Our friends at Naked Wines wanted us to film a video to say hello and present O’Vineyards to their online community. My dad and I figured it would be fun to show them what we’re doing at this time of year. You have heard me talk about it like ten times now. We are lifting wires in the Merlot. But in this video, we are lifting them a SECOND time. So pretty new and different.

And how about the slogan, “more leaves, more flavor”?  That’s not strictly true when you look at the science, but it’s pretty catchy and is true in this context.  Do you like it? Hate it?

I know that you know that I lift wires at this time of year.  But you know what else I do?  Answer a lot of questions from tourists. It seems like I get at least four or five emails each week about travel plans around Carcassonne and in the Languedoc Roussillon in general.

My emails tend to be very personalized based on what languages you speak, where you’re flying into, whether you have a car or not, etc.   It’s fun setting people up with really good trips, but it takes a lot of time.   And sometimes, people don’t really need super-personalized advice.  If you want a few wine travel ideas around Carcassonne, you might just want to check out Wink Lorch’s Wine Travel Guide – Ideal One-Day Itinerary.

Wink tends to pick places that are equipped to greet you in English.  And for these short one or two day trips, the estates often have restaurants or rooms to stay in so you don’t need to spend half of your wine holiday in a car looking for a poorly marked country road.

The One-Day and Two-Day trips around Carcassonne have really good ideas. Like a short run down to Limoux where you can visit small indie estates and then go to Gayda for a nice meal and a place to stay.  That trip’s especially nice if you have a spouse or travel partner that only drinks white wine.  Or you could do a quick jump north and visit Pennautier who also have a restaurant, rooms, etc.  I would naturally add that while you’re already in Pennautier, you should hop over to O’Vineyards . . . OF COURSE. 🙂   I’m just a few kilometers away and I’d really love to see you.

Also, if you’re planning your trip on a Sunday, good luck. You’re best off emailing me.  ryan@ovineyards.com

Anyway, I like Wink’s guide and appreciate the work of her head Languedoc researcher Richard James.

And I’m going to steal this idea of an ideal one-day itinerary if you’re looking to spend a day around Carcassonne or if you are flying in with RyanAir and have a day to spare before driving to your next destination.

Ideal One-Day Itinerary

MORNING

Leave Carcassonne, going northwest on the N113 that sort of follows the Canal du Midi.  Check out O’Vineyards in Villemoustaussou.  33 (0)6 30 18 99 10

Winery visits include young wine tasting from tanks as well as barrel tastings.  Call ahead and we can do a table d’hote where you eat with the winemaker and family.  It’s a lot of fun.

AFTERNOON

Then you have two options.  You either lounge around the vineyard all day drinking delicious wine and soaking in the countryside vistas, or you can get back in the car and head to another destination.

Possible destinations include:

• Chateau Pennautier – Big, fancy winemakers in Pennautier
• Chateau Brau – Organic winemakers in Villemoustaussou (call ahead)
• La Cité de Carcassonne – visit ramparts, have a coffee, just chill out. Whatever you choose to do, you’re doing it in a medieval castle!! How cool is that?

“It’s like a kid in a candy shop when it comes to Languedoc-Roussillon – so much to choose from!”

Cork’d, an offbeat social network devoted to sharing stories about wine, has just published a nice interview with yours truly.

So they shared the O’Vineyards story with their 35,000+ mailing list.  That’s cool.

But more importantly, they’ve been sharing EVERYBODY in the Languedoc-Roussillon’s stories!

• State of the Union: Grenache in the Languedoc-Roussillon’s Maury AOC
• Languedoc-Roussillon: Big Production & Big Value
• Push It To The “Limit” with the Fitou AOC
• Recessionary Times Call For Recessionary Wines: Languedoc-Roussillon Tasting Proves High Value Available in France

I just want to say that I am super excited to see another website putting so much time into the Languedoc and Roussillon.  Remember, we’re one of the biggest wine producing region in the world, and we get relatively little ink in the USA publications.  So thanks, Cork”d.

This was probably published around ViniSud, but it only just popped onto my radar!  Sud de France Export keeps a database of all the products that use the Sud de France brand and participate in its events, and they added some very flattering editorial to our entry.

“Ils sont fiers d’être considérés parmi les meilleurs artisans du vin du Languedoc.  Leur programme bilingue languedocjetaime.com met en valeur notre belle région.”
–Sud de France Export

So needless to say, I’m flattered and honored.  It’s nice to know that one of the biggest powerhouses in promoting the Languedoc-Roussillon thinks that little old Ryan is doing a good job with Languedoc, je t’aime.  It’s like the crazy parallel universe where David and Goliath are buddies and work together for the good of the kingdom. ;-D

And they acknowledge that we’re amidst the best artisanal winemakers in the Languedoc!  Thanks!

It is with great pleasure that I announce Domaine O’Vineyards is officially on board with a very cool group in the UK known as Naked Wines.  Thanks to Naked, you’ll be able to get delicious O’Vineyards wines without any unnecessary expenses and wasteful middlemen.  I don’t know if it’s the traditional definition of direct shipping, but it’s pretty close (and possibly better?).

I strongly encourage you to visit our winemaker profile at Naked and follow us (button in the top right coner).  THANKS.

And no worries, we’re still wearing all our clothes. If you found this blog post with a google search, you’re probably looking for something more along the lines of this lady:

Or maybe this music video for “Naked as We Came” by Iron and Wine?

Is it weird that the Naked Lady and the little girl in the music video have the same hair and are framed the same way in the youtube still?  Let’s not dwell on that.

Anyway, what you found is the O’Connell family making wine at O’Vineyards. And you’ll thank your lucky stars we’re fully clothed. It’s the wines that are Naked.

And if you read all the way to the bottom of this post, you might still be looking for pictures of girls’ bottoms so here is a gratuitous link to I Love 2 Cook Naked which is totally NOT safe for work or for people with any sort of  hygenic cooking standards.

One of our best customers is La Barbacane, the Michelin-starred restaurant in l’Hotel de la Cité in Carcassonne.  I was delighted to hear that they’ll also be serving one of our wines in Le Jardin de l’Evêque, the outdoor garden area across from the hotel.

And on top of this great news, they commissioned a painted wine barrel for the special waiting area they’re installing where patrons can enjoy an apperitif and some olives before being seated in the garden.

For those of you who don’t know, I like to paint. I’m more into engravings and prints, but I enjoy picking up a brush from time to time.  So it was a pleasure to do some simple castle landscapes on one of my old barrels.

Now, I think the Jardin asked a few other winemakers for barrels.  I’ll let you know once they’ve all been installed so we can see who made the prettiest barrel. 🙂

I just wrapped up my first day at the London International Wine Fair 2010.  It was pretty awesome.  You’ve got the usual schmoozing with winos you’ve met the world over.  And somewhere amidst all the kissing hands and shaking babies (might be backwards, or maybe not) you get to taste a lot of wine.  

One highlight was the launch announcement for the European Wine Blogger’s Conference in Austria this year.  The guy presenting the wines, Willi Klinger, is a champion. He’s amazing. And the wines were neat too.

Also a couple big Languedoc moments which I’ll probably talk more about at Love That Languedoc. But Gerard Bertrand, Puech Haut and O’Vineyards (3 Languedoc properties) all made appearances in the Access Zone on DAY ONE of the LIWF. What that says to me is that the Languedoc is cutting edge on this thing called the Internet.

And of course, if you’d like to see me goofing around with Oscar Quevedo, drinking in the morning, here is the video from Catavino. It has an awkward, wholesome Sesame Street vibe. You know.. if Sesame Street did an episode on winos.

Winery Collaboration from ryan and gabriella opaz on Vimeo.

Awesome!  Google Maps updated its satellite images of Domaine O’Vineyards and several other estates in our area.  The satellite images are in much higher detail than they used to be.  And the new images of O’Vineyards includes the winery which didn’t exist in the old images from 2005.  COOOL.  Check out the map yourself by googling O’Vineyards.

I really like Google Maps.  I haven’t checked our map in a little while, but I think this is a very recent update.  It appears to be an early spring photo which could mean I caught it just a few weeks after the photo was taken.

For some reason, the map updates seem really important to me.  I remember a few years ago (2007?) when Google updated its images of New Orleans and you could see the blue tarps still covering the leaky roofs all over town.  You could see some parts of the much publicized lower ninth which had been so destroyed by the canal break.

Now, a more cheerful memory has been built into the Google Map.  Domaine O’Vineyards!  The winery is built and life has been restored to these vines that were once destined to be ripped out of the ground.  Hurrah for new beginnings!

I hope you enjoy this little French wine map from O’Vineyards and Google.  The Languedoc deserves a lot more of these updates because there’s a lot of beautiful french wine country.  If you find some other vineyard satellite images you like, please let me know and I will post about them too.

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.