The world’s best wine spas: Six stunning venues for ultimate relaxation
Beautiful vineyard scenery, top-quality wines on hand and the ultimate in relaxation and pamper-treatment – what could be better for the weary wine lover? These six wine spa venues on three continents can go to the top of your bucket list.
Why do we drink wine? Put the more esoteric arguments aside and the reason is simple: it makes us feel good. It does us good, too. Besides helping us to relax and unwind, boosting our mood and providing connection with others, wine has frequently been shown to have a positive antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect.
Vinotherapy, the marriage between wine and spa, takes the idea of wine as cure to an entirely new level. By utilising the byproducts of the winemaking process – grape skins, pips, leaves, must and even sap from pruned vines – in treatments, it aims to heighten wellbeing in a natural way.
As a concept, vinotherapy is nothing new – historical records do show that some people, back through the Middle Ages to Roman times, would use wine, mixed with herbs and other flavourings, as part of their hygiene rituals.
Prominent French beauty brand Caudalie has, almost since its inception by Mathilde and Bertrand Thomas in the 1990s, run wine-themed spas at the likes of Frank Gehry-designed Marqués de Riscal in Rioja, northern Spain, and its flagship Les Sources de Caudalie in Bordeaux’s Pessac-Léognan region.
Today’s vinotherapy is taking on a fresh shape, with a distinct shift from showmanship to science. Modern practice is increasingly sophisticated and nuanced, with new boutique brands and techie spas focused on the chemical potential of high levels of grape polyphenols to transform skin – in addition to theatrical soaks in barrel-style tubs.
When you pair a relaxing treatment with a stay overnight snuggled among vines, along with a curated local wine list of special bottles, as you will do in the properties featured below, then you can’t help but feel good. Which, of course, is exactly the point.
South Lodge
Sussex, UK
Set among the rolling vineyards of Sussex, this plush country house hotel is positioning itself as the British leader in vinotherapy, via a partnership with sustainable Kent skincare brand Pelegrims, which creates products derived from leftover grape material from Westwell winery near Ashford, and Ridgeview Estate nearby in Sussex.
Onsite south-facing rows of Chardonnay, Meunier and Pinot Noir – which will ultimately appear in an own-brand fizz crafted by Ridgeview’s winemaker Simon Roberts – are visited by Pelegrims’ founders Jérôme Moisan and Alex Verier periodically throughout the year in order to harvest sap, grape skins and leaves for extract to go into bespoke products, for use in the multi-storey South Lodge spa.
As for that spa: with a switched-on local clientele, glut of daily exercise classes, healthy onsite restaurant and multiple pools, the 4,000m2 space feels like a social meeting space and hub of wellbeing, where treatments focus on delivering results as much as pampering.
Arrive early for a swim in the mirror-like indoor pool, fronted by a row of sweeping windows overlooking Sussex greenery and an outdoor hydrotherapy area.
Move on to a Pelegrims treatment and a snooze in the relaxation room’s illuminated pods, then check into your hotel suite – preferably one of the spa-style, two-storey lakeside lodges, known as The Reeds.
Here you can carry on the feel-good theme with a guided wild swimming session. Or, just a chilled bottle of local Sussex sparkling, uncorked on your private terrace overlooking the water.
Must-try treatment: Fresh Leaf Fusion Face & Body Treatment, featuring a grape leaf body mask and poultice massage, followed by a bio-cellulose sheet mask infused with grapevine compounds.
Must-drink: Any one of the impressive collection of Ridgeview wines available in Michelin one-star The Pass restaurant.
Bardessono Hotel & Spa
Napa Valley, USA
With its Michelin-lauded and -starred restaurants, plush vineyard hotels and bucket-list producers, Napa Valley is arguably the wine world’s capital of luxury pampering. Bardessono, in storybook-pretty central Yountville, adds another element to the hedonistic feel with its spa-led ethos, where R&R is put on the same pedestal as a sublime vintage.
Herbs and other plants from the hotel’s own organic garden are worked into the onsite B Spa’s forward-thinking treatments – which range from Korean beauty-inspired facials with a salmon DNA derivative to healing CBD treatments.
But the real local flavour comes in with the addition of local grapes. A Vino Polish, for example, pairs crushed Napa grape seeds with sea salt and lavender to slough off dead skin cells and leave skin feeling fresh as a newborn’s.
Day guests can unwind by the poolside post-treatment, but for the full experience, book into the hotel’s comfy and stylish spa suites. Shy guests can indulge in treatments in-room – with a glass of something delicious in hand, if desired.
Must-try treatment: The Vino Polish, which includes a grapeseed body butter massage – the ultimate skin hydrator.
Must-drink: Obviously, it has to be Cabernet Sauvignon. Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars is minutes away, so pop there for a tasting if you’ve exhausted the Bardessono restaurant list.
Château de Germigney
Jura, France
The original big name in modern vinotherapy, French brand Caudalie opened its first spa in 1999 in Bordeaux, on the Château Smith Haut Lafitte family estate. A quarter of a century later, it has its name on 35 hybrid spa-boutiques and four expansive vinotherapy spas, including this one in Port-Lesney in eastern France.
Housed in a romantic 18th century château hotel where outdoor dining terraces are shaded by towering trees and rooms are outfitted with floral motifs, chandeliers and statement mirrors, this branch of the spa brand is a timeless celebration of Jura. Slatted wood, evoking wine barrels, lines the sauna exterior, while a stone-trimmed pool area mirrors local limestone soils.
Soak in the outdoor jacuzzi, unwind in a purifying salt room or indulge in one of the Caudalie signature ‘rituals’, which combine multiple treatments into a half or full day of wine-themed pampering.
Must-try treatment: The Winemaker’s Massage, which combines Caudalie hero products with treading and pressing motions – said to drain fluids and toxins from the body and activate circulation.
Must-drink: Anything you fancy off the extensive vin jaune list, which includes vintages dating back to the 1950s.
Loisium Langenlois
Kamptal, Austria
Clad in luminous green tiles that evoke the verdant hue of the vineyards just outside, the spa at Loisium Langenlois has a simple aesthetic that belies the sublime potency of its treatments.
Wine grapes make an appearance in rituals that range from head to toe, with boutique Burgundian beauty brand Vinésime employed in facials to turn back the clock. (According to the brand, Pinot Noir has five times the antioxidants of green tea – something to consider when choosing your drink at breakfast.)
When you aren’t busy on the massage table, lounging in the steamy sauna or making use of the compact workout room, you can be immersing yourself in a vinous experience of another kind on a tour of the 900-year-old onsite cellar.
Crowned with a dramatic contemporary building designed by architect Steven Holl, it’s one of several hotel delights here that also include a heated outdoor pool fringed with vines and the minimalist, light-flooded rooms dressed in white and wood.
Must-try treatment: The Vine Strength facial, which employs the flagship A20C complex from Vinésime to exfoliate, restore and strengthen the skin barrier.
Must-drink: Sign up for a Kamptal Icons wine tasting in the WeinWelt cellar, and sample a range of local Grüner Veltliners and Rieslings.
L’AND
Alentejo, Portugal
Architecturally ambitious and unashamedly modern, L’AND – a resort and vineyard in the Evora subregion of diverse Alentejo – is the kind of pin-up stay that you find gracing the cover of Wallpaper* or Architectural Digest.
But there’s substance with the style here, too, particularly given techie and sustainable Austrian vinotherapy brand Vinoble is leading treatments within the vast, standalone spa.
It’s a space that instantly sets the pulse to ‘unwind’: lined with glass and filled with minimalist wood and stone, evoking the natural textural contrasts of the vineyard.
Undertake a muscle-melting massage to unclench shoulders or an intensive facial peel to rehydrate the complexion. Follow up with a soak in a hydrotherapy bath with red grape oil, poaching away until you reach a heightened state of tranquillity.
Must-try treatment: Vinoble body peel with grape seeds, paired with a full-body massage.
Must-drink: Whichever blend you’ve made yourself. L’AND’s Make Your Own Wine experience, featuring Alicante, Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca and Syrah in the onsite winery, is the other essential thing to experience here, besides the spa.
Gibbston Valley
Gibbston, New Zealand
This Central Otago wine producer deals in superlatives, being both one of the oldest producers in the region and home to the largest wine cave in New Zealand, which doubles as the cellar door.
And among its rows of Pinot Noir, Riesling and other varieties, which are backdropped by verdant slopes, it also majors in the visitor experience. Winery tours, a restaurant, a cheesery, a deli and two dozen secluded, vine-facing villas are all found onsite.
Adding to all of that is the award-winning spa, a space that pairs classic pampering with wine-based flair to give you a taste of Gibbston as you enjoy a much-deserved unwind.
TheraVine vinotherapy products are packed with antioxidant polyphenols derived from grape leaves, seeds and vine shoots, and used in tailored facials or skin-firming gel wraps that leave bodies feeling refreshed and deeply moisturised.
After your session with the therapist you’ll get a glass of Gibbston Valley fizz to sip in the relaxation room – the perfect precursor to sampling the onsite winery’s full range later in the evening.
Over a dinner of confit duck leg or pork belly in the restaurant, work your way through Pinot Noir vintages dating back to 2005, as well as a selection of organic single-vineyard bottlings.
Must-try treatment: Deluxe Anti-Ageing Facial, featuring TheraVine products to smooth and moisturise skin.
Must-drink: Gibbston’s Reserve Pinot Noir, made only in exceptional years and in small quantities.
Vinotherapy essentials
Resveratrol
The natural polyphenol found in high concentration in grapes.
Viniferine
Natural compound in grapevine sap that can correct skin hyperpigmentation.
Grape seed oil
Antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, often used in massage.
Grape seed scrub
Exfoliates and restores skin, with anti-ageing properties.
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