I got to see a lot of British friends while I was on Naked Wines UK Tour this summer.  Even Jancis Robinson, the queen bee herself attended our London tasting.  And she had exceptionally positive things to say about the innovation at Naked Wines and also the quality of wine.

Overall quality of Naked Wines

“There are no duds, even if most of the offerings are of solid rather than mind-blowing quality – but the range is really interesting (see, for example, boutique Chileans, dry Germans, the stunning value Strathbogie Pinot and Slovenians). And if you search for GV (good value), you will find some VGV and the odd VVGV. But please be warned that not all of these wines will still be available. You can check at www.nakedwines.com.”

Jancis correctly points out that the entire range at Naked is solid quality and there are many hidden gems with very good value.  She also acknowledges that the listed prices are 30% higher than the discounted price available to the thousands and thousands of Naked Angels, paid members of the site.

Impression of the Winemakers

“We were allowed in early at the beginning of the tasting session and it was rather sweet to see this collection of mainly young men, all in the same Naked Wines T-shirt, chatting excitedly with each other, rather like freshers on their first day at university.”

I did like this bit about how the winemakers (myself included) were standing about the room before the tasting like a bunch of first years at university. 🙂  It’s a remarkably accurate description as the whole tour reminded me a lot of college.  Roaming around a new environment with a bunch of great people I just met.  Free shirts.  A bit of drinking. 🙂

O’Vineyards Tasting Notes

I don’t cater my winemaking to specific journalists, but it’s always really nice to hear that very accomplished wine pros who have been around the block like what I’m doing. 🙂

O’Vineyards, Trah Lah Lah 2008 IGP La Cité de Carcassonne 16.5 Drink 2011-2015
Made by Ryan and Joe O’Connell. 65% Merlot, 35% Cabernet Sauvignon. Deep crimson. Nicely integrated. Sweet start and attractively dry, lively finish. Still a bit chewy but chock full of life. 13.5%
£12.99 Naked Wines

O’Vineyards, O’ Syrah 2008 IGP La Cité de Carcassonne 16 Drink 2011-2014
Dry and minerally. Really rather smooth and well mannered.
£14.99 Naked Wines

And I’m not the only one she liked. As mentioned above, no duds in this tasting. The Languedoc did exceptionally well as we represent an important part of the Naked Wines portfolio. Winemaker Ben Darnault got one of the many Good Value awards in Jancis’ notes for his highly drinkable “Very Languedoc” Minervois. And Hegarty-Chamans put forward some nice wines that raised her brow. Always interesting things to drink in the Languedoc. 🙂

O’Vineyards Proprietor’s Reserve 2006 finally made its way to households across the UK.  One of my favorite things about Naked Wines is the rabid devotion and excitedness of the customers over there.  We get instant updates about the wine being delivered and it seems to never take more than a day for somebody to pop open a bottle and let us know how well it traveled.

🙂

Naked Wines customers are Fast

Darren confirmed the wine has been delivered at their home at 17:51 on the 18th.  I wonder how long it will be before somebody opens a bottle. Less than 3 hours later Trevor is already reviewing the wine online:

Naked Wines customers are devoted

And the reviews keep coming in!  We’ll keep hearing from them about how the wine is evolving and meeting their needs.  Do their friends like it?  Do their kids like it?  How does it compare to other wines from O’Vineyards or other vintages of Reserve.  We get all this feedback for free and it helps us make better wines to better please our best customers.

Naked Wines customers are the best customers in the world.

PS – It took Darren a few days to open that bottle, but he immediately let us know how it went!

I had to reorganize all the photos on our computer systems and I found some real pearls from the first few years at O’Vineyards (some of them are back when it was le Domaine du Thou! and not even called O’Vineyards yet).

Nostalgia time

The first year we were at O’Vineyards, there wasn’t a winery or anything.  And then we had a really hard time obtaining a permit, so we had to install our wine tanks, barrels, cooling system, and everything on a slab outside.  And then the municipal government kindly let us build a winery/hangar around the slab we had already poured.

So the picture at the top of this post is of me cleaning off equipment after decuvage… but the crazy thing is that the winery is being built around me.

6 Years Ago – Back in 2005

The photo data shows it’s from October 19th 2005.  I was only 20!  I look like I’m 14.  Also, this is just a couple months after Hurricane Katrina hit my city and my school.  I had only just discovered YouTube a few months before this photo was taken, and I thought “this is really cool but there aren’t a lot of videos on here”.  .  .  Back then, the US had only been in Afghanistan for 4 years. Back in 2005, I thought selling great wine would be easy. 😀  HOW YOUNG WE WERE.

Here are some more photos to take us down memory lane.

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.

Hats off to another customer for an epicly well-written wine review. We love to hear that our wines are easy to drink… perhaps a little TOO easy!! 😀

On the 4th of July, I returned from the UK (a daring reenactment of American Independence Day ;D). I had just completed a massive UK wine tour with my UK importer Naked Wines. Looking back, I can’t believe how much fun it was.

Fun, laid back tastings

One important element of the fun is that Naked Wines doesn’t take itself too seriously. Customers could pour their own glasses of wine. This might seem like a small thing, but it’s really important. All too often, tastings get this artificial feeling where winemakers or professionals stand on one side of the table and tasters stand on the other side. This artificial divide really dampens the mood. Plus I always feel like I’m in a zoo, being stared at. And tasters often feel that they are asking permission for the wine.
I much prefer the free and open tasting where everybody’s equal. Anybody can pour a bottle. And winemakers can switch to the other side of the table if we so desire!

Innovative Formats & Weird locations

We also had fun doing weird tastings. I’ve talked about our guerilla pop up wine tastings before.  The general idea is to play with the wine tasting format and spice it up.  We try to make wine less scary and more fun while bringing the delicious fruits of our labor to as many new markets as possible.

And we also had some wacky locations like the Royal Arms Museum. I still think it’s a miracle nobody tried to get on a horse or swing a halberd at a winemaker.

Meeting Angels & Vineshare Owners

Another crucial part of the tour was meeting Angels.  O’Vineyards couldn’t exist if it weren’t for all the support of the Naked Wines Angels.  And we only know a few of them (the more talkative ones).  This tour was an opportunity to meet several hundred angels whose contributions allow me to continue making wine!

Some of the angel encounters were especially exciting since we just launched our new vineyard share program.  100 Angels have rented vines near mine and are paying me to take care of the parcel and make their wines.  I got to meet about a dozen of these angels in person for the first time. 🙂

There was always this terrifying moment when the investor first tasted my wine.  Thankfully, they all loved it!  And here’s a video commentary from one of the angels/investors who had just met me for the first time.

Meeting other winemakers

I got to meet a lot of other winemakers during the tour too.  I honestly expected more violence and argument between the winemakers.  But they’re all really great people to hang out with.  It’s clear that Naked Wines hires based on personality as well as quality of wine.  And that makes sense because ultimately, we all have to be able to interface with their clients on the website’s social network as well as in tastings like these!

It’s also cool to taste so many of the most popular wines on the site.  It gives me real perspective into what angels love.  And that helps inform my winemaking decisions at the vineyard.

Being Part of a Movement

Whenever I see something like this photo of some of the dadaists and constructivists in the early twentieth century all meeting together to take goofy photos… I think it must have been crazy to live at that time. To be surrounded by all that talent and energy.

Toward the end of tour, as all the winemakers and naked staff sat around the dinner table, I felt like I was living in one of those special moments. Like I’m part of a really important movement. All I’m doing is making wine, but I belong to this big group of people who might be changing the way the wine and food world work. I don’t know how important it really is, but it sure feels important.

It feels great.

After the success of my 2010 UK Villages Tour, I’m really looking forward to the much grander scale of the 2011 Naked Wines Tour, a series of ten wine tastings around different cities in the UK.

Over 20 independent winemakers, funded by online wine retailer Naked Wines, are flying over to the UK at the end of June to thank and meet their customers. As part of a UK-wide Tasting Tour, covering eight different cities in a week, the winemakers will showcase over 100 wines which were made possible through Naked Angel funding.

So I’ll be meeting a lot of the people who drink my wines!  It should be a whole lot of fun.

Here’s a link to an article about the wine tasting tour.

The Tasting Tour itinerary:

• Norwich 25th June: The Kings Centre, King Street, Norwich NR1 1PH.
• Brighton 26th June: The Hilton Metropole Hotel, Kings Road East, Sussex, Brighton, BN1 2FU.
• London 27th June: One Alfred Place, 1 Alfred Place, London, WC1E 7EB.
• Bristol 28th June: Brunel’s Old Station, Clock Tower Yard, Temple Meads, Bristol, BS1 6QH.
• Birmingham 29th June: Maple House, 150 Corporation Street, Birmingham, B4 6TB.
• Manchester 30th June: The Studio, 51 Lever Street, Manchester, M1 1FN
• Leeds 1st July: Royal Armouries Museum, War Gallery, Armouries Drive, Leeds, LS10 1LT
• Edinburgh 2nd July: Our Dynamic Earth, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AS

Every day, we’ll also be doing a popup tasting at lunch time, but you’ll have to follow the chatter on twitter and the like (or get lucky) to discover those. 🙂

See you soon, UK wine drinkers! 🙂

We were very proud to se that the Magazine l’Express released a special wine issue with a full page feature of O’Vineyards and several references to our websites (the issue had an extensive spread on wine blogging and wine websites).

I’m including the article about us below, but I highly recommend picking up an issue before they’re out of stock because the section on blogging and wine websites is very well-written.

Elin McCoy wrote her Bloomberg column about my UK importer Naked Wines, and her article uses a lot of my personal experiences with the company.

It’s a bit strange referring to Naked Wines as a wine importer.  The more I work with them, the more I realize they have many many roles in the wine trade.  Calling them a wine importer almost feels like I’m neglecting their role as retailers, financers, communicators, and innovators.  Some of the projects described in Elin’s article like the MarketPlace can’t be classified as a traditional ecommerce site.  Naked isn’t buying wine and then selling it.  They’re instead providing a platform where other people can sell their products like eBay or GroupOn.  If this project succeeds and draws enough attention, it could totally marginalize the import and retail side of the business.

Anyway, it’s always fun talking to journalists about Naked Wines because they’re constantly trying new things.  So every interview, there’s a slough of new questions and answers.  I never get bored! 😀

I met Elin last October at the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference and she got to taste some of my wines back then.

She had this section in her article about O’Vineyards:

Domaine O’Vineyards

Joe, Ryan, and Liz O’Connell at their winery Domaine O’ Vineyards in Cabardes, France. The O’Connells, from Florida, purchased the vineyard in 2004, and their cabernet-merlot blend Trah Lah Lah has won fans among Naked Wines’ Angels. Source: O’Vineyards via Bloomberg

I took some exterior photos of O’Vineyards Bed & Breakfast now that it’s nearing completion.  Things are looking good!

You can really see how close the rooms are to the vines.  How clear the sky is.  This is life on a vineyard after all!

This is the window of the Cabardes room.  You can look out over the Merlot vines from here.  Sit watching the high road of Villemoustaussou with Carcassonne off to the south.  Soak in the sunny south of France in the privacy of our vines.

What a view!!  That’s Cabernet Sauvignon stretching off toward the valley in Villegailhenc and La Montagne Noire beyond that.  This photos taken from inside the room so it’s actually the view.  Hard to believe, right?