Les Sources de Caudalie

It’s a new twist on the traditional notion of the spa hotel. Les Sources de Caudalie, on the grounds of the Château Smith Haut-Lafitte vineyard, just a few minutes outside Bordeaux, is at first glance just a delightfully conventional countryside retreat — sixty-one contemporary luxury hotel rooms in an idyllic setting complete with phenomenal French country cooking and some of the world’s finest wines. As luck would have it, though, this once-average vineyard (now an exemplary organic operation) happens to have a natural thermal spring beneath it.

Which makes it the natural site for a spa. And in the spa there’s something different going on — Caudalie’s trademark “vinothérapie” approach dispenses with boring old mud and seaweed in favor of treatments that make use of the byproducts of the wine-making process, grape-seed derivatives whose antioxidant polyphenols are regarded as near-miraculous in reversing the effects of time on the body’s cells.

Even if you’re not in for the healing effects of grape seed, you’ll find Les Sources de Caudalie has plenty going for it — rich, individually decorated rooms, two fine restaurants, and fifteen thousand bottles in the wine cellar for those who prefer their vinothérapie in glasses, the old fashioned way.