A little last minute, but I decided to have a party on Monday in the middle of the day.  I’m not expecting hundreds of people, but if you can tear yourself away from work (or your relaxing vacation), come to O’Vineyards and join me for Sud de France’s SYNCHRONIZED GLOBAL TASTING in commemoration of their 4th birthday.

They sent kits of wine to 50 different people around the world. And they’ll be running tastings with all sorts of journalists and wine lovers at the Maisons du Languedoc in New York City, Shanghai, London, Milan, etc.  And we’ll all be tweeting and blogging and video conferencing and all sorts of nonsense.  So tune in on June 21st. Wine is going to be tasted.

And when we run out of the preselected wines Sud de France sent me, we will drink other wines from the Sud de France.

If you cannot come, please do your best to go out and find a bottle from the Languedoc Roussillon and open it on June 21st!  With good friends, if they’re around!

The tasting starts at 11 AM but you can come before or after.  If you know my mom, you realize that there will be food.

Here is an events page for the tasting (but it is not an events page for my party. It is the GLOBAL events page).

All tweets should use #WorldTastingSync and/or #SudDeFrance

We are very proud to discover that Tamlyn Currin, a writer at JancisRobinson.com, has included us in a review of some of the top winemaking “Estranhièrs” in the Languedoc-Roussillon.

We’re in very good company and this is the kind of content that makes you want to subscribe to Jancis’ purple pages.  It’s a great compilation of winemakers for people who are eager to discover the amazing diversity of the Languedoc Roussillon.

Tamlyn has also written some of my favorite reviews for my wines to date.  The Mojo has “sassy red berry fruit” (Awesome. I’ll be using that a lot.)  The Syrah has “Damson by the bucket load” (That’s a type of plum. One that we actually grow on the vineyard.)

And the Proprietor’s Reserve review goes back and forth between long, narrative sentences and sharp, captivating notes. The review matches the wine.  I’m very proud of my parents and me. 🙂

O’Vineyards, Proprietor’s Reserve 2006 Cabardès 16.5+ Drink 2010-2015

Six barrels of Cabernet Sauvignon, 10 barrels of Syrah and 12 barrels of Merlot. Fermented and aged in new French oak for 18-20 months.

A perfume that made me close my eyes, just to breathe it in. Sweet damson, spiced dried fruit, figs and wet tea leaves. Rich and chocolatey, with plenty of dark plum tang and cinnamon. This tastes much more American than Languedoc – something that is more or less what I have noticed in all their wines. Very long. Velvety. Hedonistic. (TC) 13.5%

Toward the end, I wonder if I’m really making American-styled wines and whether or not making new world wines is mutually exclusive with being true to the Languedoc terroir. But I don’t want to dwell on that right now.  I want to dwell on velvety hedonism.  I really love these reviews and I’m so happy to be featured on Jancis’ site. She wrote a lot of the reference material that got my dad and me into wine in the first place. And Tamlyn is a charm.

The rest of our reviews have been incorporated into the website for each wine: Mediterranean Mojo, O’Syrah, Trah Lah Lah, Les Americains, and Proprietor’s Reserve.

To discover the other estates reviewed in the article “Estranhièrs in Languedoc-Roussillon“, you’ll have to subscribe to the Purple Pages!   You’ll get to read about some of my good friends in the Languedoc and Roussillon.  The estates included in the reviews are Rives Blanques, Domaine Treloar,  Domaine Ste-Croix, Domaine Jones, Chateau D’Angles (which we actually considered buying in 2004!), and Chateau des Estanilles (who has a long overdue Love That Languedoc episode in the pipes).

I took clips from George Frêche’s speech at ViniSud to explain why he should adore my website.  The video’s in French, so I wrote up the whole thing in English for you!

Six reasons Georges Frêche loves Love That Languedoc.

1. “You don’t need seniority to be good. You just need to be smart”I get a lot of crap because I’m only 24, I’ve only been a winemaker 5 years, and the website isn’t even 4 months old. Yet I want to come in and change everything like some inexperiencd upstart.  Well, Georges knows that you don’t need seniority!  Heck, there are NO fourteenth generation web designers.  Also, I think a large part of our success on Love That Languedoc can be contributed to our cooperation with individuals and groups that DO bring some wisdom and seniority to the table.
2. “Take what works and throw out what doesn’t work.”I know, right!  This sort of try everything and keep what works is founded in an empiricism that I can really get into.  I didn’t know how Love That Languedoc would play out (and I still don’t! It could go a lot of different directions!)  But I knew that I couldn’t wade through the administrative back channels, building a project through conventional means.  I just launched. And it worked.  So… he’s gotta keep me now, right? 😀
3. “It’s our fault if we’re in a crisis.  We are the masters of our fate.”Georges comes down on winemakers a little hard on this point.  But let’s say that I agree that collectively, we are responsible for the crisis.  It’s not you or me or that guy… but all of us.  And I also agree that we are masters of our fate.  The entire wine industry (not just Languedoc-Roussillon or France) leaves its fate in the hands of journalists and critics.  A few exceptions exist.  Most of the exceptions are massive corporations that have found ways to leverage their size into selling power.  Very few winemaking regions have a public image that they control.  Or our idea of control is to send press releases all the time.  But today, it’s our responsibility to cultivate an audience and give our message to them directly!  (e.g. Love That Languedoc)
4. “Manifestations turn the majority of people against our message by annoying them.”This just reminds me of my wine-alerts project.  We have to get our winemakers to take our infamous street-blocking manifestations to the web.  In the real world, only the French see our manifs and it just annoys most of them.  We alienate.   On the web, we can manifest with a positive message with our clients overseas.  That is so much better than alienating/annoying your neighbors and tourists.
5. “Today, we need to be on the GLOBAL market.”If you want to talk global, you have to talk web.  It’s just stupid simple.  If you have the budget to put billboards and print ads and Maisons du Languedoc everywhere, that’s great.  You should totally continue doing that.  However you should ALSO do the web thing which costs like pennies by comparison.  And if you have no budget but you have fifteen minutes per week, it’s time to start going online.  There are people around the world who will listen to you.  And that’s Love That Languedoc.  I want to bring wine from the region to monitors around the world. And it’s working. So… you gotta love me, right?
6. “Politics bedamned, we need smart people.”I bet you thought I was going to say I’m super smart.  But that is not my point.  Freche says he needs smart PEOPLE, not just one smart person.  Love That Languedoc is succeeding because it brings together tons of smart people.  There are smart people in this region and they have opened their doors to this new project because they see the potential power of communicating our message to the world!  If I have convinced you that Georges Freche loves Love That Languedoc, or if I’ve convinced YOU to Love That Languedoc, please please please visit the website and talk about it to all the smart people you know.  Link that thing up.