I Bathed in Red Wine and Here's What Happened to My Skin

Beauty editors do a lot in the name of great skin. From testing out DIY self tanners to trying a different face mask every night of the week, consider us your own personal guinea pigs. We try trending DIYs, so you don’t have to. So naturally when we saw that beauty editors and bloggers from many of our favorite publications were bathing in red wine for the sake of their skin, we knew we had to take the plunge...literally. Find out what happened when one Skincare.com editor soaked in red wine below! Spoiler alert: Don’t try this at home.

Admittedly, I’m not one to turn down a glass or two of wine with dinner. I’m also not one to turn down the chance to partake in an out-of-the-box beauty experiment. So when I was given the opportunity to bathe in red wine and report the effects—if any—on my skin, there was no way I’d turn it down. I was so excited to dive in, in fact, I played the whole thing out in my head beforehand. I’d lay my hair down in a gorgeous crimson-hued bath, let out a relaxing sigh, and sip on a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon (for good measure, of course). Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? A stained bathtub? I could live with that, I thought to myself.

When I told my family about my homework assignment, their first reaction wasn’t concern for my skin but rather for my wallet. “Do you know how many bottles of wine you’ll need to buy to fill a tub?” they asked me. To be honest, I didn’t. But now I do—15 bottles. And that’s including some water to dilute the mix. Traditional vinotherapy includes grape seeds, skins, and stems in the bath along with some massaging jets, so needless to say, my tub filled with red wine and water was going against the norm. (I’m a rebel, clearly.) But I wasn’t about to invest in a new tub with jets, so I hoped the purported outcome—smooth and radiant skin, improved circulation, etc.—would be the same. I know wine has the antioxidant resveratrol, so I was really curious to find out how bathing in it would turn out. Let's just say it didn't go as planned. 

What I thought would be the most extravagant ten-minute soak of my life turned out to be anything but luxurious. By minute two, my entire body began to tingle in a really uncomfortable way. Another two minutes went by and my skin started to itch like mad. It was as if I could feel the moisture being sucked out. (No, I was not drunk.) At the seven-minute mark, I was ready to get out. But I’m no quitter, so I stood it out the full 10. When I got up, my skin was incredibly sticky, dry, and irritated, basically the opposite of luminous. Bummer! Luckily, the poor side effects didn’t last very long. A quick rinse with plain water and handfuls of moisturizer later, I was starting to feel like my old self again. Disappointed, sure, but not defeated. Moral of the story: I’ll enjoy the beauty benefits of red wine from a glass from now on, thank you very much.