Les Sources de Caudalie

A wooden footbridge crosses a pond fed by a spring, and beyond it the vines of Château Smith Haut Lafitte run to the horizon. Les Sources de Caudalie at Martillac, twenty minutes south of Bordeaux, began with that spring: when Daniel and Florence Cathiard bought the Pessac-Léognan estate in 1990, they found a source of warm water at 540 metres under the vineyard and built a hotel around it. It opened in 1999 and is the only Palace hotel in the Bordeaux region.

History

The Cathiards, former Olympic skiers who had made a fortune in supermarkets and sports shops, bought Château Smith Haut Lafitte in 1990 and restored its wines to the first rank of the Graves. Their daughter Mathilde Thomas founded the Caudalie skincare brand in 1995 after a conversation with a Bordeaux professor about the polyphenols in grape seeds. Her sister Alice and Alice's husband Jérôme Tourbier opened Les Sources de Caudalie in 1999: a hotel built to house the first spa to use grape extracts and wine in its treatments, with water from the spring under the vines.

The hotel grew in stages, with new wings, the Île aux Oiseaux rooms over the pond and a second restaurant. Nicolas Masse's La Grand'Vigne won a Michelin star in 2010 and a second in 2015. Atout France granted the Palace distinction in 2018.

Architecture and design

Nothing at Les Sources looks new, although almost everything is. Jérôme Tourbier built the hotel with the architect Yves Collet from salvaged materials: timber from old barns, roof tiles from demolished farms, a tobacco-drying shed moved from the Lot-et-Garonne. The wings stand around the pond and along the vineyard as a village of low buildings with wooden galleries and pitched roofs, and the chapel-like dining room of La Grand'Vigne occupies a former orangery of the eighteenth century. Interiors mix old furniture, bare wood and linen; the spa is lined in cedar.

Rooms and suites

There are 61 rooms and suites in several buildings, from the main house to the Île aux Oiseaux pavilion that stands on stilts over the water, reached by the footbridge. Rooms look onto the vines, the pond or the lawns; many have terraces. The wine cellar, the Tour des Cigares and the hotel's own barrel-shaped tasting room sit among them.

Dining

La Grand'Vigne, in the old orangery, holds two Michelin stars under Nicolas Masse, with a cellar that runs deep into the Graves and the rest of Bordeaux. La Table du Lavoir, in a timbered building that was once a washhouse, serves a country menu around a long table and a fireplace. The French Paradox bar is named after the theory about red wine and heart health, and keeps a long list of Bordeaux by the glass. Rouge, the wine bar, offers tastings of the estate's own vintages.

Wellness

The Vinothérapie Spa was the first of its kind when it opened in 1999 and is still the model: barrel baths in spring water with grape extracts, crushed-cabernet scrubs, wine-and-honey wraps, and treatments using Caudalie's products, in rooms lined with cedar. There are an indoor pool, a hammam, a sauna and an outdoor pool in the garden. The spring supplies the baths with water drawn from 540 metres below the vineyard.

Weddings and events

Les Sources takes weddings and seminars throughout the year. Receptions use the lawns, the terraces by the pond and the barrel-shaped tasting room; dinners are held in the restaurants or in the Château Smith Haut Lafitte cellars next door. There are several meeting rooms, and companies combine seminars with tastings and cycling through the vines. The estate's land of about 70 hectares of vines gives room for outdoor events of some size.

Location

Martillac is in the Pessac-Léognan appellation, about 20 minutes by car south of Bordeaux and 25 minutes from Bordeaux-Mérignac airport. Bordeaux Saint-Jean station, two hours from Paris by TGV, is 25 minutes away. The Château Smith Haut Lafitte winery and its sculpture park are at the hotel's gate, and the other Graves estates of Haut-Bailly and Pape Clément are a short drive. Few luxury hotels in the Bordeaux vineyards combine a spa, a two-star table and a grand cru at the door.