A Brewed Awakening

Wine and beer have long fought a turf war on the dinner table, but they are adding an exciting new palatable dimension to the European spa scene.

A good old soak
A brass beer tap near my toes, froth near my nose and a symphony of flutes in the air – as the last bit of caramel-coloured foam slowly fizzles out beneath my nostrils, a cyclone of steam and rich beer fumes develops and I slip into unruffled reverie.

I’m asleep in a tub of beer. What? No! I’m not a drunk and I certainly don’t mix booze with business, but on this trip my business is booze – soaking in warm, frothy beer in the brick-lined underground bathing chamber of the Kummerower Hof spa-hotel. On my way over, I had envisioned an intoxicating broth clinging to my body in an icky-sticky embrace, making me feel like a fly trapped on an ice lolly. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. The dip is neither messy nor gooey – soaking in a murky mélange of yeast, malt, hops and warm water is strangely stimulating and sensuous. This is a whole new level of liquid therapy.

Situated in the drowsy little village of Neuzelle, an hour-and-a-half east of Berlin, the Kummerower Hof is a dainty family-run establishment that claims to be the birthplace of the modern medicinal beer spa. The idea began brewing in the early 1990s, around the time when a heated debate broke out over Germany’s historic beer purity laws. According to a rigid, five-century-old rule, beer could only include barley, hops and water. In support of the more innovative brewers, who where adding character-building sugary syrups, a local writer famously proclaimed “If this isn’t beer, I’ll just have a bath in it”.

Taking the idea to heart, Kummerower Hof’s entrepreneurial proprietors teamed up with pharmacists, researchers and the local brewery to create a combination of vitamin-rich yeast, hops, dark bathing beer and herbs suitable for soaking. A prescribed 20-minute beauty beer bath, heated to a temperature of 38°C, apparently soothes muscles and joints, strengthens the cardiovascular system and improves skin nutrition.

Back to my bath, and Kummerower Hof operations manager and physiotherapist Susanne Taschner-Schmidt scoops sizable spoonfuls of brewers’ yeast extract into the tub. The brew gets more shadowy and stocky, but she says this will help firm and elasticise my skin, leaving it “really velvety smooth”. In order to “relax from the inside and out”, she offers me a well-chilled glass of the amber elixir produced by Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle, the neighbouring 16th-century brewery that provides this beer-wallowing business with its vital ingredient.

Clumps of thick, green herbal-hop mush are added to the mix, resulting in a sticky paste that works the same magic as a body scrub, and which are said to help stimulate blood circulation. Now to allow enough time for the treatment to take full effect, I’m whisked off to a chill-out area and wrapped tightly in layers of textiles. A pleasantly mellow buzz takes over and I fight the urge to fall asleep.

Yet it’s not just Kummerower Hof offering such treatments, as other spas around Europe have been tapping the beer-bathing concept, too. High in the Austrian Alps near Salzburg, the cuckoo-clock cute Landhotel Moorhof offers boozy remedies in wooden barrels large enough to fit a canoodling couple. And in the scenic Tirolean woodland, Starkenberg Castle Brewery features seven super-sized beer swimming pools, where spa-goers can take a plunge in 42,000 pints of malt nectar. Finally, Prave Pivni Lazne, “Real Beer Baths”, in the Czech Republic, has a sprawling health centre, beer massages, a museum of brewing, and a beer garden seating up to 300 punters!

Wine after beer…
After my beer baths, I move on to pleasures of the grape variety, travelling from Germany to Spain and paying little attention to the old rule “wine after beer and you’ll feel queer”. A steaming Cabernet Sauvignon-infused soak kicks off my foray into vinotherapy, the latest anti-ageing spa practise that harnesses the powerful antioxidant and exfoliating properties of wine and its by-products.

The sleek, Jacuzzi-style hydro vat of spring water is spiked with a cocktail of finely crushed grape skins, seeds, stalks, pulp and organic oils. Lolling like a slumbering seal, I marinate in the steaming, prune-hued soup of regeneration, embracing the wide views of the sun-dappled vineyard. So is the life of leisure at Can Bonastre Wine Resort, a haute-rustic country house and winery north-west of Barcelona that has served wine-infused spa delicacies since 2007.

The roots of vinotherapy, not surprisingly, trace back to France. It was amid the ancestral Bordeaux vineyards of Smith Haut Lafitte that owners Mathilde and Bertrand Thomas met pharmacology professor Joseph Vercauteren, who in 1970 proved that antioxidant-rich grape seeds can counteract free radicals responsible or ageing. This led the young couple to develop a grape seed skincare line called Caudalie and to launch the world’s first wine spa in 1999. Since then resorts have surfaced all over Italy, Spain, Austria and further afield. But it is Caudalie’s deluxe liquid landmarks in places such as New York’s The Plaza and the Frank Gehry-designed Marqués de Riscal winery in Spain that reign supreme in terms of treatment variety.

My soaking is succeeded by a peel, facial and full-body rubdown containing Chardonnay seed extract that promises to release me from my wrinkles and unsightly cellulite. All the scrubbing and rubbing must be getting to me, as I actually sense a crinkle disappear.

Wine and beer might be at war in stores and homes, but when it comes to the tub, they bring equal delight. Both high in self-indulgence, strangeness and sensuous pleasure, these spa sensations are sure to perk up even the most jaded of palates. So who cares about the so-called wine versus beer debate – nowadays, I can bathe in both and cheers to that!

Wine and beer spots around Europe
BEER
> Kummerower Hof Beer bath, €45, www.bierbad.de

> Landhotel Moorhof Beer bath, €129, www.moorhof.com

> Starkenberg Beer pool, €135, www.bierschwimmbad.com

> Prave Pivni Lazne Beer bath, €23, www.chodovar.cz

WINE
> Can Bonastre Wine therapy, €153, www.canbonastre.com

> Les Sources de Caudalie Two-day vinotherapie cure, €350, www.sourcescaudalie.com

> Marqués de Riscal Two-day Caudalie cure, €448, www.marquesderiscal.com

Bar wars
They may be on an even footing when it comes to spas, but which tipple wins your heart when it comes to drinking?

COST
BEER: Carlsberg claims it is “probably the best beer in the world”. It’s usually pretty cheap, but the group’s new Jacobsen Vintage No 1 is probably the most expensive in the world. Unveiled last year, it costs €270 a bottle!

WINE: The most expensive wine ever was a Montrachet 1978 (set of seven bottles) from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Burgundy, which fetched $167,000 (€118,640) in an auction at Sotheby’s in New York in 2001.

FUN
BEER: Oktoberfest (19 September – 4 October) is not only the world’s largest beer festival, but is also known as the world’s largest “people’s fair”, with visitor figures often exceeding 6.5 million.

WINE: Well, nothing can quite match the world’s largest people’s fair, but then beer has no real equivalent to “pigeage”, or grape stomping. This sees people with a great deal of faith in their detergent voluntarily getting into a massive bucket and crushing the hell out of the grapes with their feet. Sounds cool!

OPENING
BEER: Hundreds of people are injured every year after attempting to open bottles of beer with their teeth in the UK alone. Dumb, but still, opening a bottle of beer with your teeth is pretty bad-ass!

WINE: For something really awesome, try “sabrage” – the art of opening a bottle of Champagne with a sabre, by rushing it along the edge to the lip of the bottle. This only works on sparkling wines due to the pressure build-up.

TOTAL: BEER 11 / WINE 12
RESULT: WINE WINS!