“Waiter, There’s a Person in My Soup!”

Billing itself as a “spa theme park,” the Yunessun Resort in Japan’s Hakone prefecture—an hour and a half bullet train ride from Tokyo—offers bathers the option of soaking in a pool filled with red wine. Several times each day, the bath is replenished by a stream of red wine from a giant wine bottle suspended over the pool. Traditional bathhouses and hot springs (known as “onsen” in Japanese), are a centuries-old tradition in Japan, but the offerings at Yunessun are decidedly, gastronomically, modern. Additional bath choices include a Sake Spa, Coffee Spa, Green Tea Spa and a pepper-water filled Ramen Noodle Spa. More than just colored water, these baths are filled with the actual beverage or soup.

Switzerland is mostly a red wine producing country.

Answer: True.

It may seem counterintuitive given its climate, but Switzerland produces mostly red wine. The leading variety, in fact, is pinot noir, called blauburgunder, a light, spicy, and often quite good wine, although (when grown in Switzerland) rarely complex or nuanced in flavor. Some tasty, light red wines are also made from pinot noir-gamay blends (called Dôle) and merlot has been growing in the southern canton of Ticino since the early part of the 20th century. Both wines are light, sleek, fairly crisp, and sometimes spicy. But perhaps the most intriguing red variety of all in Switzerland is the indigenous rouge du pays, which can be the source of super-juicy, spicy wines redolent of black cherries and pomegranates.

“The inseparable connection in southern France between wine, food, and the earth reminds me that wine is a gift from God. In a visceral sense, drinking Châteauneuf-du-Pape and eating local sausages becomes a way of transcending time, of experiencing that which, though it may seem temporal, is, in fact, timeless.”

—Steve Edmunds
Co-owner, Edmunds St. John Winery, which specializes in Rhône-style wines made in California

“Waiter, There’s a Person in My Soup!”

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