With this gorgeous weather, many visitors from Down Under , the US and the UK have been taking advantage of this.
Our new guests brought back the mementos of our friends. We are continuing to post more pictures! Thank you again for the great memories shared during 2012 ! HAPPY NEW YEAR ! Hope to see you again soon in 2013 !
Wall of Fame part 2
Wedding with O’Wines! Thank you Michael and Fay
O’Vineyards Wall of Fame, part 1
Pictures received from our 2012 visitors:
We are also proud to be featured amongst the famous monuments and attractions of France in Stephan and Amanda Holiday video :
“I hope you are well. We had a wonderful time at the vineyard and the food you made for lunch was amazing! I’ve attached a pic of us for you. We also have the vineyard featured in a little vacation video I made for Amanda. Have a great holiday and if we are in Carcassone again, we will definitely stop by for another tour.”
We are so lucky to count, year after year, more friends from all around the World! We want to thank you for your support.
2012 wouldn’t have been the same without you, so we’re putting you on the wall of fame.
Your Friendship is the best present we received!
We will need more pictures to keep great memories of your visit and the great fun shared around good food and wine.
We will feature photos with links to reviews along with the food and wine experiences we had with you.
If you want to relive the memories…
We hope to see you again soon, but in the meantime, you can always relive the experience with a good bottle of O’ wine or by downloading one of Liz’s recipes from our website. http://ovineyards.com/english/tag/recipe/
Happy Holidays to you and your family!
Here is a link to an Aussie blog. Don, Margie , Alex and Rebecca spent some time visiting France and our beautiful region of Aude.
Ingredients given below serve 20 individual “casseroles”:
wash 8 carrots. peel 10 medium potatoes cut in halves.
2 nice shredded onions
cook carrots and potatoes in a pressure cooker with a little water. stop cooking approximately 10 minutes after your cooker starts to “sing”. once it cools down. cut your vegetables in squares about 2 to 3cm (one inch). add salt and pepper.
add 2 table spoons of oil in a sauce pan, sauté the shredded onions.
add potatoes, carrots and 250g table spoons of cream, slow cook for 1o minutes.
fill 20 individual serving dishes.
spread 2 table spoons of olive oil, salt pepper and 2 table spoons of taragon on this 5 kg turkey. wrap in aluminium foil .
cook in the oven at 205° for 1 hour.
open the aluminim foil. spread 250g of cream on the turkey.
cook it for an extra 40 minutes. shut the oven off. the turkey will continue to cook in the electric shut off oven for an extra hour.
Depending on the quantity you want to serve, you can choose a smaller or larger individual size dish. Cut the turkey in chunks. Garnish the chunks of turkey over the vegetable base, then pour over one to two table spoons of the turkey juice.
An alternative to serve this turkey casserole: cover with a puff pastry sheet. bake for 12 minutes at 220°.
Pictures: 12 different steps to cook this moist and yummy taragon turkey. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!
Katie Preparing Chef Liz's Hors d'Oeuvres
One Brave Soul in O’Vineyards Kitchen…
One brave soul dared to spend a few hours in the shoes, or rather apron of Chef Liz to participate in one of O’Vineyards’ fascinating Food & Wine Workshop. Katie’s parents hungrily observed the process as she learned how to prepare a multiple-course meal under the guidance of none other than Chef Liz herself. Katie began by testing her skills at preparing Chef Liz’s unique sweet-and-savory hors d’oeuvres:
Pear-Roquefort Crumpets with almond slices and coconut shavings
Homemade Spring Rolls and Chef Liz’s garlic and lime soy sauce
Melted Goat Cheese and Herb Crumpets, starring rosemary and thyme from O’Vineyards very own herb garden (yes, they do grow plants other than grapevines!)
Black Pudding Stuffed Apples
Not dainted by this initial challenge, Katie dared to attmempt the second step: preparing Liz’s internationally inspired main dishes, including:
Bami (an Indonesian national dish composed of vermicelli noodles, spring onions and other vegetables)
Roasted turkey à la crème fraîche with leeks
Perfectly grilled Merguez, the celebrated lamb- and beef-based sausages typically enjoyed in North African dishes
Mashed Potatoes with Melted Brie
Twice-Baked Potatoes à l’Américaine, with fresh chopped bacon, melted brie and chives from the O’Vineyards herb garden
The second-to-last challenge in Katie’s Workshop involved learning which herbs go best with which cheeses. She found that some of the best pairings were sheep’s milk cheese with rosemary, and the brie with a sage leaf.
To finish “avec une petite douceur” (with a little touch of sweetness) — as Mom and Dad’s tastebuds could hardly hold out another minute — Chef Liz walked her through the process of making the perfect Tarte Tatin, a sort of carmelized apple upside down pie, if I may dare. This final challenge proved to be a difficult one: properly carmelizing sugar is no easy task, and neither is the scary-impressive-pie-flip-over step, but Katie pulled off these final stunts with flying colors.
Katie was very proud (and after surmounting the challenge, quite hungry too). The other guests around the table were delighted to taste the end result of Katie’s culinary escapade, accompanied with none other than Joe’s pairing of O’Vineyards delicious wine! Having personally experienced all of these dishes and many more delicious meals paired with O’Vineyards wines at the Winemaker’s Table, I can only say…
“Way to go, Chef!”
Way to Go, Chef!
This summer, O’Vineyards is celebrating the arrival of its newest wine, O’MG 2011, by extending the opportunity to all visitors to enjoy it before bottles go on sale outside of O’Vineyards later this fall.
The O’MG Summertime Special begins at 12pm with a winery tour and wine tasting, followed by a picnic basket lunch and half a bottle of our new wine O’MG per person. You are free to enjoy the picnic basket lunch on our sunny patio overlooking the vines. The price per guest is 35€ all inclusive. Please call or email ahead for reservations as limited space is available.
We want to take this opportunity to inform our readers that the five course meal at the Winemakers’ Table will be exclusively available at dinnertime until our harvest time. Thank you and see you soon!
Cette photo de Domaine O’Vineyards est fournie gracieusement par TripAdvisor
“Some Naked people came to pick up their wine last week, and we all had a blast!”
I admit it was somewhat alarming to hear these words coming from Liz during my first few days at O’Vineyards. I was going to have to live with these people for several weeks, so I needed an explanation. Luckily Ryan had previously posted about the Naked Wines Angels, who are the main actors in O’Vineyards’ new vineyard share program. One hundred “Angels” rented some of O’Vineyards vines and are paying Naked Winemakers Ryan and Joe O’Connell to see these vines through wine fruition. Now, the Naked Wines Angels are streaming in one by one to pick up their wine. If you are still confused, they are perfectly normal people–properly clothed and everything–they just went that extra mile because they really like our wine.
So, meet Michelle and David. They are Naked Angels. Liz and Joe had the pleasure of meeting Michelle and David (I unfortunately was not here yet) when they stayed at the B&B around two weeks ago. They enjoyed a tour of O’Vineyards and shared good times and good food around the Winemakers’ Table. As Michelle very poetically puts it in her TripAdvisor review: “We arrived strangers and left as friends.” They also reportedly arrived as fully clothed and sober angels, and left as…
“C’était une très agréable visite pour nous, surtout parce que nous n’étions pas les seuls à nous amuser–eux aussi!”
(It was a very enjoyable visit for us, especially since we were not the only ones having fun, [the O’Connells] too!)
This morning, I had the idea to reread my TripAdvisor review from when I first visited O’Vineyards back in September 2010. I was not surprised to rediscover my first impression of this place–it hadn’t changed one bit. Since day one of my current stay, I have been telling myself the same thing every day: the O’Connells have way too much fun making wine. Their joy and passion is contagious, too.
So we would like to take this opportunity to send out a special thanks to all the guests who have kindly left a review on the “Domaine O’Vineyards” TripAdvisor site. We greatly appreciate your praise, compliments, feedback and striking photos of our vineyard (see below for a few of our guests’ own snapshots). Above all, it helps us keep all the memories alive too!
Whether you stayed at our Bed and Breakfast, dined with us at our Winemaker’s table, or simply popped in for a tasting, we’d love to keep in touch through the TripAdvisor site. Donnez-nous de vos nouvelles…Don’t be a stranger!
Cette photo de Domaine O’Vineyards est fournie gracieusement par TripAdvisor
Cette photo de Domaine O’Vineyards est fournie gracieusement par TripAdvisor
Cette photo de Domaine O’Vineyards est fournie gracieusement par TripAdvisor
We had a great surprise during harvest. One of our friends dropped by with a crate of freshly picked mushrooms from the Malepere (southwest of Carcassonne and northwest of Limoux)! So in the midst of harvest chaos we had time to make some delicious mushrooms.
People around here know what mushrooms to pick, but even if you have doubts you can bring them to the pharmacy. French pharmacists will tell you what mushrooms are edible and which aren’t. How adorable is that?! Once you’re confident in your mushrooms, then you chop them up and toss them in the frying pan for just a bit. Some olive oil and garlic. Voila! Hopefully these photos make up for the fact that I don’t have the time to write much.
Enjoy.
Alternate names for these mushrooms
Cepes, Ceps, surenys, Cepes de Bordeaux (we don’t like that one much around here), porcino (means piglet in Italian), king bolete, penny bun. In German, it’s a stone mushroom (Steinpilz) and my favorite might be the Austrian Herrenpilz which feels a bit like saying Mr Mushroom or Gentleman’s mushroom.
There were also a few cepes bronzés in the batch (sometimes called Tête de nègre).
How to find us
Domaine O’Vineyards, located in the North Arrondissement of Carcassonne, is just minutes from the Carcassonne train station, the Medieval City, and the Carcassonne Airport.
GPS coordinates: 43.259622, 2.340387
O’Vineyards
Wine, Dine, Relax at our Boutique Vineyard
Unique thing to do in Carcassonne
Wine Cellar. Winery Visits. Wine Tasting.
Wine & Food Pairing
North Arrondissement of Carcassonne
885 Avenue de la Montagne Noire
11620 Villemoustaussou, France
Tel: +33(0) 630 189 910
Best by GPS.
Follow the signs to Mazamet/ Villemoustaussou using the D118. At the end of the last straight part of D118, you will come to a roundabout with the Dyneff gas station.
Take the exit towards Pennautier. Continue 500m to a small roundabout and go straight over.
Look out for the second road on your right, Avenue des Cévennes which curves up hill (about 1km) to Avenue de la Montagne Noire on the left.
At the last juction, bear left. the road sign “Ave de la Montagne Noire” (confusing as it seems to show a right turn)
After another 500m you will see our red brick color building in the middle of the vines.
