Okay, so it’s actually January.  But a bit of Trah Lah Lah can make any month feel like spring. ;D

Today’s Tra la la song is sung by Julie Andrews. The Lusty Month of May from Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot.

Admittedly, I’m much more familiar with Vanessa Redgraves’ Lusty Month of May in the film adaptation. I love how Camelot is an idylic place full of sexy 60s-styled maidens. Unfortunately, they cut the tra la la’s. So Julie Andrews version it is. In case you want to throw back though, here’s the clip from the movie:

I frequently talk about how winemakers have more to gain from partnering up rather than dueling to the death.  Well, I’ll be putting my words into action at the London International Wine Fair.  And I won’t be doing it alone.

How do you convince a bunch of wine professionals to work with other winemakers?  You do it with the help of other winemakers, obviously!

I’m going to share the stage with Oscar Quevedo of Oscar’s Wine in the Douro Valley of Portugal.  We’re going to leave the powerpoint presentation at home and we’re going to try to make people giggle as we taste through some of our favorite wines in the world: each other’s!

This offbeat performance is scheduled at 11 AM on Tuesday, May 18th, and it will take place at the daringly named  “Access Zone” of the wine fair.  Please stop by.  You will have a blast.  You will taste some yummy wines.  You will even taste a wine cocktail.  We will break every rule wine snobs hold dear.  And we will do it all before noon time on a Tuesday.  Because that is how we roll in the Access Zone.

11:00 Winery Collaboration with Quevedo and O-Vineyards

Oscar Quevedo from the Douro and Ryan O’Connell from the Languedoc, two powerful social media enabled wine producers, will show the power of collaboration in a live wine tasting of each others wines. Be prepared to laugh, enjoy some great wines, and have a good time. Not to mention learn something about how collaboration will lead to success with your wineries wines!

The Access Zone also has a ton of other wine programming organized by Catavino.  Later on Tuesday, there’s going to be a deal with Tim Atkins (The Wine Gang) and Gérard Bertrand’s ‘Tautavel’ wine.  Bertrand is another heavy hitter from the Languedoc and a French rugby legend, and I guess he’ll be making an appearance too.  If the lineup of the access zone is indicative of the rest of the London Wine Fair, the LIWF should be a hoot and a half.

London, prepare yourself.  You are about to be accessed…hard… ew.

welcome to week 3 of winemaking 101. To begin this episode I would like to apologize for my often inept ability to convey my thougths clearly  in writing. It has been brought to my attention that the  literary  skills, I aquired at U-Mass Dartmouth sometime back in the 70’s, may be deteriorating a bit. I have promised myself to make a more conscience effort from this point forward but what the hell its all about the content N’EST-CE-PAS!

OK back to the vines. There has been no recognizable change in the vines this past week, probably due to the cold weather and SNOW that I wrote about last week.  I have never seen such little activity in the growth of the vines at this time of the year but things appear to be back to normal with plenty of sunshine, warm days, cool nights and steady winds.

The winds of the langaudoc region help to keep the vegatation dry which limits the risk of diseases and should limit the amount of treatments (chemicals) used on the vines.  By simply following the advice of the local chamber of agriculture  we seem to treat half as much, if not less, than other grape growers in the area.

But I digress, and the treatment story should be an entire post on its own. Anyway, although there was limited change visible in the photos this week, I have a strong feeling next week’s photos will show impressive growth. Thanks for visiting and feel free to comment.

note from Ryan: I was just driving back from Montpellier and the vines closer to the cost are like ready to lift wires (i.e. way ahead of us). It’s crazy what a huge difference there is between our medium altitude micro-terroir and the lower plains on the way to the coast.

Another post from dad as he chronicles the freak snowstorm that we had in the south of France on May 4th. SNOW IN MAY?!

This is Joe the Winemaker with a special bulletin in my continuing coverage of the O’Vineyards Merlot saga.

Normally, these blog updates are weekly. However due to the unprecedented May snow storm, you get two updates this week.

It snowed at O’Vineyards in Carcassonne on May 4th! Unheard of!

People ask, “Should red wine ever be served chilled?” I’m asking if red vines should ever be chilled! We were very worried because there is already a lot of growth on the vines and a late frost could harm them. Additionally, the heavy, wet snow that fell for over an hour could cling to the new growth and break it off. Luckily, the snow failed to cling to the young shoots.

You can see in these photos that the snow mostly stuck to the wooden posts and to the trunks.

By pure speculation (my son calls that “making shit up”) I am going to say the warmth of the ground and stones due to the normally warm temperatures we have experienced over the last two weeks was enough to melt the snow. Anyway, it appears the parcel of Merlot I’m blogging about has escaped any significant damage.  But we still have to see how the freeze affects growth over the coming week.