Patron Saint of Wine

Saint Vincent Celebration in Carcassonne

“We do good with very good,” was the motto of Prosper Montagne, master French chef and culinary writer, recognized as one of the most celebrated talents of French cuisine.

Club Prosper Montagne is unique. It brings together all areas of Food and Drink: butchers, bakers, chefs, chocolatiers, farmers, restaurateurs, caterers, winemakers,… all are committed to develop quality products.

The club radiates throughout France with presidents by region . Its scope of action never stops expanding. Internationally, delegations are also present in Germany, Belgium, Hungary, Japan, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Alphonse Caravaca, President of Prosper Montagné Carcassonne put together a great event, celebrating the Patron Saint of Grape growers & Winemakers with a delicious private 350 sold out Lunch.

On Saturday January 19th, festivities will start at 11:00 with Deputy Mayor of Carcassonne leading the parade. Participants will be guided through the streets of the Bastide St Louis to the Church of St. Vincent where will be held the blessing of the wine!
Truffles supplied by Philippe Barriere will be the hi-light of the Celebration. Lunch will be served by a young and talented caterer.

The five winemakers representing the Region are:
Joe O’Connell, O’Vineyards,
Raymond Julien, Chateau Mirausse,
Jean Louis Poudou, Domaine de La Tour Boisée,
Domaine de l’Horte,
Antech Limoux.

Alphonse called a meeting to verify the final preparation…we drank and ate as much as we talked!

Wall of Fame. Part 3.

Thank you for the pictures and reviews!
Mel & Paul Farrer,
Samantha Sunderwood & Andy,
and Louisa Wordlage.

Two nights for two persons

Value 580€. Buy now and get our special offer 480€

Two nights at O’Vineyards B&B.
Spacious room with views on vines, mountains or Carcassonne City lights
A welcome bottle of wine
O’Vineyards winery visit
Taste young wines from tanks and barrels. Taste older vintages in bottles
Enjoy Liz’s five course meal at the winemaker’s table both evenings, wine included
Three bottles of O’ wines to go

Offer good any day of the week, until February 2014

VineShare:

Value: 790€ each.
Limited number of VineShares offered at the price of 590€ each

30 bottles of O’ Wines
One night at our Bed and Breakfast
A full tour vineyard & winery visit for two
Taste young wines from tanks and barrels. Taste older vintages in bottles
A Winemaker workshop with Joe or a Cooking workshop with Liz
A six course dinner for two with many wines

Book before March 30th 2013 and get this special discount

Offer good any day of the week, until February 2014

To Redeem:

Please call us at 33 (0)6 30 18 99 10
Or email us at ryan@ovineyards.com

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.”

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

When I asked Ryan to explain his choice of name for the new O’Vineyards wine OMG, he replied: “I’m an O’Connell. So it’s O’Vineyards, O’Syrah, O’MG, hahaha”

O’Vineyards recently began having visitors taste their new wine called OMG 2011, and your reactions have been promising. For those of you who missed that memo, OMG stands for Oh My God in online communication culture – though if you’re reading this blog, then you surely already knew that.

OMG 2011, new O'Vineyards wine

We have been fortunate to hear professional opinions too, including the Maitre Sommelier of Carcassonne’s Hôtel de la Cité, Georges Gracia. In Georges’s words, OMG has the following characteristics:

—

Eye.

: The New Arrival at O’Vineyards: OMG 2011

color: purple, black cherry

Nose.
1st nose: red berries; slightly spicy; la garrigue (thyme, laurel, Mediterranean spices)

2nd nose: combination of fruits, prunes and kirsh; beautiful intensity; fairly complex

Mouth.

Freshness, spices, thyme, bay leaves, pepper; beautiful balance

This is a nice aromatic wine that can adapt to a variety of different dishes. It can be drunk at room temperature or slightly chilled, in any season.

Fruit, spices, with a silky tannic wine with Bordeaux-like charisma

—

OMG is available for purchase exclusively at O’Vineyards for now, but will be available elsewhere this coming fall. More details to come.

“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.

Michelle and David, Naked Angels

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!