“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…

We were interviewed for Food and Wine Talk, a radio program based out of Miami and hosted by Simone Diament and Carole Kotkin.

Winemaker interview for Domaine O’Vineyards

This was an event organized about a year ago by the CIVL and they had a little winemaker dinner with some American press.  Since our wines had been selected for the US Ambassador tour, we were poked to do this very fun dinner in the medieval castle city of Carcassonne.  There was another larger producer in the Malpere present, so it was a fun western-Languedoc dinner.  Not enough focus on the Malpere and Cabardes, two Languedoc appelations with very peculiar varietals available to them (eg. Merlot, Cabernet)

Here’s the full article about Carole’s Languedoc travels.

I just got back from a long two weeks of tastings around Western Europe. We went as far north as Normandy (Cherbourg) and we went all the way down to Logrono in the Rioja region of Spain. We drove past a lot of vineyards on our tour, and I have to make a confession. I love the Languedoc.

I cannot deny the beauty and character of every wine country we drove through. I can’t deny that there are talented winemakers everywhere we traveled.

But I have to admit that I love my region, the Languedoc-Roussillon, more than any other place I’ve visited.

Every beautiful place we visited sort of made me miss the Languedoc a little more.

What makes us different? Obviously, there’s a great terroir. But the wonderful thing about terroir is that EVERY wine country has its own unique terroir. Ours isn’t necessarily BETTER than the others. It’s something else that draws me to the Languedoc.

I think it’s the opportunity. The Languedoc-Roussillon is one of the largest wine producing regions in the world. We’re responsible for something like one third of France’s wine. And a decade ago, we were producing 10% of the GLOBAL wine supply just in this one area. But despite this vast size and importance, we are one of the least recognized areas.

Well I’m going to change that. Check out www.love-that-languedoc.com where I’ll be running around the Languedoc-Roussillon with my camera. I’m going to be interviewing everybody I can find. We’re going to show the Internet and the New World that the Languedoc is a vibrant place full of opportunity and energy. If you’re reading this, I’m very grateful that you’ve been following my vineyard adventures. But NOW, I’m hoping you’ll want to follow my Languedoc adventures as we rediscover every wonderful part of the Languedoc-Roussillon.

Pigeage is more than just a funny word with indecipherable vowel distribution. It’s a way of life. For weeks, all of our wines are going through an extended fermentation where the grapes and grape juice are turning into delicious red wine. This is a critical period known as maceration when the wine will draw its best qualities from the skin and the seeds in the tank. The undamaged grapes of harvest time impart their best qualities to the juice which will one day soon be fine wine.

But it’s not smooth sailing, my friends. The tanks we hold the grapes in contain 80 to 100 hectoliters (converted to nonmetric: a lot) of grapes. And the pristine purple marbles that fall into the vat are crushed and torn asunder by the chemical forces at work when yeasts ferment the juice. What’s more, there’s a byproduct to all this fermenting: CO2. The Carbon dioxide rises to the top of the vat like bubbles in soda and they will lift the majority of the skin and seeds to the top, forming a thick hard cap.

Two or three times a day depending on where we are in the fermentation (determined by measuring the density and temperature of the wine in the cuve). This is hard. It’s a struggle to push the grapes back down into the juice. Especially the first time. Especially the first hole. That first puncture is rough, but we’ve gotta’ do it!

I’ve been looking for excuses to push back the daily pigeage ritual to give my tired arms a rest. My finely tuned ability to procrastinate led me to make a video about pigeing. And now, in an effort to avoid the afternoon pige, I’m writing a blog post about pigeing.

Now you can learn the ins and outs. See the tools I use. Learn the theory and strategies that I usually ignore. You too can use this blog post as a way to not do the work you should probably be doing right now.

Behold punch downs:

Wine punch down – Pigeage

oh, music by Phunt Your Friends available for free download at songfight.org

I’ve been back in Tampa a couple days now and I’m starting to miss mom’s cooking. But it’s good to be in the city that raised me, checking out the old stomping grounds and living in the house I was in before we started this crazy vineyard thing. For those who don’t know, I’m from Tampa so this is where the wine’s marketing and distribution is headquartered for the time being.

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Home, Sweet-Mother-of-@#*!, Home.

[[VIDEO REMOVED]]

The video isn’t working entirely right… I’ll have to get my mom to reupload it. Regardless, that’s a glimpse of the house my parents built before going into wine. They made the houses like they make wines WAY BIGGER THAN MOST PEOPLE WOULD EVER EXPECT.

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Anyway, I’m in Tampa and I’m ready to start selling wine. A lot of new contacts from the Sarasota Wine Festival. I met David and Deb Hunt from Hunt Cellars, several of the family member at Stanley Lambert including (Jim Lambert, self-proclaimed wannabe winemaker), the lovely family behind Silkwood Wines, and the Michael half of Michael-David Winery (who make Earthquake, Incognito, Pride, 7 Deadly Zins and many many more). They were all fantastic people and I will be keeping in touch with each of them.

I also got to snoop a little behind the scenes, sneaking around the service corridors of the Ritz Carlton, salvaging floral arrangements from the hotel’s trash, and pouring more than a thousand samples in three days. I even got invited to an after-party thrown by one of the bigger distributors and it was fun drinking behind (what some refer to as) enemy lines. At the end of so much good wine, everybody can be good friends.

We spent most of the day doing soutirages on some of the Syrah for the 2007 Reserve. It had a lot of lies (that’s pronounced leez and has nothing to do with obfuscating the truth) and it was exceptionally important to make sure that this grape deposit should be separated from the wine at this time.

We also took advantage of this move to put some of the barrels in the center of the room on that new oxoline shelving I was bragging about a couple days ago. It took a long time, but it should be easier on the remaining barrels we have to go through.

More to come!

I just celebrated my 23rd birthday at the beginning of the month and after an incredibly busy pair of weeks in Florida, I flew back to the vineyard. I am currently typing from my office above the winery and I am excited to announce that I finally got around to making a short vineyard video. Hopefully, I’ll keep these coming as a web series on O’Vineyards that can shed some light on some of the cool things we get to do, the way we tend to grapes and wine, our love for this work and this area, all the sweet toys I get to play with, etc.

This installment is on a topic I’m very excited about. I’ve been gone since crush at the end of 2007. In my absence, my parents installed a brand new oxoline system to shelve our barrels. This actually sounds a lot like an ad for them, but I’m not getting paid. (We should look into the sponsorship opportunities, but) This is just a friendly look into one of the cool new gadgets I get to use.

For people who can’t see the video cause they’re at work or on dialup or somesuch:
My barrels used to be stacked on top of each other which is the way it’s been done for a long time. Once they’re full, they’re exceptionally heavy and it’s a little difficult reaching the bunghole (that’s the hole in the barrel, not the naughty part of your body). The shelving system uses space age innovations like wheels and tubes to shelve each barrel independently. This makes the hole accessible, makes it possible to turn the barrel around while full with minimal effort, and turns the difficult process of emptying the last bits of the barrel as easy as turning it upside down. I’m sort of surprised it took centuries of winemaking before an affordable shelf with wheels was invented, but at least we have it now.