Here are some pictures of les Ampelofolies from January 22, 2012.

This event takes place in Moussoulens, just twenty minutes from O’Vineyards B&B.

And even if you miss the Ampelofolies, there are truffle markets all around Aude for almost every weekend of January (and some in December).  This is the season when we get fresh truffles in this part of the south of France.  And we’re happy to incorporate them into the meals at O’Vineyards Bed & Breakfast too.

If you have a camera, the goal is to take a tight shot with as many people wearing berets as you can fit in the frame.  There are bonus points if you take a picture where the beret-wearers outnumber the non-bereted heads.

Today, I was at les Ampelofolies 2012 in Moussoulens and I played the beret game while waiting for the truffle market to open.  Here are the results:

If you’re with friends, play to see who can get the most berets in one shot.  Or take a picture of every beret and compare photos later to see who got the most interesting looking hats.

There is also the inverted beret game where you try to take a photo of the largest possible area WITHOUT somebody wearing a beret.  At some events, this is harder than it sounds!

You can also include optional rules like “No moustaches” so you have to take a picture with a beret but without a mustache.  Again, much harder than it sounds!

And finally, there is Beret bingo although this requires a little more preparation.  And it deserves its own blog post.

“O’Vineyards wine tasting combined with chocolate tasting = successful Christamas Eve!”
–MS

It’s absolutely heart warming to see pictures, tweets, and status updates about so many of you enjoying our wines during the holidays.  If you had a glass of O’Vineyards, I hope it was the perfect wine for a festive occasion.  A gathering of family and friends.  And hopefully you had something good to eat!

Here are a few of the photos that people posted over the holidays with their O’Vineyards.  Please feel free to share yours too!  Just post them on facebook, twitter, naked wines, or email them to me.  :)

“Happy new year! Looking forward to visiting o’v in 2012 ”
–FR

You might only get to visit us every once in a while, but you can always open a bottle of Trah lah lah or Proprietor’s Reserve to relive the memories.

For more customer reviews, see the O’Vineyards wine reviews category on my winery blog.

Even though Villemoustaussou is just a tiny village (and Carcassonne only has about 50,000 residents), the region is so beautiful and its produce is so bountiful that we have a huge selection of chefs, markets and restaurants to enjoy. It’s really one of the most beautiful places on earth for a foodie because of the incredible diversity of our produce. Even in the winter months, we have rich meals showcasing ingredients like duck, goose, sea food, mountain cheeses, chestnuts, squash, and so on.

Some of these ingredients took center stage at our Christmas lunch. Photographs below:

If you stay at O’Vineyards B&B, you can easily venture out to restaurants like la Barbacane. Or you can stay in and order a meal at the winemaker’s table where you’ll enjoy the same sort of ingredients in a more home-cooked style.

Rich history, rich food, rich wine. What else could you ask for during the holidays?

La Barbacane
Place Auguste-Pierre Pont
11000 Carcassonne
+33 4 68 71 98 71
reservations@hoteldelacite.com

Thursdays to Mondays
from 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Reservations required; Book a table
Download the autumn menu

For 300€, you can spend the last day of 2010 and the first day of 2011 at O’Vineyards, enjoy a sumptuous six course meal as the clock strikes midnight, and pop as many corks as you want to ring in the new year before retiring to your big double room with a view on the vines.

• 1 night in a double room at O’Vineyards B&B
• 4 hours of wine tastings or workshops
• 6-course dinner for 2 at the Winemaker’s Table (as seen on jamieoliver.com)

The winemaker's table

O’Vineyards had a stand in the Place Eggenfelden and we brought our B&B guests to town last night. It was a hoot!

Dancing on wine barrels

If you play your cards right, you might even spend the night dancing on top of a wine barrel like the guy in this video. This really happened right in front of our stand. I had to drop the camera at one point to pick him up and put him on the barrel though so excuse the low quality video!

Wine Bread

photo: depeche du midi

The baker replaces all the water in his recipe with our young wines, and he adds a bit of chorizo or saucisson to kick things up a notch.

The result is a savoury, lightly perfumed bread that really got people talking.  Our baker, Dominique Noez, says that the whole bakery smells like wine when he makes it. I can’t wait to visit, although it will mean waking up early (he starts at 3AM!)

Food pairing with l’Hotel de la Cité

We also served mise en bouche from the Michelin starred chef Jerome Ryon who works at l’Hotel de la Cité.  The first night, we paired our wines with a poitrine de porc on a compote de pomme de Marseillette.  And there was a three mustard sauce to go with that composed of moutarde Dijon, moutarde a l’ancienne, moutarde au vin jaune, and all of that on a cider vinegar.  Mmm!!  The second night we served a lentil salade with a jarré de porc.  Both nights we also had some mousse caramel to finish things off.  It was really delicious.  We’re proud to work with Georges Gracia and Jerome Ryon because they know how to make and serve food that will highlight our winemaking.

Photos of the Fete des Vendanges in Carcassonne

Place Carnot
Market on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning
from about 8AM to Noon
For information, call the Mairie +33 (0)4 68 10 24 30

B&B Guest Photos of the Carcassonne Market

Guests at our B&B took these wonderful pictures at the Place Carnot market while they visited last month.  All these photos belong to Gardener Scott and Suds n Buds.

Directions from O’Vineyards to Place Carnot

If you’d like to book a cooking workshop, just give us a call or email.

O’Vineyards Cooking Workshops
885 Avenue de la Montagne Noire
11620 Villemoustaussou
+33 (0)6 30 18 99 10
ryan@ovineyards.com
Reservations REQUIRED!

What did we cook?

Every part of Liz’s heritage (French-Vietnamese-New Caledonian-American) has influenced her cooking style and so she’s a true fusion chef.  But she’ll usually incorporate local and seasonal ingredients to complete her recipes.

This workshop focused on a deconstruction of cassoulet she calls Cassou-Liz.  And a big batch of pepper and prawn tempura.  Along with a simple salad, some cheese pastries, and a tarte tatin aux pommes et au miel.

Pictures from this weekend’s cooking workshop

The lunch menu is great because it’s really affordable.  34€ gets you a three course gastronomic lunch with a glass of wine.  If you want to experience some of the best cooking in the region without spending hundreds of euros, lunch at le parc is a perfect way to go.  The menu is very seasonal (changes every few days) and everything is executed perfectly.  It’s only a matter of time before Putelat earns another star (and the prices may go up when that happens).

Photos of our lunch at Le Parc

Enjoying a glass of newly bottled wine

After an epic bottling session (over 30,000 bottles!), it’s nice to kick back and enjoy the product of all that hard work.  Some of our guests took pictures of the bottling line while they were here, and then we sat down to drink some of the newly bottled wine.

People say you’re not supposed to drink freshly bottled wine as it needs time to settle, but the wine was tasting delicious to me!

How does wine get bottled?

If you’re curious about subjects like how wine gets bottled, you can learn a lot by staying on a vineyard.  Of course, we don’t bottle every day, but there’s always something interesting going on.

What we do at O’Vineyards is we have a big old bottling truck come to the property.  The truck has all the bottling equipment on board.  We pump wine into one end of the lorry while somebody feeds empty bottles into it.  There are separate stations in the machine to rinse bottles, fill them with just the right amount of wine, squeeze and insert the cork, apply and crimp the metal foil capsule, and apply the adhesive labels.  Then the bottles come out at the end where two people diligently form boxes and place the bottles inside before sliding them off the truck where somebody puts them on a pallet.  It’s a pretty cool group of machines and a very precise process.

Here are the photos our guests took of the wine bottling process: