Spa Stories

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Bathing in Italian Wine - by Veronica Matheson

 

IN ancient times Cleopatra bathed in asses’ milk – or so the legend goes.

But today’s Romans prefer a bath filled with robust red wine as part of a treatment known as vino-therapy that is guaranteed to condition a weary traveller’s neglected skin.

The fruity aroma of a wine bath is unquestionably therapeutic, and the intoxicating liquid is a warming shroud as I sink deep into the enticing vapours in rustic Abruzzo, a few hundred kilometres east of Rome.

I am already a fan of the region’s signature Montepulciano wines, but right now my aching body needs the grapes’ lesser-known healing powers.

After an energetic morning picking white Trebbiano grapes off vines that have reached their peak in the warm Mediterranean sunshine my lazy muscles are crying out for attention.

In season this grape picking experience is often a highlight of an Absolutely Abruzzo tour of this rural region that is being hailed as the next Tuscany or Umbria. For Abruzzo has the same charm as these better known regions from hilltop villages that spill down slopes to hidden monasteries filled with art treasures, to centuries old castles that lord it over classic landscapes.

My fellow grape pickers are the salt of the earth, weathered, generous, hard-working men and women who break into song at the slightest excuse. Sadly they are too busy to take a spa treatment - even if it is the perfect end to any grape-picker’s day.

My treatment is at Azienda Agriverde, an organic wine and olive growing estate  in Caldari, that has a purpose built Wellness Centre.

The centre is cool and restful, and excess organic grapes from the season’s vintage find their way here for use in exfoliation treatments where roughly crushed grape seeds turn the skin silky.

This ingenious exfoliant is rubbed on my skin which is already coated with an olive oil base (from olive trees on the property, naturally).

While I shower the scrub off, red grape juice is heated briefly and nourishing anti-oxidants poured into my bath in a private candlelit room. It is all so relaxing that I refuse the fresh glass of wine that is offered.

A bonus of this indulgent wine bath is that I have no need to spray on perfume when going to dinner as nothing matches the intoxicating smell of red wine that still pours from my pores.

Spa Files

Thai Airways flies to Rome via Bangkok, and it is a few hours scenic drive from there to Abruzzo. Look up www.thaiairways.com.au

Package: Wine tastings, Italian cooking lessons, and a wine spa can be included in Absolutely Abruzzo’s tour of the region. The company also tours the Aeolian Islands, off northern Sicily, where the renowned spa at Hotel Signum on the island of Salina, has natural thermal springs, and treatments using Sicilian orange water and locally-grown almonds.

More:  www.absolutelyabruzzo.com