Inspired by some of my favorite musicians who often favored rural village tours over big city stages, we hit the road in rural England.  And I think it was a huge success. Our UK Villages Tour was short but awesome. It’s definitely a concept I want to pursue further!

What is the UK Villages Tour?

We used my importer’s website to find people that were organizing rural wine tastings in the UK, and I offered to show up in person.  This year was a quick trial run, and it went really well.  We spotted two tastings happening the same week in Oxfordshire and Cumbria and all I had to do was hop over on a RyanAir flight from Carcassonne to Stanstead.

These were tastings where the organizers had pooled money from the group and bought a large quantity of wine from Naked Wines already.  Compare that to other tastings where it is often up to the winemaker to furnish the wine, the structure, the organization, etc.   On the Villages Tour, people are already paying for wine and they are really appreciative that you’re coming, so they put up room and board and travel.

How did it go?

It went very very well.  But don’t take my word for it.

Here is photographic evidence:

Phil Hardy’s photo album of the Windemere trip.

Here are some reviews posted on Naked Wines’ site:

“Thanks for organizing such a good evening on Wednesday – he’s quite a character! I thought the wines were, overall, the best selection we have enjoyed at any of the Club’s meetings. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.”

“Last Wednesday’s club meeting was absolutely wonderful and Ryan was a very informative speaker. I learnt a lot more about wine making and had a very enjoyable evening. The wines were excellent, and not one that I was displeased with. Thank you for organizing it and a thank you to Ryan.”

“It was a great night! Ryan was not only knowledgeable and passionate, but very engaging and not too heavy for a Wednesday evening. His humour and humorous approach to his tasting notes and his anecdotal style were an ideal combination. Some of the wines too are definitely worth a bottle or several”

“Please can I adopt him!”

Read more about the Upton Village tasting on their very own blog.

One of my favorite reviews came from a customer who wasn’t totally converted on our wines.  You have to realize I’m one of the most expensive wines on Naked, and people really need a good reason to spend an extra 3 or 5 quid on a bottle of wine.  It has to be really special.  Well, one of the Angels had tasted our wine on its own and he only liked it as much as his other favorites on the site (which are less costly).  But our tasting on Lake Windemere allowed him to taste some of his favorites side by side with my wines.  And he had one of those aha moments!  There’s something to those O’Vineyards wines that makes them just a little different than the new world fruit bombs.  There’s something to it!  Hard to pinpoint!  Well, it was a very nice comment.

Why only 2 stops?

Because that’s all that we found.  I tried to do a thing near Edinburgh but it didn’t work out.  Most likely because it wasn’t a Naked Wines customer and thus much harder to communicate and motivate.   The Angels at Naked Wines are the best.  I hope next year we can line up 3 or 4 village tastings.  Make it a more legit tour.  If you think you can get some people together for a wine tasting next year, let me know!  I’d love to explore more of rural England.

Will I do it again?

Yes.  On the one hand, I had a lot of fun.  Lake Windemere was gorgeous.  A geology that, in some ways, reminds me of the south of France.  But with a lot more grass and sheep.  Presumably, way more rain too, but we had considerably sunny days.   The beer was also delicious.  Great pubs.  Cool experience.  Good company.  Upton, the village in Oxfordshire, was also beautiful and the group of 40+ people at the village tasting had a lot of fun going through my wines and a couple wines from Benjamin Darnault.  I also got to spend a day in Oxford, checked out some of the sights and popped into the Ashmolean.  A big thanks to Ivy and Doug for being such wonderful hosts in the Lake District.  And a big thanks to my hosts and chauffeurs, Frankie and Kevin Jacklin, who made the whole trip a delight.  So I would absolutely do this again because it was a lot of fun.

It also doesn’t hurt to mention the spike in sales on Naked Wines.  Naked ran a promotion on a mixed case of my wines right before I came to the UK, selling 50 cases of 6 bottles at a discounted rate.  And on top of those 300 bottles, Naked sold another 1600£ of my wines at full price this month.  They have some pretty intense cashback offers, so it’s hard to pin down an exact number of pounds that changed hands, but the point is that this vacation of mine was very interesting financially.  And my Reserve which comes in at a whopping 30.99£ on the site is rated a 4.8/5   That’s a big deal for this customer base that is VERY value-conscious and very demanding at higher prices.

There’s also talk of the Upton Village Club taking a big trip to my vineyard one day!  That could be a lot of fun too!

This is the second part of a series on O’Vineyards wine tastings we held in the UK this year. You can read about the first part in my post about the Languedoc Outsiders Tasting in London.

–This is part of an ongoing series about the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference–

Pretty busy around the winery so I haven’t had time to write much about the EWBC. But here is some unedited video of an exclusive winery and vineyard tour we did at Iby in the Burgenland.

The Austrian Wine press trips had the great idea of splitting us all up into small groups and sending us off with different winemakers. We all had totally different experiences and we’ll all get to write about them differently. Very very fun. Plus I just love meeting the producer and tasting the wines with him or her. It’s the way wine was meant to be shared and it’s a welcome break from these long table tasting marathons of 50 different Blaufränkisch in 60 minutes. *gasp*

I also enjoyed the excellent company of three lovely ladies on this trip. Olga Mosina (a Russian wine blogger), Onneca (a Barcelona punk who I believe makes or represents a delicious cava), and Mariëlla Beukers who has already published her thoughts in Dutch. But there’s also a translate button for English. 🙂

More to come later when I have time to write write write type type type.  For now, let it be known, the wines were delicious.

I just got to visit Chateau Margaux on their first full day of the 2010 harvest.  This is sort of a dream and it’s hard to believe that it really happened.  It was an authentic and intimate glimpse into the belly of one of the world’s most prestigious estates, one of the four (five if you count Rothschild twice) premier grand cru estates in Bordeaux.

As you know O’Vineyards grows Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the Cabardes region of France.  So we’re always talking about the potential of these Bordeaux varietals in the Atlantic Corridor of the Languedoc.  So it’s an exceptional opportunity to see how Chateau Margaux (arguably the most famous producer of Cabernet Sauvignon in the world) harvests and vinifies.

That first photo up top is a partial shot of one of their TWO cellars.  They age the wine there for a full year (so that’s the 2009 being aged in the photo) and then they move it to the second year cellar.  Now why am I talking about large wine cellars?  Those aren’t unique by any means as large wine cellars exist around the world, but I think it’s a good place to start talking about Chateau Margaux.  While it’s very well-recognized that this estate produces some of the world’s most desired wines (the 2009’s are hitting 1000 Euro / bottle), what a lot of people don’t realize is how many bottles they make of it.  To produce that quality level on such a large scale is truly a wonder of the world.

Down south, we have some cult wines and some famous wines, but production tends to be very small.  I’ll flatter myself through a brief comparison.  I like to think my wine is very good, but I have to acknowledge that I could never scale it up to produce thousands of cases per year.

So how on earth do they scale up the production of this quality level?  Well, they have two identical harvest lines bringing in pallets of small fruit cases full of hand-harvested grapes.  The small crates full of grape bunches run up a short conveyor belt.  A person  empties the crates onto a sorting line where bunches that show any sign of rot are removed (although I spent a long time up there without seeing any which indicates a good harvest and/or a talented team of harvesters who only pick the good stuff).

The conveyor belt drops the grape bunches into a machine I don’t know the name of photographed here (but the front of it says “VINOCLEAN”).  It is some sort of very fancy destemmer that takes the grapes off of their stems very nicely and bounces them down to another conveyor belt. One more machine that crushes the grapes very slightly before they are dropped into a stainless steel container.

This container is brought to the winery by futuristic pallet jacks with built in scales so they know how much tonnage goes into each tank.  The stainless steel container is hoisted above by a winch and the grapes are carefully dropped into the tanks from above.

As the pallet jacks wisked past us, Marie from Chateau Margaux reached in and grabbed some 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon for us to taste.  I get to taste before Parker now! ;D

And then there’s the whole process of fermentation where they are truly dedicated to maintaining the high reputation of their estate.  Needless to say, I took a lot of notes and borrowed a couple of the less expensive ideas for O’Vineyards.

And then we had a really educational tasting of the 2009 and a few other wines followed by the most amazing meal in a very elegant dining room of the Chateau proper.

I will talk more about this visit when I’m not so busy with my own harvest, but I thought it would be fun to share this technical side of the Chateau Margaux harvest intake while my brain is still in harvest mode.  It is rare to get such an unfettered glimpse into the process of a legendary wine estate.  Thanks again to Paul Pontallier for his excellent welcome at Chateau Margaux. And also a huge thanks to Barry and Stuart for making this visit possible.  What a fantastic experience!

I went camping at the Vinolodge set up in Virgile Joly’s vineyard. Always accused of Blair Witch Style, hand-held camerawork, I was really looking forward to using the camp atmosphere to do a Blair Witch parody. . . But it was actually pretty hard to pretend to be scared or uncomfortable in any way. The tents are simply outfitted, but the gorgeous open space and chic furnishing make it feel pretty posh. And reliance on renewable energy doesn’t prevent the tents from feeling blinged out from time to time with the LED mood lighting and fully-stocked wine bar.

So, enjoy my Blair Witch moment. Even if its pretty chimeric. It was just too hard to feel scared or uncomfortable in such a nice tent.

While the tents are really well integrated into the surrounding vines and local wildlife, you really have all the amenities of traditional eco-tourism projects.  I was pretty impressed with how much space we have especially.  This tent is bigger than a lot of hotel rooms in France.  And it has its own porch, foyer, bathroom, etc. almost entirely powered by the solar cells and windmill outside the tent.

To take the two photos below, I just had to turn around.  I hope that conveys how closely juxtaposed luxury and nature are in these tents.  You really just have a nice hotel room in the middle of a bunch of trees and vines and shrub and pheasants and everything else the Terrasses du Larzac has to offer.

Why this project is important

I’ve talked a bit about how comfortable it is. What a nice vacation it would make… but with all that advertising fluff aside, I’m most impressed by the long term implications of the vinolodge project.  The potential applications for winemakers and nature-lovers in general are pretty astounding, largely due to the ZERO impact promise of the lodge.

Beyond being one more way to go glamping (glam camping), the Vinolodge offers an innovative way to drop a tent into the middle of any natural environment without impacting the place permanently. Even dirty hippies in sleeping bags have SOME impact on nature. Experienced campers will know that this is referred to as “low-impact” camping.  But low impact is not as cool as NO impact.  How can a big tent structure have a smaller impact than a hippie in a sleeping bag?  I feel like I’m going to have to explain this … and there’s just no avoiding the one big example.   Oh boy. I guess it was only a matter of time before I start talking about poop on my vineyard’s blog.

A camper creates waste. And even the old “dig a hole and bury your business” solution has an impact. It’s low impact, and you can wipe with leaves and a variety of other gross stuff to lower your impact more, but you’re still leaving a lasting mark on the environs.  But the vinolodge tent has its own waste processing and storage. Whenever they want, they can decide to break down the tents and within a couple days the whole camp has disappeared leaving NO permanent mark on the environment. Not even poop buried everywhere around the tent.

This means that the tents allow for campers to go where even hardcore low-impact types weren’t allowed before. Like my vineyard. Or a well-protected national park. Or remote locations after natural disasters. The vinolodge (frequently referred to as a geolodge) quickly inspires a lot of important big picture ideas. It goes far beyond the long list of novelty eco tourism that ranges from cramped tree houses to glorified camping car parking lots.

What does it mean specifically for vineyards and the Languedoc?

I think that it offers an unprecedented access to the terroir that we like to brag about so often. A wine drinker who stays in one of the vinolodge tents becomes familiar with the local flaura and fauna in a way that is simply extraordinary. You can hear things at night, you can smell things in the morning, that you just don’t get access to unless you live on a vineyard. Heck, a lot of winemakers would benefit from staying in their own vines once or twice as many of us live quite a ways away from our vineyards.

Imagine having 10-12 of these lodges set up throughout the Languedoc Roussillon. A person could choose to stay at a series of vineyards and really discover the nuances between the microclimates, soil topography, what goes bump in the night, etc. I think that people who really are keen on learning the difference between one terroir and another will appreciate this first-hand access and experience. And I wouldn’t really be comfortable taking regular campers in year round… but the vinolodge makes it feasible and even attractive.

In a few days, I’ll be headed to Saint Saturnin to sleep amidst the vines. I’ll admit I’ve done this a couple times at my place in a sleeping bag.  It’s more fun to talk about it than to actually do it.  Because the ground is tough and stony.  And the nights at O’Vineyards get very chilly (which allow us that freshness which differentiates us from so much of the south of France).   But I’m looking forward to this upcoming trip, because I’ll be vine camping in luxury.

Vinolodge set up a bunch of tents in Virgile Joly’s organic vineyard.  The tents are self contained with fully functioning bathrooms, water, and I think some amount of electricity.  I mean, you can’t necessarily run a microwave or whatever.  But you can plug in your phone, laptop, lamps, etc.

Now this is a sneak peak, so I’ll be pretty limited in what I’m allowed to show you.  A lot of the design of these tents is apparently highly protected and patented information.  And the project won’t launch officially until May 2011.   But I hope to film an episode in the tents and give you a glimpse at the inside and outside so you can judge for yourself how well Vinolodge delivers on their promise of eco-friendly, luxury tourism.

At the Salon d’Aniane, I spoke to Virgile and got a sneak peak at the sneak peak. ;D  He said that it was really cool to sleep in one of the tents.  You’re very comfortable.  As comfortable as your own bed.  And then you wake up in the vines.  But really IN THE VINES. A comfortable, luxurious alternative to my rocky sleeping bag experiences in the past.

Once the project is up and running, there’s also supposed to be tents devoted to a low energy restaurant, a reception area, a wine tasting tent, etc.

I’m not going to lie.  I think my hopes are TOO high.  The lodges look really chic and they promise a whole lot of amenities like air conditioning, and a fully stocked wine bar.  It seems like it would be impossible to do that and lighting and plumbing and everything else in the press release, and still be energy efficient, self contained units.  Like maybe I’m going to get there and find out I have to pedal a bicycle to flush the toilet or something.  ;D

We shall see soon enough!

VinoCamp Paris:séance sur l’oenotourisme. Je reviendrai d’une manière un peu plus éditoriale avec mes opinions sur ce qui a été dit. Mais pour l’instant, je voulais au moins télécharger l’enregistrement inédit de la discussion qui a eu lieu à VinoCamp Paris sur l’oenotourisme et le tourisme à distance / la réalité augmentée.

Partie 1 de “Oenotourisme, l’Internet et la réalite augmentée”:

Partie 2 de “Oenotourisme, l’Internet et la réalite augmentée”:

Merci à tous les participants, et spécialement à ceux qui m’ont aidé à déplacer la camera pendant toute la séance.

More coverage of VinoCamp Paris:

• Session on Winery Interaction
• Session on Geolocalisation and cartography

I took the night train to Paris again for another round of Parisian wine tastings.

On Friday afternoon and evening, I’ll be tasting with my favorite Parisian supplier, Crus.  I think Gregoire, who organizes a lot of the Paris BarCamps will be coming in with some of his gang.  And a lot of other assorted Paris friends will attend.  YOU should come to if you live here.  We’ll have lots of bottles open and we’ll eventually head off to Mr Lounge for the after party.  Should be fun.  Mr. Lounge has new ownership so I’m excited to meet them and see what they’ve done with the place.

And then on Saturday, I will spend the whole day at VinoCamp Paris. It’s the first BarCamp in France devoted entirely to wine.  We’ll discuss lots of issues (to be determined), and eventually drink lots of wine.  I lugged 24 bottles of O’Vineyards wine on the train and through the Paris Metro so we’re going to have a party.  Also, other notorious winemakers such as Vicky Wine and Benoit Tarlant (among others!) will be pouring their goods after the brainstorming workshops.

And now a gratuitous DISCOBITCH music video with Tarlant Champagne bottles in the background (because what is the point of hanging out with Champagne guys if it you can’t be in music videos?)

So YouTube (which is owned by Google) has a tool that lets you make movies out of your Google searches. It’s pretty primitive, but it’s a fun way to spend a few minutes. errrr.. scratch that, 35 minutes. Damn it. Now I have to go back to work.

Oh well, here is the story of a person trying to research cool wine related stuff near Carcassonne. And only getting one result over and over.  No, I’m not referring to trip advisor. It’s O’Vineyards. The best indie wine estate to visit near Carcassonne.

Search terms used are:

1. “wine tasting around carcassonne”
2. “meet a winemaker near carcassonne”
3. “visit a winery near carcassonne”
4. “best wines cite de carcassonne”
5. “make wine around carcassonne”
6. “vineyard holiday in carcassonne”

If there’s a message to take away from this video, it’s that people aren’t maximizing SEO about wine tourism yet in the Languedoc.  The post that turned up in most of these searches was written last Sunday.  Gites and Chambres search engine optimization is locked down, but there are tons of wine keywords that are still up for grabs.  Especially in English.  And Carcassonne is a good example because it receives millions of anglophone tourists every year. And the word on the street is that some of them drink wine.

;D

I know that you know that I lift wires at this time of year.  But you know what else I do?  Answer a lot of questions from tourists. It seems like I get at least four or five emails each week about travel plans around Carcassonne and in the Languedoc Roussillon in general.

My emails tend to be very personalized based on what languages you speak, where you’re flying into, whether you have a car or not, etc.   It’s fun setting people up with really good trips, but it takes a lot of time.   And sometimes, people don’t really need super-personalized advice.  If you want a few wine travel ideas around Carcassonne, you might just want to check out Wink Lorch’s Wine Travel Guide – Ideal One-Day Itinerary.

Wink tends to pick places that are equipped to greet you in English.  And for these short one or two day trips, the estates often have restaurants or rooms to stay in so you don’t need to spend half of your wine holiday in a car looking for a poorly marked country road.

The One-Day and Two-Day trips around Carcassonne have really good ideas. Like a short run down to Limoux where you can visit small indie estates and then go to Gayda for a nice meal and a place to stay.  That trip’s especially nice if you have a spouse or travel partner that only drinks white wine.  Or you could do a quick jump north and visit Pennautier who also have a restaurant, rooms, etc.  I would naturally add that while you’re already in Pennautier, you should hop over to O’Vineyards . . . OF COURSE. 🙂   I’m just a few kilometers away and I’d really love to see you.

Also, if you’re planning your trip on a Sunday, good luck. You’re best off emailing me.  ryan@ovineyards.com

Anyway, I like Wink’s guide and appreciate the work of her head Languedoc researcher Richard James.

And I’m going to steal this idea of an ideal one-day itinerary if you’re looking to spend a day around Carcassonne or if you are flying in with RyanAir and have a day to spare before driving to your next destination.

Ideal One-Day Itinerary

MORNING

Leave Carcassonne, going northwest on the N113 that sort of follows the Canal du Midi.  Check out O’Vineyards in Villemoustaussou.  33 (0)6 30 18 99 10

Winery visits include young wine tasting from tanks as well as barrel tastings.  Call ahead and we can do a table d’hote where you eat with the winemaker and family.  It’s a lot of fun.

AFTERNOON

Then you have two options.  You either lounge around the vineyard all day drinking delicious wine and soaking in the countryside vistas, or you can get back in the car and head to another destination.

Possible destinations include:

• Chateau Pennautier – Big, fancy winemakers in Pennautier
• Chateau Brau – Organic winemakers in Villemoustaussou (call ahead)
• La Cité de Carcassonne – visit ramparts, have a coffee, just chill out. Whatever you choose to do, you’re doing it in a medieval castle!! How cool is that?

It’s been a week or so now and I watched a great video recap of what went down in the Access Zone at the London International Wine Fair.  As you can see, I’m not the only one talking about social media and new technology.  Quite the contrary, I was just a small part of a huge new space at the LIWF and I’m really proud to have been surrounded by so much innovation, excellence and friendliness.

So this video from the LIWF will give you a little taste of the events that were programmed in the space and if you want more information about anything, you’ll likely find it on Catavino’s site.