LOISIUM Wine & Spa Resort Langenlois

It’s hard to even remember the dark ages before the invention of vinotherapy, when wine and spa treatments had to be enjoyed separately. These days, though, they’re best taken together. And these days, most everywhere there’s a wine industry, there’s an ultra-modern haute-luxury spa hotel — like the Loisium, in the village of Langenlois, in the Kamptal Valley wine country of Lower Austria.

It’s a trend that’s given birth to some cutting-edge architecture, and the Loisium is no exception. The building, by the American architect Steven Holl, is nothing if not distinctive — the cubic hotel and spa buildings, with their slightly crumpled aluminum skins, tower over the surrounding vineyards.

Interiors are modern as well, if a little less imposing — the open-plan rooms and suites come in unexpected geometries, and look decades younger and more stylish than the spa-hotel norm. The Vineyard restaurant serves a pared-down modern cuisine, rooted in the agriculture of Lower Austria, and plates are paired with the very wines that are the reason for this place’s existence.

The thousand-square-meter Aveda Wine Spa is arguably the main attraction, complete with fitness center twenty-meter heated outdoor pool. Or if it’s simply the vino you’re after, and not the vinotherapy, go for a cellar tour: the 900-year-old cellars lie just beneath this 21st-century hotel.