a fine vintage; Grapes from the world's best vineyards are inspiring everything from first-rate skin care to five-star spas.

Byline: Catherine Piercy

When Mathilde Thomas celebrated her 1996 nuptials on the grounds of the eighteenth-century Ch,teau Smith Haut Lafitte, her family's grand cru classe vineyard in Bordeaux, the 300-plus guests threw grape seeds instead of rice and sipped glasses of the winery's 1971 vintage in honor of the year of her birth. But the bride owed her glowing complexion to more than just the blush of love. For two years, she had been smoothing her skin with Caudalie serums and creams-the skin-care line she and her future husband, Bertrand, created when they stumbled upon the anti-aging power of polyphenols: antioxidant-

packed extracts contained in grape seeds and skins.

Today Caudalie has the kind of cult status more common to the winery's Pessac-Leognan reds and is known for products that combine a winning mix of breakthrough ingredients and old-world charm-like the Vinoperfect Radiance Serum, which contains an extract from grapevines used for centuries by local families to fade freckles. There are decadent Caudalie vinotherapy spas at the vineyard in Bordeaux; the Relais San Maurizio in Piedmont-a seventeenth-century Franciscan monastery set in the Santo Stefano Belbo vineyards; the Kenwood Inn, in Sonoma County, California; and as of this fall, at the Marques de Riscal vineyards in the Rioja Alavesa region of Spain (adjoining a Frank Gehry-designed hotel), where guests soak in a tub swirling with extracts from local tempranillo grapes. To approximate the experience at home, there's the new Fleur de Vigne Shower Gel, fragranced with the scent of the tiny white flowers that bloom on the vines just once a year, signifying exactly 110 days until the harvest.

But the Thomases aren't the only wine family cultivating a grape-inspired beauty business on the side. Napa Valley native Carlo Mondavi dreamed up his new skin-care company, Davi, while standing knee-deep in a 5,000-gallon barrel

of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in his ...