Cleopatra is SWIMMING through my mind’s eye. One minute I am sighing with pleasure, the next I am dreaming of the nose-turned-up queen who felled an empire. All this is happening while my body is being pummelled and pounded! Queen Cleo used to bathe in wine, as did her virile lover Marc Anthony, who probably underwent what I am experiencing right now – getting chilled while crushed grapes cover my body with gentle determination.

Call it ‘pulp friction’, with due apologies to Quentin Tarantino. After the grapes are rubbed in, I am encased in a plastic wrap. Now I know what frozen fruits feel like. Amazingly, after a shower, my skin feels definitely smoother. Even a week after this vinotherapy my body continues to feel like a baby’s.

You’ve guessed by now I’m no spa virgin. I’ve spa-d with glee in most civilised parts of the world. From Port Louis in Mauritius to Adelaide in Australia to Bangkok’s charms to the thermal springs of Bath, a professional massage is a given indulgence for moi. But even by my exacting standards, this one is delightfully decadent. For not only am I drinking one of the world’s most sought-after wines, I am also immersed up to my neck in it, with just a skimpy brief to cover my modesty from the luxurious feel of this caressing liquid.

Everything at Les Sources de Caudalie, a secluded vinotherapy spa in the heart of France’s most renowned wine region, Bordeaux, is calibrated to spoil you silly. Wine enthusiasts sample Grand Crus in their parent company’s world famous Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte winery’s underground cellars a five minute walk away. Golfers shoot holes on a course hidden among the verdant vines. Gourmets indulge in haute cuisine in the Grand Vigne restaurant and calorie-conscious tweeters like me gorge at La Table de Lavoir.

The complex includes a 50-room hotel and most visitors stay for a week. Adorned with Asian and French antiques and Braquinie fabric dressed rooms, this charming hamlet – surrounded by oceans of calm and expensive vineyards – does not come cheap. After all, it gets voted among the world’s top five spas, every year, by those in the know.

Spa snobs know that it takes aesthetes to create such serenity and business acumen to market a luxury retreat located far away from urban metropolises. Serendipitously all these virtues are infused in just one family whose dreams have enticed the world’s super rich and socialites in here. This, chers amis, is the Danielle Steele love story of the Cathiard family.

Teenagers Daniel and Florence met in 1965, as members of the French national ski team. Daniel inherited his family’s single grocery store which he built up into a network of 15 hyper markets and 300 supermarkets. The Ambani of French retail, to coin a metaphor. Florence was equally busy running the McCann Europe advertising company operation. They did spend some time with each other though, producing two lovely daughters Mathilde and Alice.

Life went on in this engaging fashion, with personal secretaries ensuring they remained married. One day things did come to a head. Flo and Dan’s Aum moment came when they found out they had spent time in the same airport without knowing it. You can raise your eyebrows at this point. They did too. And decided that this indeed was not the way to live. So they took a year off but did not come to the Himalayas for enlightenment.

Instead, without any prior experience, they decided to run a winery. Several helicopter rides over Bordeaux later, the Cathiards found what they were looking for. They paid one million dollars per hectare and without blood pressure rising up, snapped up 70 hectares. With admirable Gallic sangfroid they weathered frost the first year, heavy rain the next and only in 1994 did the winery start realising its true potential. In 10 years Chateau Smith Haut Lafite became a wine brand commanding ridiculously high prices.

Their daughters meanwhile, having inherited their parents’ business genes, had already drifted into the cosmetics market. They got their very own Eureka moment when a visiting professor told them about the potential in wasted grape skins and grape seeds. Voila, the idea of a vinotherapy spa was born and in typical Cathiard fashion, took shape and flourished. Just like their grapes that grow up luscious enough to be plucked and made into wine.

Plucking dead skin from your face is called Vinoperfect facial. Grape seed extracts are known to fight free radicals, which are to be blamed for three-fourths of your skin’s aging process. When I lie down for my facial, the skin expert points to the rough patches on my face which I never even knew existed. So on with the special blend of lotions made from a combination of different grapeseeds and my face gets mummified for an hour. While the polyphenols do whatever they are supposed to do, I get a hand and foot massage. Basalt stones are placed on different parts of my body. To impart energy to the parts where reiki reaches not! You’ve just paid a hundred Euros for this hour-long rejuvenation, your red and blotchy face may startle your spouse, but not to worry. Tomorrow morning, the mirror will smile back at you!

I’m beaming from ear to here. I’ve just had a Barrel Bath. It’s a bubbly, back relaxing Jacuzzi inside a large wine barrel full of grape extracts and essential oils. Feeling rejuvenated after this day-long pamper, I’ve ordered a fougasse to be followed by a goat’s cheese salad. I’m drinking a chilled Semillon Sauvignon 1987 Smith Haut Lafitte. Next, their red cabernet will enhance my lamb in wine sauce and the dessert finale will be the temptation laden ile flottante! Yes, I know it’s sinful. That’s why we go to spas.

Les Sources de Caudalie Spa is a 20-minute drive out of Bordeaux city, in France. Just as wine drinkers reap the benefits of grape antioxidants through the digestive tract, vinotherapy works by sending those antioxidants through the skin. Oxidation within the skin cells is the main culprit in signs of ageing, dark spots and loss of skin tone. The process is accelerated by free radicals generated by ultraviolet rays, pollution, as well as cigarette smoke and stress. Antioxidants destroy these free radicals. Research now confirms that grapes are a superb source of antioxidants. The skin of red grapes is rich in the powerful polyphenol which is 50 times stronger than Vitamin E. www.sources-caudalie.com

Chateau Smith-Haut-Lafitte is reputed as one of the world’s most sought after wine makers. In this part of Bordeaux known as Pessac-Leognan, the whites are usually made from 100 per cent Sauvignon Blanc varietals. Chateau SHL has blended their whites with five per cent Sauvignon Gris, which gives power to the mid-palate and a spicy finish. Their whites are not classified, but the prices they command are of the same level. Chateau SHL’s reds contain about 55 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon, 34 per cent Merlot, 10 per cent Cabernet Franc and 1 per cent Petit Verdot, which makes for an unusual blend. It also presents a fine balance of classicism with a twist of modernity. These wines are highly sought after and to be found in the world’s most haute cuisine restaurants.

Subscribe to Verve Magazine or buy the Verve issue on stands now!