It was only a matter of time until visitors to California's wine country would find it wasn't satisfying enough to taste the wine, but that they'd have to soak in it to truly relax.

Now hidden within a buttery, Italian, Bergo-styled compound in Sonoma County’s Valley of the Moon, hotel guests wholly immerse themselves in Sonoma's wine culture by experiencing “vinotherapie, ” a new approach to anti-aging dermo-cosmetic skincare developed in Bordeaux that employs the seeds discarded at the end of the grape harvest. The seeds are said to contain polyphenols which are believed to trap free radicals, providing cosmetic benefits.

The mild exfoliating effect of the “barrel bath” at Caudalie results from the use of grape and red wine extracts and organic oils. A red vine bath, honey and wine bath, merlot wrap, energy wrap, crushed Cabernet scrup and sauvignon massage are among several other treatments provided at this spa at the Kenwood Inn. Whether or not it works – and there’s a body of clinical studies to say it does – just spending a day at the spa is enough to make you feel and look better.

Of course, if you’d rather have the wine inside you than be inside it, the Kenwood is in the center of the Sonoma Valley AVA (American Viticultural Appellation). Within minutes of the Kenwood Inn are some of America’s finest wineries. The inn even offers a $13,150 Winemaker’s Package in which guests, with the assistance of the winery’s winemaker, blend their own barrel of Cabernet Sauvignon. Then, each year for three years, they return to monitor the wine’s progress as it ages, is bottled and labeled. At the end, they take home 24 cases of personalized wine, after having stayed six nights at the inn.

Imagine returning to the Inn after checking on the progress of your barrel, to luxuriate in an oversized saline pool in a setting that seems centuries old. You might retire to a mineral Jacuzzi pool in a fountain court or a saline spa inside a rustic mill house to consider whether you should introduce more mocha or earth flavors to your blend.

Then again, at breakfast the next morning, you might prefer just to ask for a mocha and accept that you got the wine right... (cont.)

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Source: www.a1articles.com