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Seeking sanctuary at Abadía Retuerta

Nina Caplan pays a visit to Abadía Retuerta, a former abbey in northern Spain, where spa treatments and wine combine. Is this the future of wine tourism? We can only hope…

Words by Nina Caplan

Abadia Retuerta
The Collection
Hotel and former monastery Abadía Retuerta, surrounded by vines on the edge of the Ribera del Duero region

Oenotourism may be a modern term but travel and wine have been intertwined for millennia. Some of the world’s most famous vineyards were originally created by Romans whose soldiering was compensated by gifts of conquered land on which they planted vines, to assuage their thirst for home. Wine offers a taste of elsewhere – and when the taste is wonderful, it seems reasonable to hope that the ‘elsewhere’ will be, too. After all, vineyards tend to be beautiful,and great wine regions usually have fascinating histories. What they haven’t always had is the sort of amenities that will entice a travel-weary wine lover, one beset by an impossible choice of destinations.

This issue has taken on fresh urgency since the Covid pandemic. For Spain, 2017 was a record year: 3.2m visitors to the country’s wineries and wine museums, according to the Observatorio Turístico Rutas del Vino de España. Those figures nosedived during the pandemic and have not yet fully recovered: 2.5m visitors in 2022 is still a substantial drop. The outlook is promising; in 2023, Spain finally topped its 2019 tourism numbers but wine regions need to pull in their share.

Abadía Retuerta tower and pool
The abbey's original baroque staircases and towering spire make a striking backdrop for spa stays

The modern way to entice wine lovers is to install a great restaurant and perhaps a hotel. The Australians, starting with the disadvantage of a relatively young industry – no Roman vineyards there – have led the way in this. I have eaten countless wonderful meals beside the Antipodean vineyards responsible for the contents of my glass. Often the view has included a kangaroo or two enjoying their own excellent dinner, which might have pleased the owners less than the human visitors, who at least pay for the grapes they consume. This is an experience that is, as Michelin would say, worth the journey.

Europe has been slower to catch on to the advantages of building your own lures rather than relying on attractions that happen to be nearby. Things were moving even before Covid but a global health crisis may have hastened that movement, particularly as regards another form of enticement: spas.

Many of these are magnificent, with the additional health benefits of rolling vineyard views. But some make even more use of the vines. It was Mathilde Thomas, of Bordeaux’s Château Smith Haut Lafitte, who first brought the elements of wine into the treatment room, and her grape-based Caudalie products were followed, in 1999, by a vineyard hotel, a restaurant called La Vigne, and a spa where it is possible to be slathered in Crushed Cabernet or have your torso moulded by a Vinosculpt massage. The grape, after all, is a miraculous fruit – it needn’t be fermented to offer benefits.

The 'Monk's Cave'
The winery ages some of its rarest vintages in the 'monk's cave'

Abadía Retuerta, a former abbey beside the Duero river, is forging an even closer association between wine and wellness. This beautiful 12th-century building, its pale stone walls surrounded by vineyards, sits between Valladolid and the superb vineyards of Ribera del Duero; its owners could have been forgiven for thinking they need do nothing but wait for visitors to show up. And that is how things used to be, during Abadía Retuerta’s seven centuries as a monastery.

The abbey’s revival dates back to the late 1990s. First, the vineyards were replanted, then the building was converted into a luxury hotel and restaurant. That transformation was sensitively done: the monks would still recognise the chapter room, the refectory and the cloisters, even if the former is now a bar, the second a Michelin-starred restaurant and the last an elegant passageway between the two.

The former refectory has become the Refectorio restaurant
Abadía Retuerta's Refectorio restaurant provides the opportunity to dine beneath ancient art work, such as this 17th-century fresco of the Last Supper

The vines that were essential to the monks – for their worship, which required that wine become the blood of Christ, and doubtless to palliate the rest of their austere lives, too – have become key to its second life. There is nothing quite like a hotel that can serve its own wines, in its two restaurants and, in summer, amid the vines, in addition to offerings from farther afield. And Abadía Retuerta has gone further. Before a treatment in the spa, which has Jacuzzis, saunas and steam rooms either side of an indoor pool, a Spa Sommelier invited me to choose my massage oil by sipping three wines from the estate, each associated with a scented oil. My favourite was Valdebellón, a single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon paired with almond oil scented with thyme and cedar. But the sesame oil infused with aromas from around the abbey, principally lavender and pine, which accompanied the Selección Especial – a rich red, predominantly from Tempranillo – seemed more suited to a massage.

The spa
Spa sommeliers are on hand to help choose the right massage oil based on wines from the estate

Nobody was claiming the wine would improve my wellbeing; the idea was to prime my senses. Any scepticism evaporated when my masseuse washed my feet in a kind of welcome ceremony, one with echoes of a very different spiritual practice. After all, have the uses of wine really changed so much? We still hope it will take us to a higher plane.

It was a lovely massage, and I returned to a bedroom more luxurious than any monk dreaming of temptation could have envisaged, before dinner beneath a 17th-century fresco of the Last Supper made largely of produce from the hotel’s kitchen garden. Chef Marc Segarra actually sketches out each dish of the tasting menu to ensure the preparation is perfect – a ritual of which an abbot might have approved, even if the outcome would surely have been too hedonistic for his liking.

Abadía Retuerta food
Chef Marc Segarra's menu utilises produce from the kitchen garden

These beautiful vineyards are not part of the Ribera del Duero denominación de origen (DO), even though Vega-Sicilia and Pingus, its two biggest stars, are a mere ten minutes down the road. Instead, Abadía Retuerta has had Vino de Pago status – a protected denomination of origin (PDO) label for single estates – since 2022.

The wines, particularly the single-vineyards we tried in the large tasting room above the winery, are superb. It all feels as modern and as geared to commercial imperatives as a place built for worship in 1146 can. Only the original church had an echoing sadness; between the monks’ departure and the revival, it was used to store grain, and the resulting humidity wiped the walls of their ancient frescoes. It now feels as obsolete as the religious hegemony that once shaped this landscape.

Four more luxury hotels where spa and wine combine

 

Les Sources de Caudalie

Bordeaux

The original wine-spa hotel uses Mathilde Thomas’s Caudalie products (which make much of the beneficial antioxidant properties of resveratrol, found in grapes) as part of a multifaceted wine-themed experience.
sources-caudalie.com

 

Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa

Champagne

A lacklustre hilltop inn with a claim to fame as Napoleon’s sometime stopover reopened in 2018 as a top-tier hotel. Every room – and the magnificent spa – boasts views across the Moet & Chandon vineyards. Cycling through them is done by electric bike – a necessity, given the steep slopes. And the importance of the spa, as a lure, is evident in the name.
royalchampagne.com

 

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The Yeatman

Porto

This vast hotel above the Douro river is owned by the Fladgate Partnership, which started in 1692 with Taylor’s Port, then bought up other brands and eventually moved into tourism – just as so many others are now doing. In addition to a two-Michelin starred restaurant and a bar with amazing views across to the centre of Porto, the hotel has a spa where it is possible – even advisable – to marinate in a barrel-shaped Jacuzzi liberally dosed with grape-scented oils.
the-yeatman-hotel.com

 

Castiglion del Bosco

Tuscany

The Ferragamo family – they of the shoes – rescued this neglected village and revived it as a gorgeous hotel and restaurant (Michelin starred, of course), with luxury villas fashioned from village houses, an infinity pool overlooking the village of Montalcino, and a spa that offers massages with grapeseed oil and fine Tuscan wines – after the treatment, this time.
rosewoodhotels.com/en/castiglion-del-bosco