For every good idea I have, I get at least three ridiculously bad ideas.  And some of those bad ideas make it far beyond the planning stages.

So, last week, I was joking about the rhetoric we terroir-lovers tend to use.  We get very wrapped up in the importance of a wine reflecting a sense of place and we can often minimize the efforts of the winemaker.  We say that winemakers should only act in order to produce good fruit that reflects the place where they’re growing the fruit.  Anyway, we can get a little carried away with the rhetoric.  So in the spirit of making fun of myself, I bottled some vineyard dirt and put it up  for sale on the website.

The idea, unfortunately didn’t stop there. Once I had a bottle of dirt, it was pretty much unavoidable: I had to do a dirt tasting.

Tasting notes: dry, abrasive attack; strong minerality; dead leaves; low alcohol; significant sediment; muddy finish

So, without further ado, Ryan O’Connell from O’Vineyards tastes some dirt and makes fun of himself.

If we can learn anything from this ridiculous exercise, it’s that the perfect wine is not 100% vin de terroir or 100% vin d’effort but some clever middle path between these two extremes.

Buy now 🙂

Couleur bouteille

Marron €13,00Vert €13,00

When I first heard about Cabernet Day, my immediate reaction was to jump on board.  And I kind of assumed that everybody would follow me unquestioningly… but there have been some questions, rightfully posed, as to why exactly I’m hosting a Cab Day event in the Languedoc.  I want to take a moment to explain what Cabernet Day is and why I want lots of people to participate.

Here is the facebook event page for Cabernet Day at O’Vineyards

What the heck is Cab Day?

On September 2nd, a bunch of people around the world will drink Cabernet Sauvignon and talk about it online.  A lot of the talking will happen in real life too at special events organized in wineries around the world.  But a lot MORE of the talking will be happening online.

Some will blog, and even more will casually tweet with the hashtag #Cabernet.  It’s called a tweetup (twitter meetup … I really hate web-related portmanteaus).  And while I personally wanted to have a real-life party, the success of Cab Day will largely be measured by the participation on Twitter and the rest of the online chatter channels.

So that’s basically what Cabernet Day is.  In all transparency it is organized by Rick Bakas, “social media director” for St. Supery in Napa Valley.

Does there need to be a Cab Day?

Cab Day is about celebrating the grape varietal Cabernet Sauvignon, a varietal that is so popular it seems like it doesn’t really need to have a party.  So I guess that’s why some people are asking me “Do we need a Cab Day?” and “Why are we doing Cabernet?”

I’m gonna answer these questions in two parts.  Part 1, since when do we have to attach moral imperatives to wine parties?  Part 2, I need to communicate how awesome Languedoc Cabernet is.

Why people want crazy moral imperatives to party? – A lot of the people who are really into tweetups are also into promoting obscure varietals and communicating on more esoteric themes than Cabernet Sauvignon.   I like talking about rare grape varietals too, which lets you communicate on themes like authenticity, local culture, history, etc.  But I also realize that a mainstream subject can be just as interesting as an obscure one.  And more mainstream topics can bring more people into the fold while very obsucre topics can sometimes alienate people who don’t feel “initiated”.

The interesting mainstream topic – The Languedoc is not known for it’s Cabernet Sauvignon.  We’re a Mediterranean region and you can’t grow Cabernet just anywhere around here.  So the few parts of the Languedoc that do make great Cabernet Sauvignon absolutely must communicate on that.  So I’ll try to round up some Cabs from the Malpere, Cabardes, Aniane and so on.  Cab Day is going to get a lot of people online who are interested in the grape varietal and we’ll be able to talk about how certain parts of the Languedoc make really great Cab.  Sounds like a great opportunity!

And I hope other winemakers and Languedoc fans will take up the banner with me.  Come visit on September 2nd or send your friends.  We’re gonna drink great wine, have a blast, and it should be a lot of fun!

I took the night train to Paris again for another round of Parisian wine tastings.

On Friday afternoon and evening, I’ll be tasting with my favorite Parisian supplier, Crus.  I think Gregoire, who organizes a lot of the Paris BarCamps will be coming in with some of his gang.  And a lot of other assorted Paris friends will attend.  YOU should come to if you live here.  We’ll have lots of bottles open and we’ll eventually head off to Mr Lounge for the after party.  Should be fun.  Mr. Lounge has new ownership so I’m excited to meet them and see what they’ve done with the place.

And then on Saturday, I will spend the whole day at VinoCamp Paris. It’s the first BarCamp in France devoted entirely to wine.  We’ll discuss lots of issues (to be determined), and eventually drink lots of wine.  I lugged 24 bottles of O’Vineyards wine on the train and through the Paris Metro so we’re going to have a party.  Also, other notorious winemakers such as Vicky Wine and Benoit Tarlant (among others!) will be pouring their goods after the brainstorming workshops.

And now a gratuitous DISCOBITCH music video with Tarlant Champagne bottles in the background (because what is the point of hanging out with Champagne guys if it you can’t be in music videos?)

So YouTube (which is owned by Google) has a tool that lets you make movies out of your Google searches. It’s pretty primitive, but it’s a fun way to spend a few minutes. errrr.. scratch that, 35 minutes. Damn it. Now I have to go back to work.

Oh well, here is the story of a person trying to research cool wine related stuff near Carcassonne. And only getting one result over and over.  No, I’m not referring to trip advisor. It’s O’Vineyards. The best indie wine estate to visit near Carcassonne.

Search terms used are:

1. “wine tasting around carcassonne”
2. “meet a winemaker near carcassonne”
3. “visit a winery near carcassonne”
4. “best wines cite de carcassonne”
5. “make wine around carcassonne”
6. “vineyard holiday in carcassonne”

If there’s a message to take away from this video, it’s that people aren’t maximizing SEO about wine tourism yet in the Languedoc.  The post that turned up in most of these searches was written last Sunday.  Gites and Chambres search engine optimization is locked down, but there are tons of wine keywords that are still up for grabs.  Especially in English.  And Carcassonne is a good example because it receives millions of anglophone tourists every year. And the word on the street is that some of them drink wine.

;D

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?

A little last minute, but I decided to have a party on Monday in the middle of the day.  I’m not expecting hundreds of people, but if you can tear yourself away from work (or your relaxing vacation), come to O’Vineyards and join me for Sud de France’s SYNCHRONIZED GLOBAL TASTING in commemoration of their 4th birthday.

They sent kits of wine to 50 different people around the world. And they’ll be running tastings with all sorts of journalists and wine lovers at the Maisons du Languedoc in New York City, Shanghai, London, Milan, etc.  And we’ll all be tweeting and blogging and video conferencing and all sorts of nonsense.  So tune in on June 21st. Wine is going to be tasted.

And when we run out of the preselected wines Sud de France sent me, we will drink other wines from the Sud de France.

If you cannot come, please do your best to go out and find a bottle from the Languedoc Roussillon and open it on June 21st!  With good friends, if they’re around!

The tasting starts at 11 AM but you can come before or after.  If you know my mom, you realize that there will be food.

Here is an events page for the tasting (but it is not an events page for my party. It is the GLOBAL events page).

All tweets should use #WorldTastingSync and/or #SudDeFrance

As a lot of you know, I got to attend the London International Wine Fair where I spoke about the Internet and winery collaborations with Oscar Quevedo.  After the conference, I took the opportunity to visit my dear friends at Borough Wines to do some tastings at the legendary Borough Market.

It’s a really interesting atmosphere, and most of the shoppers have a totally different attitude than the people at your average American market or French foire.  For one thing, I think Londoners have a tendency to buy one or two bottles for tonight.  Whereas French folks go to foires to get discounted six packs and Americans tend to walk out of stores with entire 12 packs, the Londoner shops for dinner.  Or for the next meal with friends.  This is a generalization, but I’ve heard it from other people and I really believe it’s true.

But the market doesn’t just consist of Londoners shopping for tonight’s wine.  You’ve got some tourists and looky-loos too.  It’s important not to spend too much time with idlers, but it can be fun to teach folks a little about wine and contribute to the atmosphere of discovery that surrounds Borough Market, a foodie heaven.  Plus, having one or two curious tasters can often draw a more serious crowd to your stand as crowds tend to draw crowds.

It was a hot day as London was experiencing its first bout of really nice 2010 summer weather.  That makes it hard to taste red wines so we also poured Chateau Grezan’s 100% Cinsault rosé.  Borough Wines knows I’m a sucker for Languedoc so I was only too happy to show off the Cinsault which presents as a dry, sturdy rosé.  Far from the watered down wimps some people expect from other parts of the world, Grezan’s wine can cool you down and give you some flavor.

And then for the serious folks, we could taste through the entire O’Podium gift set to learn the difference between three aging processes.  Cinsault is nice.  But I wanted a bigger, drier red to go with my boar sausage lunch.

Anyway, it was a really positive experience. And I got to be a part of this really cool market, playing behind the curtain, and drinking all the wine on tap I could handle.

Everybody who works at Borough Wines is a delight to be around and we had a good time after closing up the shop.

Another post from Joe the winemaker, my dad.

Welcome to week 2. I am back as promised with more basic wine information and photos to help you follow the entire cycle of  a year in the vineyard. As I mentioned in last week’s vineyard update I expected that you would be amazed by the change in the growth of the merlot vines we are following, but even I was estonished by the rapidity of the growth this past week. This is pure speculation on my part, but I believe that the late start of the vines due to an extremely harsh winter followed by record breaking temperatures the final week of April could be the reason.  (can anybody say global warming ?).

Our Norwegian lady friends (hello, ladies) who visited us 2 weeks ago, with Anthony Swift of  Wine Pleasures tours, can bear witness to the rapid change in the growth of the merlot. We are very pleased that we chose to lower the wires in the merlot when we did  because if we were attempting that with the present growth we would be knocking off far too many shoots (buds, future grapes). Fortunately for us the progress of the syrah and the cabernet saugvignon does not match that of the merlot this year. This is not unusual for the cab but very surprising for our syrah which is normaly ahead of the merlot. I attempted to take the photos in the same spot that I did for the first post and will continue to do so we have an accurate account of the progression of the vines. The majority of the photos show the same vines as week 1 and I have included a close up a  future  bunch of grapes. The “baby grapes photo” is something I always found intriguing and I hope you will also. We still have wires to lower in the cabernet but we are extremely happy with where we stand today. Hopefully my son will not read this but I think we will soon be able to cut back to  45 hour work weeks. I am not complaining because I have never felt heathier in my life and the fringe benefits are outstanding!

We are considering doing some weekend BBQ/Blending sessions for wine enthusiasts living in or visiting the  Carcassonne area this summer. give me some feedback if you find this interesting.

Thanks for following and remember to come back next week for more free wine information.

I just had a wonderful and hectic time in Paris, the city where I never sleep.

I did a big Languedoc-themed shindig with Vicky Wine at a nice art gallery called l’Oeil du Huit.

We also did a Love That Languedoc episode at the Paris cave de dégustation of Crus.fr before opening up the doors to do a Domaine O’Vineyards tasting.

Here is a little snippet from the crus tasting where one of their dear patrons talks about which of the three Podium wines she liked best: