing. They can also improve circulation by strengthening blood vessels.

The Sources de Caudalie spa is as popular with men as with women, although, typically, it’s only males who think that they are going to be wallowing in a bath filled with fine Bordeaux wines.

At this spa you can forget the alcohol-free, traditional health farm diet of mineral water and lettuce leaves only fit for anorexic rabbits. The spa’s two restaurants, run by a Michelin two-star chef, provide plenty of opportunities for gourmet food and wine. There’s a 10,000-bottle wine cellar in La Grand’Vigne to provide the perfect accompaniment to the Vinotherapy treatments. At La Table du Lavoir, designed in the style of a 19th century country inn, you can have an excellent three-course meal for $25. And the wine list naturally includes the Smith Haut Lafitte wines that are produced from the vines just outside the restaurant. If you are calorie-conscious, there are low-calorie menus, and even these include a glass of the host wine.

Wine buffs can enjoy free tours with tastings in the castellated winery. The fluttering yellow and blue flags with a fleur de lis on the roof indicate that the estate dates back to the Middle Ages when a branch of France’s royal Valois family owned the estate.

The classy hotel next to the spa is designed with antiques and materials dating back to the 18th century. It has one bar where you can sample cigars and cognacs and another that sells wines and champagnes by the glass where I ended up. (I did say that this is not like other spas and health camps.) As I sipped an excellent Smith Haut Lafitte 1998 red, described by Robert Parker as "A hallmark of symmetry and complexity", I noticed that the bar had a discreet sign with its name. I was drinking in the "French Paradox".

Caudalie has plans to open a vinotherapy spa in Las Vegas soon, and in Paris you can sample some of the treatments in the classy Hotel Meurice in Rue de Rivoli.


Photo: courtesy Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte
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