Soak up the ambience of a fine red wine

GOOD for the heart and now good for the skin.Not content with drinking your favourite drop? Visitors to South Australia's premier wine region, the Barossa Valley, can immerse themselves in a bath full of red wine.

Vinotherapy, or red wine baths, are the latest trend and marketing tool being used to lure tourists to the wine region.

The baths are made up of grape seed skin, oil and extract and have anti-oxidant properties that are believed to help in the fight against ageing.

The treatment is unique to the Novotel Barossa Valley Resort's day spa.

Kylie Leopold from endota spa, said it was "good to have a wine-based treatment here which was uniquely designed for the Barossa Valley".

Australian Hotels Association SA general manager Ian Horne said: "It is quite clever, maximising its location in the heart of one of Australia's premier wine regions."

Barossa tourism manager Racheal Klitscher said the beauty treatment was "a point of difference".

"They go on about a glass of red wine a day is good for you, maybe a red wine bath is good for the soul," she said.