TripAdvisor users who look for “Things to Do” in the Languedoc Roussillon region are presented with a top 3 attractions list, and Domaine O’Vineyards is the number 1 attraction on that list!  We also placed #1 on the complete list of 174 things to do in Languedoc Roussillon.

What is TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is the world’s largest travel review site.  Anybody with the Internet can log in and review attractions, accommodation, restaurants and so on.  A lot of hotels and B&B places study their tripadvisor reviews religiously because your rating on this site can make or break a business.

How did we get listed

A very friendly Irishman took our winery tour in 2010 and he had a really good time.  After the wine tasting, he told us that he would give us a really good TripAdvisor review, and I had no idea what he was talking about.  On June 15, 2010 (just 14 months ago) this friendly Irishman posted a review of O’Vineyards on the site.  We had no engagement with TripAdvisor at all.  No cost.  We just kept operating our tours as we always did and suddenly we got this cool feedback on a review site that, at a glance, seemed like a pretty big deal.

A couple of months later,  I was nearing the end of a tour when somebody mentioned that this was as awesome as promised on TripAdvisor.  Now that was interesting!  So we started asking everybody how they found out about us.  Today, one year later, we see that TripAdvisor is one of our best sources of clients.  They’re ahead of the Office of Tourism and tied with all the local B&Bs, cottage rentals, and hotels that we work with (combined).  That’s an outstanding statistic!

And it’s a self-enforcing feedback loop.  The clients we get from TripAdvisor tend to know exactly what to expect because of the level of detail in the reviews.  That means they are easier to please because they have realistic and informed expectations.  And then they go back and review us on TripAdvisor, further adding to the detail available on the site and increasing our rating.  So in just one year, we’ve become the number one attraction in the entire Languedoc Roussillon!

Additionally, the feedback we receive from the site has not been empty praise.  By listening to people’s reviews, we actually learned what people like most about our tours (and by deduction what parts people didn’t really care about).  We were able to shift our efforts to emphasize the elements that people like most.  I’ll write about this more in the future, but it’s basically the subject of my who visits vineyards post.

What’s next?

I think it’s a travesty that I’m one of the only vineyards listed on TripAdvisor.

One of my guests this year (coincidentally, somebody who found us through TripAdvisor) suggested that I start getting vineyards and domaines onto TA and helping them use the site.  So that’s our next big step.  After harvest, I’m going to see how many Languedoc Roussillon vineyards we can get on the site.  With something like 3000 wineries in the region, I’ve got my work cut out for me!

Carcassonne and the surrounding area are very popular travel destinations because of the charm, character and history of the region.  Rather than staying at a cookie-cutter hotel when you visit Carcassonne, consider taking advantage of some of the incredibly unique accommodations available in the area.

Obviously if you’re looking for holiday accommodation on a vineyard, I highly recommend visiting me at O’Vineyards!  But vineyards aren’t the only cool place to stay while you’re in Carcassonne.

You can spend a night floating down the Canal du Midi.  Or sleep inside a medieval castle!  Gypsy caravans?  Vintage Airstream trailers?  If you want to go further afield in the Languedoc Roussillon, you can find…  Country yurts?  Treehouses?  Glam Camping?

With all of these options, you don’t have to have to stick to traditional lodging accommodations.

Here’s a list of just a few unusual options available around Carcassonne.

Vineyard
O’Vineyards B&B Carcassonne
885 Ave de la Montagne Noire
11620 Villemoustaussou
33 (0)4 68 10 89 18
ryan@ovineyards.com

In the Castle
L’echappee Belle
5 Rue Raymond Roger Trencavel
La Cite 11000 Carcassonne
33 (0)4 68 25 33 40
info@lechappeebelle.co.uk

On the Canal du Midi
Péniche Mirage
28 rue du Canal
Ecluse d’Herminis
11090 CARCASSONNE
33 (0)6 16 46 28 67
info@mirage-hotes.fr

Gypsy Caravan
Les Roulottes Du Lauragais
1, rue de la République
11320 MONTMAUR
33 (0)4 68 60 56 64
lesroulottesdulauragais@orange.fr

I just had a spectacular hike to the Chateaux de Lastours last night where we had a picnic and watched the sunset. One of my buddies at ESC Dijon’s wine commerce program stayed at the B&B this week with his girlfriend. And Gabriella Opaz came up from Barcelona too. Everybody asked me how they could spend their last night in town so I suggested a picnic in the Chateaux de Lastours.

Lastours is a tiny village north of Carcassonne and it used to be the headquarters for the Lords of Cabaret, the guys who give their name to the Cabardes. Lastours was the center of their feifdom and all the surrounding lands were farmed in the name of these lords. They built these fortifications on the high ground above Lastours and the ruins still stand today. And they’re open to the public. So if you want to see a castle that isn’t crawling with tourists, check out Lastours after hours. We walked up and were the only people there. We sat down and had a lovely picnic with some sandwiches and O’Vineyards wine. If you do this, don’t litter! You have to be very tidy or else you’ll ruin this historic site.

Lastours is about 25 minutes north of Carcassonne so you’ll need a car, but it’s totally worth it if you like nature, breathtaking views, and castle ruins. There are lots of stairs too and it’s sadly not accessible to wheelchairs.

Additionally, we went at sunset but you have to be very careful and bring flashlights if you do this. The path down is rather treacherous in the dark and there aren’t always handrails so be safe.

I managed to take some pictures yesterday.  Lots of photos of the Syrah and Cabernet finishing veraison.  That’s the period when the plant turns the grapes purple.

I also found some baby birds newly hatched in the Syrah!

For more pictures of grapes turning purple, check out this Love That Languedoc post about veraison in the Languedoc-Roussillon.

Cabernet Day is coming up on September 1, 2011 and O’Vineyards is going to be a French HQ for this International celebration of Cabernet grapes.

Domaine O’Vineyards

885 Ave de la Montagne Noire
11620 Villemoustaussou

Cabernet Day

Entrée libre
1 Septembre
De 18h-24h (pour synchroniser avec les États Unis)
Ambiance amicale
Grignotage, Beaucoup de Vin. 😉

What is Cabernet Day?

It’s an International event that gets people around the world to talk about and taste Cabernet wines.  People will be buzzing on all sorts of Internet forums and in the real world too.  The whole thing is organized by Rick Bakas, an American wine promoter and social media guy.

At O’Vineyards, we’ll be having a big tasting at night.  Hopefully lots of winemakers will show up with their own wines. And it’ll be just as much fun as last year’s event.  We’ll be trying to put as much of the event as possible online.  And we’ll be staying up late to synchronize with the Californians who can’t start drinking until our usual bedtimes here in France.

Why is Cabernet great?

I talked about this last year too.  A lot of people criticize Cabernet, especially in the Languedoc.  After all, it’s not a varietal that’s really from here.  But I stick to my guns!  Particularly in areas like the Cabardes and Malepere where we have a distinctly Atlantic influence on our climates.  We get winter water reserves deep down in our clay soils and we get more surface area of leaves and we have fresher nights during the late summer.  And all that means we can play with Cabernet to make some very interesting wines.  They’re not mere imitations of Bordeaux or California.  They’re unique and delicious expressions of a great grape varietal.

Furthermore, Cabernet has an important part in the contemporary Languedoc scene.  In the 1970s, when nobody believed in the region’s wines, Aimé Guibert came and planted Cabernet in the Terrasses du Larzac.  And since then, many have followed his example in the higher altitude terroirs of the Languedoc.

But do we need a Cabernet Day?

It’s not about needing a Cabernet Day.  Cabernet Day is coming whether you like it or not.   So my choice is to be a part of this fun excuse to party or to stand aside and “save my energy” for another cause.

Well, I’ve got lots of energy!  And I love an excuse to party. 🙂

A lot of people are going to be thinking about Cabernet on September 1st.  It’s my job to make them also think about the Languedoc. 🙂  Let’s not leave this beautiful opportunity to other more ambitious wine regions.  Let’s show the world how much we love Cabernet.

This post is meant to dispel a rumor that is circulating about the CIVL’s three tier hierarchy.  The rumor is that they have abandoned the hierarchy entirely.  I was shocked to read this so I sent emails to their press agency and the folks at the CIVL that I usually deal with.

The short version is: The CIVL is still pursuing its three tiered hierarchy.  A press agent has spoken with Jerome Villaret, director of the CIVL, and the project is still underway.  They are currently waiting on all the AOCs to decide what family they want to commit to.

I’m at the London Wine Fair right now so I will try to make time to communicate with Monsieur Villaret and let you know how that goes.

Here’s the email I received denying the rumor:

Ryan,
Après discussion avec Jerome Villaret, je te confirme que la segmentation est bien en route pour les AOC du languedoc avec les trois étages. Le travail est maintenant dans le camp des appellations qui doivent se déterminer et s’engager dans une famille. Jerome t appelle demain pour te donner des précisions sur ce sujet.
A ta disposition

Marie Gaudel – Clair de Lune

Here’s how the rumor started as far as I can tell:

a post on Jancis Robinson’s forum:

Well, Jancis, by the time your fingers had stopped tapping this article out, the CIVL project appears to be dead. There has been so much reaction to this senseless, dirigiste and political proposal, that the email fibre optic cables down here have been smoking. The proposal has been both rejected by local Syndicats, by growers and in fact was probably illegal anyway, as it’s only the INAO who can propose Grand Cru/Premier Cru status. Talk about proposing out of turn! Nul points!

Re reading this post, I see that the poster (Graham Nutter) probably meant the project was getting a lot of flak.  I don’t think he meant that the CIVL had abandoned the project.  But it was interpreted and retweeted and facebook status messages were updated and what have you.  And things spun out of control.

I think a lot of people want to see this project go away, but I assure you that very good sources say it troops onward.  There will be grands crus and grands vins du Languedoc sooner or later and the CIVL will be doing it their way.

 

This post is about one of the round table discussions from VinoCamp Languedoc in March 2011.  I hesitate to label it as “wine blogger ethics” since that’s a big subject.  Miss Glouglou proposed and led the roundtable topic, and she had a more specific idea about what we’d discuss.  We set out to address the “transmission of information” which sort of bundles up a lot of subjects:

• Marketing material vs. reference material
• Credibility
• Bribery
• Are blogs any different than traditional media?

A lot of people felt strongly that there were deontological moral issues at stake specific to bloggers while other people focused much more on pragmatic issues (credibility, sales, etc.)

My favorite bit is in part 2 around 1:36 where we start talking about giving journalists free bottles of wine.  Some very earnest revelations.  (FYI: the off screen voice that admits it’s normal wine writers get wine is a professional wine writer.)

There’s also this question about whether bloggers can get into trouble by denouncing or even accidentally insulting people.  In retrospect, we could have talked about my extreme positivity on Love That Languedoc. But we talk so much about my website all day, I’m glad there was a session where it came up less.

There’s this idea that keeps coming up about federating talented bloggers into an edited source of information to rival conventional press.  It might be tangentially related to the topic just because bloggers wouldn’t need to face unique ethical issues if they operated more like a print magazine.  But then there’s also this issue of “why copy print media when it’s on its way downhill?”  They might have the ethics figured out, but if you have questions about monetization, there might be better industries to consult.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll continue to think about this and maybe post more later. For now here are the videos for people who weren’t able to attend.

Beautiful moments (that only come after wine-fueled lunch)

• French produce wine to be criticized by Americans and sold by the English and bought by the Chinese
• Traditional press is Tripoli; bloggers are Bengazi
• Freedom of speech, freedom of regret

VinoCamp Languedoc was full of interesting conversations.  One of the round table discussions, led by ethiquettes.fr, was about sharing success stories and fail stories of winemakers going online.

This session might itself be seen as a success story (or a fail story).  On the success side, I think it’s remarkable how many winemakers were present and spoke up.  I’m super happy about that.  And I think they left with a few really good concrete numbers and ideas that they can enact in their own wine communications strategy.

On the fail side, we see how there’s always a need for more time and more channels of communication.  As the conversation gains momentum toward the end, there are more than a couple people talking. It’s the kind of round table discussion that fares very well in a chatroom where multiple conversations can be going on simultaneously.  But we do see some real world limits.

Also, this session revolved a little too much around me (especially in the first half), but you know how it goes.

Other interesting conversation points include Olivier B, La Gramiere, e-publishing options, Vin de Merde, Gerard Bertrand, Apero Bic (can’t find this), Hervé Bizeul, Matthew Jukes, Domaine Revelh, hotmail’s viral marketing, Naked Wines, and more.  At one point I mention In Roussette We Trust as an example of other regional promotion blogs.  I rather ineptly fail to mention Bourgogne Live, Oenos or Jim’s Loire. My bad.

Common themes:

• Bypassing normal means
  • Olivier B was promoted without the conventional media
  • Love That Languedoc doesn’t wait for the interprofession
• Repeatability?
  • Was Olivier B a one shot?
  • Can there be a Love That Loire (Oenos et Jim’s Loire suggest there already are), Love That Bourgogne (Bourgogne Live), etc.
• Talking about other people
  • Ryan – Don’t talk about yourself
  • Les domaines avec un nom de famille (Bertrands, Chapoutier, Duboeuf)
  • Amy Lillard – Transparent story telling as opposed to artificial sales pitches
• How much time does it take?

I wish I had more time to tell you all about VinoCamp’s glorious Day 2 celebration at O’Vineyards.  This will come shortly. Naturally, I’ll also be adding my own media to this very soon and people who missed the conferences will get to listen in on two of the workshops that I attended.

For now, I just wanted to provide an index of some of the great media coverage of the event:

Nicolas de Rouyn – Le VinoCamp, sous les remparts

22h43’s documentary –

11 Le Magazine – Carcassonne. Vin et internet, le mélange du Vinocamp

Domaine Revelh – #Vinocamp #Carcassonne (perspectif vigneron)

MidiLibre – Les nouvelles technologies au service du vin (le Samedi)

MidiLibre – De la ‘blogosphère’ au cep de vigne (le Dimanche)

L’Independant – VinoCamp, ou la rencontre des vignerons et des internautes

ObiWine (I think) – Christiane Mortes presente le Clocher de Limoux au Vin d’Honneur

O’Vineyards – My own summary of Day 1

Day 1 of VinoCamp Languedoc is the day where we actually do the round tables that define the barcamp format. Everything went splendidly. We had three rooms at the Chamber of Commerce in downtown Carcassonne and it was really amazing. The CCI were incredibly supportive hosts. From 8 in the morning until 8 at night, a director or representative of the chamber was by our sides helping us with all the little things that need to get done on D-Day.  And we’re already seeing optimistic press coverage of VinoCamp Languedoc roll in.

Lots of winemakers

As people started filing in, we quickly realized that we were going to have a great number of winemakers.  One of the biggest complaints from previous vinocamps is a lack of winemakers.  So we’re very pleased with the turnout. This producer presence creates a diversity of backgrounds and allows a broader exchange to happen in certain sessions.

Lots of techies

As always, we also had a great number of tech people and web people, a crucial factor in informing the conversations we have in each workshop.  These people do lots of different things from ecommerce to tourism to blogging.  But they all stay really up to date on the new advancements that are shaping the fast-changing world of web communication.

Lots of topics

A wealth of topics were discussed over the course of 9 workshops.

Among others:

• Engaging consumers as an AOC or region
• Uniting villages – An EU plan
• Online presence on third party sites (vinogusto, adegga, etc.)
• Success stories and Fail stories
• L’importance de l’identité visuelle sur Internet
• Bloggers v. journalists, what’s the difference?
• Community Managing

I was pretty worried that a few of these workshops had predetermined topics (chosen by sponsors).  This is a significant deviation from BarCamp format and ruffles our geeky feathers.  But these turned out to be some of the most interesting workshops (for me).  So things went well!

Some topics are a little more tech-centric, and people sorted themselves out effectively independently. On a topic like “What is the difference between bloggers and journalists?” you’re not gonna get many winemakers.  On topics like “Success stories and fail stories of winemakers on the web” you have a lot of producers present to hear what works and what doesn’t work.

Lots of wine

After the workshops, we had a great tasting of wines from the sponsors and the winemakers who participated during the day.  We were also received by the Mairie to have a wonderful tasting of high end wine from the Toques et Clochers barrel auction.  And then we finally went out for dinner in the Cité and an after hours drink at l’Hotel de la Cité.  Good times to be had by all.

🙂