I had to reorganize all the photos on our computer systems and I found some real pearls from the first few years at O’Vineyards (some of them are back when it was le Domaine du Thou! and not even called O’Vineyards yet). Nostalgia time The first year we were at O’Vineyards, there wasn’t a winery [...]

Everybody likes wine!  Okay, not quite everybody.  But besides the President of France, really a lot of people love wine.  And it’s time for wine tourism to take this into account.  This post summarizes some of my philosophy on our winery tours and travel activities by thinking about normal people and what they want when [...]

Grape harvest in the south of France The grapes are changing color and that reminds us that harvest time is right around the corner.  We get exceptionally busy around harvest, but we leave the door open and let tourists come to the vineyard and see exactly how harvest goes down.  Some people actually roll up [...]

This is part of an ongoing series about places to visit near Carcassonne. Small wineries and vineyards around Carcassonne, often lack the infrastructure to receive tourists year round.  This post will attempt to list some of the wineries that are well-known in the area for receiving visitors without reservation. If you’d like to visit a [...]

This is a list of Cabardes vineyards that provide bed & breakfast services or other lodging options north of Carcassonne. Of course, if you want to stay at a vineyard, I strongly recommend staying at O’Vineyards Bed & Breakfast. But this post includes all the options for staying with winemakers in the Cabardes. Why stay [...]

This is probably the last update about the Quarry Project in Villemoustaussou (at least for now). Even though I panicked last week when I received the email notification of the proposed quarry installation, this week has been full of research and helpful advice from friends. Here’s the long summary of the quarry project.  I still [...]

It’s easy to find the GPS coordinates for Domaine O’Vineyards ( 43.259622, 2.340387 ) and I want to write a how to for other vineyard and winery owners who want to post their latitude and longitude online. If you own a GPS navigation system and you’re standing on your property, you can use the nav [...]

Danny McCubbin and his photography assistant Anthony just came through the south of France.  We were very happy that they could stop for three days in Carcassonne and taste the wonderful food and wine of the region.  They participated in all our vineyard tours and workshops (i.e. they toured the winery, ate a 5 course [...]

Some people say that adding your website to relevant directories will help Internet surfers find your website. Not only can they find you through the directory, the links can also help search engines figure out what your site is about. This second part is only true if you use really relevant directories. I’ve previously written [...]

I’ve previously mentioned my love for the Never Said About Restaurant Websites tumblr which delivers ironic praise for poorly designed restaurant websites.  And more recently, Andrew Jefford published a similar opinion about poorly designed winery websites.  And The Oatmeal made a comic about bad restaurant websites too. And I’ve slowly but surely been working on [...]