“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
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. 🙂
note: This post is written as advice for winemakers offering tours. If you are looking to participate in a wine tour, you can learn about our winery visits and wine tastings.
By looking at feedback we receive from our clients through social media and review sites like TripAdvisor, we’ve learned a surprising lesson about the top priorities for travelers visiting a winery. Almost all reviews highlight a casual, relaxed and welcoming atmosphere.
TripAdvisor reviews about hospitality and atmosphere
“Joe, Liz and Ryan are excellent hosts, and we all immediately felt relaxed in their company.”
“The O’Connell family is warm, friendly, and kind.”
“Ryan: some guy JUST LIKE ME, yet with an encyclopediac knowledge and passionate interest in grapes (and all that goes one with them!). There is no pretension or snobbery here – just big smiles and AMAZING wine.”
“Ryan, Joe and Liz made us truly welcome”
“As well as the gorgeous wine the other outstanding thing at O’Vineyards is the great hospitality and wonderful food.”
“Instantly I felt at home.”
“Then we relaxed in the cellar”
“Not to worry”
“The owners Liz and Joe were so friendly and inviting. From the moment we arrived we were greeted with smiles and friendliness.”
“C’était une très agréable visite pour nous, surtout parce que nous n’étions pas les seuls à nous amuser–eux aussi!”
These are all excerpts from tripadvisor reviews we’ve received in the past year or so. I think TripAdvisor is more than just a new arm of marketing/PR. These reviews are really helpful because they give amazing insight into the psychology of our visitors.
A recurring theme that leaps out of our reviews is a focus on feeling relaxed, welcomed, and unpretentious. Some reviews include detailed accounts of visiting the winery, tasting from barrels, looking at vines, and other more technical aspects of the tour. But virtually all the reviews talk about atmosphere, hospitality, friendliness, relaxing, and so on.
This was an exceptionally important realization. We were very focused on providing good information, great wine, good tasting conditions, and so on. Of course, these things are important, but we now learn that putting your guests at ease is even more crucial. The wine doesn’t have to be at exactly 17 degrees centigrade and served in finest crystal. But you do have to be smiling, welcoming, and fun to be around.
Quality of food and wine
All that said, it is really important that the wine tastes great. The quality of the wine is mentioned in virtually every review. And literally everybody who ate my mom’s cooking at the end of the tour has mentioned how good she is in the kitchen. So food is exceptionally important.
Don’t be pretentious
The point of this post is to share surprising lessons from TripAdvisor reviews. We’re not surprised that people want good food and wine.
We were sort of surprised at how much of the reviews are devoted to explaining that we are nice people. Being friendly and unpretentious is super-important!
Since I know a lot of really friendly people in the wine trade, and because I’m pretty confident about my wine knowledge, I had forgotten how intimidating this world is. And a lot of our visitors share horror stories about visiting wineries and wine shops where the wine tasted great but the service was awful. Usually these stories focus around a person who clearly knows a lot about wine and serves delicious wine, but treats the visitors like dirt just because they’re not as knowledagable or rolls their eyes at simple questions. And even if these stories constitute a minority of wine experiences, they scare people to death!
A quick look at our reviews reveals that people are really worried that the atmosphere won’t be relaxed or welcoming. And so they are very pleased to discover it is!
So don’t be a jerk! Smile a lot. Remember that nobody is born knowing a lot about wine. And even very well educated people don’t know everything. And smile again. Your guests will appreciate it!
More practical advice
Aside from smiling, there are a few things we’ve started doing differently because of this discovery.
Communicate on the fact that our wine tour isn’t for snobs.
Feature customer testimonial from people who say “this was my first winery tour and…”
Feature customer testimonial with words like “welcoming” and “relaxed”
When guests arrive, put them at ease
Tell them to interrupt you
Insist that they can ask questions
Look at everybody in the group while you talk, even (especially?) children
Don’t get too distracted by technical elements of the tour – if serving the wine at just the right temperature in a specific type of glass is impossible, don’t worry. Never neglect your guests to attend to some detail they don’t even care about.
Small doses of self-effacing humor help, but don’t get too morose
If you’re too busy to give a good tour, let your guests know beforehand. Explain what’s going on and ask if they’ll put up with these circumstances. Offer them a free glass of wine if they’re unhappy. Small groups are generally willing to wait fifteen minutes if it’s with free wine. 🙂
We were already doing simple stuff like smiling and being nice. But taking these extra steps has resulted in even better feedback and even happier visitors. And I assume this is how we got so well ranked on TripAdvisor!
top rated things to do in the languedoc roussillon on trip advisor 2011
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!
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 importerNaked 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.
This post is about a “popup” wine tasting that took place during my UK Tour with Naked Wines in 2011.
What is a pop up tasting?
Whereas most wine tastings are organized weeks or months ahead of time, popups are spontaneous and ephemeral.
Organizers of conventional tastings will spend a lot of energy picking the perfect venue, getting the word out, finding a way to get the wine to the venue, organizing for tables and glasses and spitoons, and a lot of other work. Pop up tastings however are more guerilla-styled. They just pop up out of nowhere in the middle of workplaces, parks, and other public places.
How spontaneous is a pop up tasting?
They are usually organized quickly and they are always announced at the last minute. Like a flash mob with wine.
Our first pop up wine tasting was organized on the bus ride from London to Bristol. Derek from Naked Wines put out a tweet asking who would be up for a little wine tasting in the afternoon. Less than 140 characters later, we had a cool venue on the line.
It was really kitschy. We had the tasting outside a couple of retro Airstream campers that had been outfitted to serve food and drinks on the astroturf outside this office park in the creative district of Bristol.
Lots of design firms, communication agencies, and “new media” types. It’s the perfect setting for this kind of guerilla tasting.
Why pop ups are a good idea?
On one level, they just make good sense because they’re low cost, low investment, and high payout. You have to realize we were already in Bristol. We already had the wine. We had the glasses. We had the winemakers. And we have freetime in the afternoon. So with a couple of tweets and a few phone calls, we get a very fun event with a high level of engagement from the participants.
On another level, popup tastings are just super fun and bring back a feeling of flight and fancy to the wine world which sometimes takes itself too seriously. Wine tastings can appear to be too formal and a bit pretentious. Nothing removes the pretense like a couple young guys running around an aluminum caravan shouting “Afternoon wine tasting!” “Surprise wine tasting!”
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.
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! 🙂
The Languedoc Outsiders, a valiant team of men and women from all walks of life who have taken up the mantle of winemaking, work together to defend common values like truth, justice and the American way delicious wine, good company, and the French way!
This issue promises to reveal the secret origins of Ryan.Com, the geeky kid turned winemaking prodigy. As well as his parents Joe Builder and the Liztener, a couple of dedicated builders who were hit with a super dose of the radioactive element Wine-onium.
And many many more!
Seriously though
You should really come and taste the wines of the Languedoc Outsiders. I think it’s a great group with a very different range of wines. This is not the kind of group tasting where everybody has the same attitude or rhetoric. I vehemently disagree with lots of the group members about lots of different issues of import. And that’s what makes it amazing. We’re all clearly passionate about winemaking or we wouldn’t have abandoned our old lives. But our passion has taken on eleven totally different forms and given way to dozens of really special wines.
Come decide for yourself. January 24th from 18h00 to 21h00 @ Chez Boris which is in the pedestrian centreville of Montpellier.
PS – writing in the comic book tone really makes me want to work on my comic book about the winemaker who can smell the future. THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TIME IN THE DAY.
Inspired by some of my favorite musicians who often favored rural village tours over big city stages, we hit the road in rural England. And I think it was a huge success. Our UK Villages Tour was short but awesome. It’s definitely a concept I want to pursue further!
What is the UK Villages Tour?
We used my importer’s website to find people that were organizing rural wine tastings in the UK, and I offered to show up in person. This year was a quick trial run, and it went really well. We spotted two tastings happening the same week in Oxfordshire and Cumbria and all I had to do was hop over on a RyanAir flight from Carcassonne to Stanstead.
These were tastings where the organizers had pooled money from the group and bought a large quantity of wine from Naked Wines already. Compare that to other tastings where it is often up to the winemaker to furnish the wine, the structure, the organization, etc. On the Villages Tour, people are already paying for wine and they are really appreciative that you’re coming, so they put up room and board and travel.
How did it go?
It went very very well. But don’t take my word for it.
“Thanks for organizing such a good evening on Wednesday – he’s quite a character! I thought the wines were, overall, the best selection we have enjoyed at any of the Club’s meetings. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.”
“Last Wednesday’s club meeting was absolutely wonderful and Ryan was a very informative speaker. I learnt a lot more about wine making and had a very enjoyable evening. The wines were excellent, and not one that I was displeased with. Thank you for organizing it and a thank you to Ryan.”
“It was a great night! Ryan was not only knowledgeable and passionate, but very engaging and not too heavy for a Wednesday evening. His humour and humorous approach to his tasting notes and his anecdotal style were an ideal combination. Some of the wines too are definitely worth a bottle or several”
One of my favorite reviews came from a customer who wasn’t totally converted on our wines. You have to realize I’m one of the most expensive wines on Naked, and people really need a good reason to spend an extra 3 or 5 quid on a bottle of wine. It has to be really special. Well, one of the Angels had tasted our wine on its own and he only liked it as much as his other favorites on the site (which are less costly). But our tasting on Lake Windemere allowed him to taste some of his favorites side by side with my wines. And he had one of those aha moments! There’s something to those O’Vineyards wines that makes them just a little different than the new world fruit bombs. There’s something to it! Hard to pinpoint! Well, it was a very nice comment.
Why only 2 stops?
Because that’s all that we found. I tried to do a thing near Edinburgh but it didn’t work out. Most likely because it wasn’t a Naked Wines customer and thus much harder to communicate and motivate. The Angels at Naked Wines are the best. I hope next year we can line up 3 or 4 village tastings. Make it a more legit tour. If you think you can get some people together for a wine tasting next year, let me know! I’d love to explore more of rural England.
Will I do it again?
Yes. On the one hand, I had a lot of fun. Lake Windemere was gorgeous. A geology that, in some ways, reminds me of the south of France. But with a lot more grass and sheep. Presumably, way more rain too, but we had considerably sunny days. The beer was also delicious. Great pubs. Cool experience. Good company. Upton, the village in Oxfordshire, was also beautiful and the group of 40+ people at the village tasting had a lot of fun going through my wines and a couple wines from Benjamin Darnault. I also got to spend a day in Oxford, checked out some of the sights and popped into the Ashmolean. A big thanks to Ivy and Doug for being such wonderful hosts in the Lake District. And a big thanks to my hosts and chauffeurs, Frankie and Kevin Jacklin, who made the whole trip a delight. So I would absolutely do this again because it was a lot of fun.
It also doesn’t hurt to mention the spike in sales on Naked Wines. Naked ran a promotion on a mixed case of my wines right before I came to the UK, selling 50 cases of 6 bottles at a discounted rate. And on top of those 300 bottles, Naked sold another 1600£ of my wines at full price this month. They have some pretty intense cashback offers, so it’s hard to pin down an exact number of pounds that changed hands, but the point is that this vacation of mine was very interesting financially. And my Reserve which comes in at a whopping 30.99£ on the site is rated a 4.8/5 That’s a big deal for this customer base that is VERY value-conscious and very demanding at higher prices.
There’s also talk of the Upton Village Club taking a big trip to my vineyard one day! That could be a lot of fun too!
I’m a member of a group of winemakers known as The Outsiders, our forces marshaled by Louise Hurren. And in anticipation for our London tasting on November 10th, this article is an exploration of what being an outsider even means.
What the heck is an outsider?
There are people in this world who just always end up in weird situations. Outsiders will regularly surprise you. Not with contrived novelty. Not by jumping from behind a corner and shouting “Boo!” But by being genuinely and irrepressibly strange.
Am I an outsider?
Being a winemaker at a highly technical web conference gave me several glimpses of that priceless moment of surprise. Somebody says, “I’m a front end UX designer.” Somebody else says, “I’m a coder working on the W3C”. I say, “I’m a winemaker.” [small double take] In that moment, the true definition of outsider emerges. Somebody who is so unusual in the milieu, that they can contribute real insight. It might not always be great insight, but it’ll be original.
But if being a winemaker makes me an outsider to the tech world, doesn’t that mean I’m an insider in the wine world. Well, honestly, if you know anything about me, you know that’s not true. I’m a first generation winemaker with no training, certifications, or degrees. I was born and raised in a part of the US where award winning wine production is dominated by fermented fruit concentrate with flavors added (no joke, definitely a link worth clicking). I just love wine and I’m pretty good at making it.
People ask why
People also ask how. But all these questions are very hard to answer. I don’t have a rule book or manifesto that guides my decision making. I guess that’s also part of being a natural-born outsider. Who knows why we do the crazy things we do? But when you look at our amazing lives, our beautiful countrysides, our delicious wines, et cetera. . . don’t your questions fade away?
Sharing the Outsider Experience
I hope the Outsiders Tasting in London this November 10th will give a lot of people a glimpse of true weirdness. Not that the wines will be over the top, heavy-handed efforts to surprise you. They’ll just be effortlessly surprising. Because we’re all genuinely strange people. And we can’t help but make interesting wines.
Who exactly are the Outsiders?
At the London tasting, we will be many. In no particular order:
Domaine O’Vineyards, located in the North Arrondissement of Carcassonne, is just minutes from the Carcassonne train station, the Medieval City, and the Carcassonne Airport.
GPS coordinates: 43.259622, 2.340387
O’Vineyards
Wine, Dine, Relax at our Boutique Vineyard
Unique thing to do in Carcassonne
Wine Cellar. Winery Visits. Wine Tasting.
Wine & Food Pairing
North Arrondissement of Carcassonne
885 Avenue de la Montagne Noire
11620 Villemoustaussou, France
Tel: +33(0) 630 189 910
Best by GPS.
Follow the signs to Mazamet/ Villemoustaussou using the D118. At the end of the last straight part of D118, you will come to a roundabout with the Dyneff gas station.
Take the exit towards Pennautier. Continue 500m to a small roundabout and go straight over.
Look out for the second road on your right, Avenue des Cévennes which curves up hill (about 1km) to Avenue de la Montagne Noire on the left.
At the last juction, bear left. the road sign “Ave de la Montagne Noire” (confusing as it seems to show a right turn)
After another 500m you will see our red brick color building in the middle of the vines.
