We review a hot compress massage

Relaxation massages aren’t my thing. Firm, almost bruising strokes, elbows in the traps and thumbs dug into pressure points are all part of my perfect massage; mandatory, in fact. Soft strokes and oil, though, leave me feeling a little deflated.

That’s what I thought before I found myself face down in a darkened room with the scent of lemongrass, patchouli, lavender and clary sage wafting through the air. Bianca, a therapist at Château Élan Day Spa, has just taken two fist-sized Thai compress balls out of the warmer and is using them as extensions of her hands to work into my back muscles, pressing them into the sweet spots in the sacrum and slowly stamping them up the length of the spine. It’s a high-heat day outside in the Hunter Valley, but the heat seeping into my body is divine.

Let’s backtrack slightly, though, to the moment I heard about this particular bodywork treatment, a Thai hot compress massage. It had me scratching my head a bit: was it a Thai massage complete with a mat on the floor and a therapist helping you perform supine yoga on those body parts not covered by medical-style compresses? Surely not. So, in the name of investigative writing (OK, the chance to see just what Château Élan Day Spa was truly like), off I waltzed.

Château Élan at The Vintage is a five-star golf, spa and conference resort in the heart of wine country, about a 90-minute drive from Sydney. If you like golf, you’ve no doubt heard about the resort’s Greg Norman-designed Vintage golf course. This 18-hole course was actually the first thing to be built here; it caught the eye of US couple Don and Nancy Panoz, who decided they liked it and the Hunter Valley so much they wanted to build a resort around it.

Driving into Château Élan, the rolling greens are the first thing you see. It’s a stunning setting that’s ever-popular with wedding parties and, while I don’t stay the night, it’s easy to understand why rooms here range from AU$229 (US$207) a night for a spa suite up to a starting price of AU$478 (US$433) a night for a two-bedroom private spa villa.

It’s at the day spa, however, that the retreat comes into its own for me. I’m greeted warmly and ushered into the bathrooms, where I get changed into a robe and leave the outside world in a locker. If you have the time to spare, you can while away an hour in the “hydrolounge”. In this spacious spot overlooking the vineyards of Beggars Bridge and the Barrington Tops, there’s an outdoor hot spa, an infrared sauna and two hot saltwater thalassotherapy tubs, plus a sun deck and indoor lounges.

Now to the massage: 80 minutes of relaxation heaven. Bianca works on my back with the herb-filled compresses — that’s the first step. Then, warmed oil is applied to my skin with long, flowing strokes that wash away any strain and tiredness. It’s not an overly firm massage but there are elbows involved, pushing into pressure points and gliding along particularly tight muscles. After the back, the therapist works on the rest of my body, slowly working her way up to the neck and head.

A large part of this treatment seems to be the aromatherapy benefits of the dried herbs in the fabric compress bundle. Among the herbs’ multiple uses, lemongrass, I’m told, helps lift the mood, as does clary sage; patchouli helps work on anxiety and depression; lavender is marvellous for calming the nervous system. It seems to do the trick: when the time’s up, I feel slightly dazed, wondering how 80 minutes could have passed so quickly and where exactly my shoulder tension went.

Bianca takes me into a lounge overlooking the golf course and sits a glass of champagne and a cup of steaming lemon and ginger tea in front of me. Is this a test, I wonder, to see which one the body craves after a detoxing massage? Then I remember I’m in wine country, a place people visit to taste that ancient tipple. Ah, time to relax: it’s all good here.

The writer was a guest of Château Élan Day Spa.