In a nutshell
When in France, do as the French do, and stay at a spa in the middle of a vineyard, where there is a bottle of the château’s white available next to the orange juice at breakfast — yes, breakfast — and where the staff look on with approbation (really) should you drink a glass with your muesli (all in the name of research, your honour). No prizes for guessing what lies at the heart of its offering: vinotherapy is based on grapes and their extracts and uses Caudalie’s own range of beauty products. By night (and, indeed, by morning) you get to drink one kind of grape extraction, by day you get another variety rubbed into your face and body. In vino veritas, indeed. Caudalie also boasts a two-Michelin-starred restaurant.
What’s it like?
Caudalie is a très tasteful affair, a veritable Petit Trianon of French rural chic with pretty wooden buildings, and immaculately maintained potagers reflected back in a suspiciously perfect lake. (Gardening junkies will love it here: there’s some herbaceous-border planting worthy of a gold medal at Chelsea.)
The beautiful wood-constructed spa is separate from the hotel — there’s a charge for entry if you’re not having a treatment — and has a feel that’s part French barn, part Japanese pavilion. It has a hydrotherapy pool at its centre, another overlooking the grounds, and a steam room (though no sauna). Here is an object lesson in the charms of warm minimalism — lots of wood, lots of glass, but cosy as well as cool. There’s an outdoor hot tub too, in a giant barrel, bien sûr.
Just across the vineyards — turn left at the giant rabbit sculpture — is the château itself, dating back to the 14th century, where the Smith Haut Lafitte wines are produced. If it can all seem just a little bit theme park, well, here’s a theme so intoxicating — literally, at times — that it’s impossible to resist.
The treatments
Caudalie takes its treatments as seriously as its wines and the quality of the therapists is notable. Many of the body treatments use the seed for exfoliation, but the Pulp Friction massage (with apologies to Tarantino) takes it further, using the entirety of the pulped fruit (€110 for 50 minutes). Or how about a bath in grape marc and red vine extracts? (€68 for 15 minutes.)
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Where it really gets serious is with the facials, that signature French combination of great product, expert therapist, and a rather stern bedside manner (my therapist really wasn’t happy about my eyebrows). The antioxidant Resveratrol is just one of the grape ingredients put to work. The Premier Cru facial deploys sculpting massage and derma-rolling to help you finesse your own — ahem — vintage (€210 for 110 minutes).
Who goes?
Quietly chic Europeans. The hotel was full when I visited, but you wouldn’t know it. Oh, the joy of such good manners, when conversations by the pools are barely audible, and when you never hear the ring of a mobile phone. Even the children here — yes, in contrast to many spas they are allowed at Caudalie — are preternaturally well-behaved.
What are the rooms like?
The 40 rooms are in the cream stucco main building, and most have a terrace or balcony. There are 21 suites of varying sizes that are spread across the hotel’s six buildings, each with separate living room, plus large terrace or balcony. The decor varies from room to room but what is consistent is the pitch-perfect melange of old with new, and the approach to colour (here a soft, deep pink, there are rich yellow). Especially charming is the stand-alone large suite perched on stilts over the lake. According to the website it was designed, in best French style, “as a refuge for lovers everywhere”. Should events not proceed to plan, a spurned lover can always bunk down in the en suite vintage gypsy caravan outside the door.
What’s the food like?
It’s good. Some spa junkies might say too good. La Grand’Vigne is as posh as its Michelin status would lead one to believe, with immaculately conceived flavour combinations intricately presented in best — albeit somewhat uptight — haute cuisine style. The Caudalie hush descended yet further as each table in the reconstructed 18th-century glasshouse succumbed to the five or seven-course menu. (There is an à la carte option too, but everyone seemed to have taken the view, like me, that it would be rude not to.) Particularly memorable was the stuffed artichoke.
The more relaxed Table du Lavoir, set in a lovely grenier-like space, timber-lined and light-filled, offers faultless versions of French classics, from rémoulade to steak frites. What do they bring when your table wobbles? A wedge of the cork from a wine bottle of course. There’s also a cool tapas bar.
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The lowdown
Anna Murphy was a guest of Les Sources de Caudalie. B&B doubles start at €325. A half-day’s spa entry is included with any treatment. Otherwise a full day’s access costs €38. A three-night “reinvigorating” spa break starts at €1,614pp, full board, with one meal at La Grand’Vigne, plus two half-days of spa treatments and two hour-long fitness sessions (sources-caudalie.com)
