A liquid zone in the desert far from the maddening crowd at Food & Wine

Not far from Palm Springs and the mid-century boutique hotels, where girls sip designer cocktails infused with jalapeno, lies a desert oasis where the rituals of detoxification have reached an art form. It’s called the We Care Spa. I was headed there for five nights and six days of pure liquid diet.

For 37 years, mother-daughter duos, models, television execs, artists, celebrities, and well-educated couples have come seeking the spa’s infamous detoxifying process that combines nutrient-dense liquid fasting with colon therapy and treatments such as “System Recovery,” where my body was brushed with castor oil, wrapped in an amethyst-weighted blanket and left to sweat on a heated massage table. I sunk into a dizzying dream state heightened by my cranial rub.

I had other options: breath work, yoga, meditation, hypnotherapy, cupping, classes for mental detox, even a fire ceremony in which guests can burn away past grievances under the stars.

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In our oversaturated world of spas, We Care stands apart as it has evolved naturally from humble roots. The seed of one divorced mother of three’s simple need to find a way to cope with stress and health issues blossomed to helping others until it morphed into what it is today.

That mother is Susana Blenan. At 85, the diminutive Argentinian is a testament of health and longevity. She still lives on the premises and still teaches yoga, three to four nutritional (food preparation, digestion, detoxification) classes every week. She fasts one day a week, three days every three weeks, one week every six months. Her daughter runs the business while she continues to offer wisdom and no-nonsense health advice to those who have come to We Care over the decades.

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Clients come from all over the world and the United States, all seeking a jump start. Some of Susana’s devotees have been returning yearly for over a decade. Celebrities have been known to drop in for weeks at a time. Silicon techies burning the wick for months take their last pull on their cigarette and walk through the gates for their shot at purity. 

For Susana, health is her mission and passion as much as the vigneron’s passion lies in the cultivation of his vineyard.

After Food & Wine?

If you are attending the Food & Wine Classic this weekend, chances are your palette is having the time of its life. Maybe you’re tasting new delicacies you’ve never dreamed of, like candied yolks or sea lettuce or perhaps you’re sipping a new Bordeaux like Saint-Estèphe, La Dame de Montrose.

Bringing people together for an intentional gathering, be it Food & Wine or a detox spa, is the same in a way. Visceral experiences break down walls.

At the spa, the lack of food and the intense regimen joined our disparate group under a shared intention. It’s hard not to laugh at yourself when you’re clad in a robe waiting for your colonic treatment.

After all, we were in the trenches, albeit a very cushy one with organic sheets and lush pillows, a deep tub equipped with a scrub brush and detox powder for the bath.

You’ll be amazed at how quickly the stories begin to flow after you’ve been tasting wine for hours in the middle of the day. A wine rep once lifted his shirt to show me where a bull had gouged him while he was running the bulls in Pamplona. He was proud of the puckered skin, crudely stitched together in a Spanish hospital. It was the bacchanalian freedom that made that scar.

But when Food & Wine is over, the white tents come down and the wooden floors are dismantled, you might want to consider your own regeneration.

A time to pause and shift.

And that’s what I got.

Upon arrival, I was given a highly-perfected list of organic vegetable juices, alkaline water, nutritional supplements, and specially-designed therapeutic teas and powdered-plant concentrates of spirulina, wheat grass, and barley made into juices as my regimen. That’s it. 

At the end of every day, I joined the other spa goers for the evening ration of pureed vegetable soup to share intimate reports of our “innermost secrets” and our lives in the real world of solid food.

After five nights at We Care, napping between treatments on floating beds, soaking in outdoor hot tubs and infrared saunas, sleeping a solid nine to 10 hours a night, my desire for anything epicurean was gone. I actually looked forward to the daily detox shake made of organic psyllium husk and seed, apple, fig, and prune.

I’m not sure Jacque Pepin would like it, but the stoics would.

I quickly learned that what they say is true: By giving your system a break from solid food, you have extra energy. It felt good knowing that energy was going straight to my five organs of detoxification: skin, lungs, kidney, colon, and liver.

Just as any wine director will tell you that un bon mariage is when the right food and wine pairing elevates the partnership to a perfect harmony, We Care does the same.

Here, too, there is a quest for harmony. Both internal and external.

We Care is set amid a sweeping desertscape with nothing around but the faint outline of windmills in the distance. Tumbleweeds and wild brush line the fence that separates the property from the real world.

As I took my sunset stroll one evening, a gray, tricked-out lowrider Mustang packed with four young men drove by on the other side of the fence along a dirt road. We were only separated by a few feet. I could see their curious expressions, even bemusement. I laughed knowing how I appeared to them. Face it, I know it’s a luxury.

I knew they might not understand. And perhaps my bull-fearing friend wouldn’t, either. But then again, if they dared, they would be right at home