Les Source de Caudelie
[UPDATE: From today until September 30th the InterContinental is serving a Grape Antioxidant Afternoon Tea in conjunction with Caudalie. Here’s the story behind the vinotherapy brand.]
The waitress is so shocked she can hardly contain herself: I’m not having wine with my lunch? After a few seconds of stunned silence, she adds with further disbelief: “And I suppose you’re not having pudding either?”
Okay, so I’m in France, where not partaking in the finer things in life is practically sacrilegous, but I am in a health spa. Then again, this is the world’s only vinotherapy centre and it is dedicated to beauty treatments derived from grapes. Denial is definitely not on the agenda here – as well as a cellar of 13,000 wines, there’s a Michelin-starred restaurant and a cigar room. You’re even encouraged to join a wine-tasting session at the nearby chateau.
Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte
The name of this unique spa is Les Sources de Caudalie, and beauticians at the centre, 15 minutes’ drive from Bordeaux, believe that as well as imbibing a couple of glasses of wine a day, we should be bathed and massaged in it, too. The theory is that the humble grape pip is highly effective at countering skin damage caused by free radicals (smoking, pollution and sunlight).
Which is why, later that afternoon, I find myself lying on a plastic sheet being slathered with wine and honey. The sheet is wrapped around me, then covered with what looks like a thermal blanket and I’m left to doze in a gloopy cocoon for 20 minutes. Not only is this bacchanalian-sounding process strangely relaxing, it is meant to render me lithe, toned and youthful to boot.
Les Source de Caudelie hotel
Vinotherapy is the brainchild of Mathilde Cathiard, whose parents own the Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte wine estate. With the help of dermatologists at Bordeaux university, Mathilde launched a line of skincare a few years ago, using the byproducts from her parents’ wine-making business. Last year, she opened the spa and diminutive four-star hotel among the vineyards.
Think of it as haute rustic – the appearance seems effortlessly country casual, but you can bet your life that every detail has been agonised over. The 23 bedrooms and six suites are each decorated in variations of boho chic. There’s one room in a cabinesque building next to a small lake complete with a pair of swans.
Les Source de Caudelie
Les Source de Caudalie
If a seven-course tasting menu at a two Michelin starred La Grand V’igne is too much on a health break, The Country Inn is out here, too, in this ridiculously romantic setting, serving the Table du Lavoir. It’s a casual eatery with such hearty fare as rabbit stew, but it is still slickly stylish. Non-residents pour in to both places and, of course, since you’re not a prisoner of this particular spa, you are free to explore the culinary delights of Bordeaux.
The Country Inn at Les Source de Caudelie
The spa itself is in a wooden outhouse, just a short trot from the hotel. Inside, the series of relaxation areas and beauty rooms exude a Zen-like calm – all large, airy spaces, pale wood and stone. While you’re left in no doubt that vinotherapy is a serious business – the hushed silence of the spa suggests it is almost a temple to wine – the treatments themselves reveal a sense of humour. They read like a wine list – Sauvignon massage, crushed Cabernet body scrub, Merlot wrap, Premier Grand Cru facial . . .
Les Source de Caudelie
And although you are not exactly frolicking in wine – any chance of a Kate Moss/Johnny Depp-style champange bath is out – the vino references are very much in your face. The barrel bath, for example, is a Jacuzzi clad in wood à la wine barrel. Powdered grape extract is added to the spa water so it is frothy and warm, but it is more like soaking in a barrel of British beer than vintage vin. From every treatment tub and table, you look out on to the 163 acres of vines through wooden-slatted windows – you can see out but no one can see in.
Alas, the invitingly sounding red vine bath turns out to be a big white tub unnervingly similar to the tubs for the elderly and infirm you see in small ads. But it is quite a treat none the less. Once submerged, jets start up everywhere, resulting in a sort of turbo-charged Jacuzzi. As with all the treatments here, extracts to “relax”, “refine” and “slim” are added so all you have to do is lie there, no effort required. Definitely my kind of exercise.
Les Source de Caudalie
My fellow guests were mainly professional couples of middle youth – impeccably preserved French women with bobbed hair and Tod’s driving shoes with their pot-bellied, expensive watch-wearing husbands lying next to the (ultra chic) pool. Many had children with them. Apparently this is the norm in French spas but it did seem a bit odd. Singletons such as myself were such a rarity that I felt distinctly awkward dining en seule. There is no chatty banter between guests and I even began to miss the enforced table-sharing of British health farms, which means that no one eats alone.
Nevertheless, I embraced the vinotherapy ethos wholeheartedly – in the spa, restaurant and bar. While you’re not going to get fit here, you can’t beat it for pure, unashamed relaxation. One thing still puzzles me, though. Over the few days of my stay it was scorchingly hot. All the guests, while paying a fortune to preserve their skin, were all too happy to roast in the sunshine in between beauty slots. I guess it is all wrapped up in the French paradox.
Les Sources de Caudalie, Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte, Martillac (00 33 557 83 82 82, www.sources-caudalie.com).
InterContinental Hong Kong is serving a Caudelie Grape Antioxidant afternoon tea between August 1st and September 30th 2019 for HK$688 for two persons +10% service charge, inclusive of two sets of Caudalie Resveratrol Trial Kits (while stock lasts). https://hongkong-ic.intercontinental.com/en/
This story was originally posted in 2000.
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