It’s a Saturday afternoon in West London and I am having my paper underwear ripped up the side seams as if I’m one of the dancers in Magic Mike, except perhaps I’m more like one of the men in Bucks Fizz. It’s also not me doing it: an amazing masseuse, Angelica, is getting to the problem areas and drying off a copious amount of red wine and rose petals in the process.
Ella Di Rocco is a spa in Chelsea with a very clear USP: come and bathe in red wine and feel better as a result. It’s such a clear selling point that, from the moment I slip into the tub full of vino, Angelica asks if I would like any photos taken and immediately proceeds to take a very competent photoshoot of me in different poses (“and now one with your wine. And one sipping from it. And now let’s try it with flash.”) This is why people are coming, but it is – to their credit – only a part of a larger, very soothing, spa procedure.
History suggests there’s reason to believe that red wine has healing properties: back in 3000BC the ancient Egyptians seemed to stew herbs in wine to produce medicine. A few thousand years later Hippocrates suggested it helped digestion. In the 13th century it was championed as a solution for sinus problems in France and in the 19th century it was often the only option due to the contamination of water and milk. Then again, most of these were about consumption: it was in 1999 that the first “vinotherapy” red wine baths were championed by French skincare company Caudalie.
Once you’ve slipped into your robe and disposable scanties, you start by dunking your feet into a footbath full of rose petals, Himalayan salt and other ingredients. There’s a glass of red wine provided, along with a couple of snacks and some water. Then you’re up and onto a massage bed for a full-body exfoliation using cornflour and red vine leaves, and then you’re up and into the bath. One might say there's too much moving around. One might not be wrong.
The tub contains water, grape juice extract, detox powder, red wine yeast and two bottles of red. Angelica says that this wine mix is great for blood pressure, great for the body and a great cleanse in general. For what is effectively sitting in a large mulled wine, it is exceptionally relaxing, although that is helped by the wine-bottle-green cavern you’re nestled in.
The bath is definitely soothing – what warm bath in a soothing room isn't? – but it is a decidedly brief section of a very comprehensive spa procedure. Perhaps that's for the best, but it does feel leave one uncertain how much virtue such a passing dip can have. Unlike some procedures, you'll leave placid but you may not leave feeling like anything has immediately improved. That, if it does happen, happens elsewhere.
Following the bath – and a change from one very sodden pair of pants into another – there’s a massage and then you’re free to clean off and head upstairs for a pot of green tea. Did I feel soothed? Well, yes, but I’d just been in a boozy hammam for 75 minutes. There is something about being shuttled between three-and-a-half different procedures that, while competent, and while calming, doesn't give you quite the same sense of self as a singular process. Then again: no matter what the science of a red wine bath, every other procedure felt delicious and well-informed.
If you’re looking for a spa experience that’s easy to reach in central London, you won’t find many places more soothing and womb-like than Ella Di Rocco. But, as of yet, I’m yet to be convinced that a bottle of Beaujolais a day will keep the exfoliator scrub away.
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