Wine and products from grapes were already used in ancient times in various forms internally and externally as a health-promoting agent and against diseases. Wealthy women used grape seed oil to keep their skin soft and supple. The Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377 BC) recommended wine as a remedy for many ailments and pointed out the positive aspects of drinking wine. He was followed by many others such as the mystic Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), who praised the purifying effect of wine on the blood, juices and vessels of humans with many recipes.
The chemist Dr. Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742) from Halle (Saxony-Anhalt in Germany) was one of the most famous physicians of his time. He not only invented the "Hoffmanns Tropfen" (3 parts alcohol, 1 part ether) named after him, but also developed a special wine cure. He wrote: "Of all the medicines, what better and more natural remedy is there to freshen and increase the movement of the blood than wine - and especially Rhine wine?" In 1993, during the grape harvest at the ChâteauSmith-Haut-Lafitte vineyard (Pessac-Léognan in Graves), the French couple Mathilde and Bertrand Thomas met Prof. Joseph Vercauteren from the Pharmacy University in Bordeaux. He had discovered that procyanidolic oligomers (flavonoids) extracted from grape seeds are significantly more effective than vitamin E against free radicals. As a result, they opened the first wine spa hotel in the world, the five-star hotel "Les Sources de Caudalie" in the middle of vineyards and developed the cosmetic line "Caudalie".
