The 2011 European Wine Bloggers Conference (EWBC) happened in Brescia, Italy last month.  I had the honor of moderating a session on Saturday and here is the video recording.

Blogger’s Stories – Storytelling in action from Vrazon on Vimeo.

The entire conference was themed around storytelling and we had lots of sessions about how to improve our storytelling.  My session was devoted to actually telling some stories.  I think it went really well and I’m hugely grateful to everybody who stood up to share a story as well as the hundreds of people who attended the session. And a big thanks to Brescia and Franciacorta who allowed us to share our stories in this marvelous venue, the Santa Giulia church, a place all-too-epic for a silly little blogger like me.

Summary of stories told

Name – title – time stamp in video
my summary

Ryan Opaz – Introduction – 0:01
Brief intro to the storytelling session

Ryan O’Connell – Judge a book by its cover – 2:00
I told a story about writing my book on the Cabardes wine region.  And the help I got from my neighborhood winemakers.  Or lack of help.  Or in some cases ridiculous amounts of criticism they gave me.  And the most hilarious criticisms.  Spoiler: “Why is there an asian child on the cover of this book?!”

Brett Jones – Don’t let a prostate prostrate – 7:20
Brett shared a very moving story about how he handled the discovery of his prostate cancer.  And his wine tasting on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square to promote awareness and early detection of prostate cancer.

Jason Kallsen – Feel the fear – 14:18
“The counterfeit innovator is wildly self confident. The real one is scared to death.”  A good story about how Jason learned that Ryan Opaz was moving to Spain without any real plans.  And how to create something beautiful we have to go out and embrace the scary world out there!  The book he mentions is Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art”

Anders Aberg – I bought a vineyard! – 18:20
The story of how a successful Swedish film producer bought a little property in the south of France.  And how he was a bit surprised by developments of his first vintage.  And how much his friends will lie to him about the wine being great! 😀  Follow his adventures in Swedish on his blog Livet i Languedoc.

Louise Hurren – Story of a ball of string – 22:25
Louise talks about how her life has intertwined with wine and drops some twine around the room with every step.

Agnes Nemeth – Bordeaux Lock Out – 30:32
This Hungarian wine writer talks about an epic trip to Bordeaux where everything goes wrong and she ends up treading through the muddy clay vines in the pitch darkness of night until somebody found her in the morning.

Wink Lorch – A Shaggy Dog Story – 39:01
Wink tells a hilarious story full of beautiful and irrelevant details about an American winery that does EVERYTHING possible to make their wine the best on the market. It’s fun to recycle and retell stories and embellish them and all that jazz. Wink shows us how it’s done.  Read more of Wink’s serious work at Wine Travel Guides.

Magnus Reuterdahl – Archaeology tells a story – 45:04
This Scandinavian talks about the history of wine in Sweden and how some very old symbols come and go over time and how archaeology tells a story just as interesting as any person can.  Read more of Magnus’ wine blogging at Testimony of the Spade.

Oscar Quevedo – Don’t challenge me -49:09
This winemaker in the Duoro Valley talks about how they tread grapes in the lagares and how he almost drowned as a child.  And now, people battle in the lagar and Oscar’s near death experience has given him the power to win every time.  Follow Oscar on the Quevedo blog.

Joao Roseira – En Memoire de Joe Dressner – 52:09
This portugese fellow decided to talk in French (which was hilarious and awesome) in a tribute to Joe Dressner the wine importer and unconventional blogger who recently passed away.  I think Dressner would have loved the spirit of rebellion to Joao’s story and choice of language.  He blogs in Portugese on gotaepinga

Thomas Lippert – Recovering from cardiac arrest – 54:50
Thomas suffered a major cardiac arrest and discovered the first EWBC online while he was in hopsital.  His incredibly speedy recovery was partially fueled by a desire to attend that first conference and share with other people who love wine.  A really touching story.  More of Thomas’ blogging on winzerblog.de

 

 

 

I just saw off the last of my Cabernet Day friends.  It’s been a real blast.

Seeing Local Winemakers

2010 was a really heartwarming Cabernet Day because it was one of the first events I organized to really get a great deal of support from local grape growers and winemakers.  I was worried about 2011 because the slightly early harvest means a lot of winemakers are too busy to celebrate with us.

Some winemakers managed to send samples to be tasted in their absence.  Notably, Gerard Bertrand sent a few bottles of his Cabernet Franc from Cigalus.  That’s a big name in the region and I’m so excited that he decided to participate.  And everybody enjoyed tasting the wine while watching high def video footage of the Corbieres vineyard from a helicopter!  Bling bling.  We’ve come a long way from  #Cabernetday’s humble beginnings. ;D

I was also really pleased to see some winemakers tore themselves away from harvest to come in person.  And they brought wines!  Which is also very exciting because a lot of the growers around here are very shy and don’t like promoting their own wine. I’m very proud of them for coming out and braving a mostly anglophone audience to help share some of the Cabernet love.

Sharing with Anglophones

And it should be noted that this year was VERY English-speaking.  Many English families retire to this region around Carcassonne, and I feel like they make up a really strong community that will enjoy a lot of local wines.  Probably 90% of the attendees were speaking in English.

And I’ll add that almost everybody tonight was a wine novice, which is great.  I was happy to have a very professional/wine trade crowd in 2010.  But I’m even happier to share the joys of Cabernet with an amateur/novice crowd.  People who just love life in the south of France and want to drink some good local wine.

We got to spend a lot of time sharing simple winemaker pleasures like “how to taste grapes for ripeness“.  We all went out to the rows of Cabernet Sauvignon and tasted how the fruit was coming along.  Chewed the skins and seeds separately.  Talked about the importance of sugar and phenolics.

It was a lot of fun because we had a huge deal of neighborhood support.  I’m getting too mushy, but it felt wonderful to have such a big block party here at O’Vineyards all around some Cabernet.

Lots of good friends!

2011″s Cab Day turned out very different from 2010 here in the Languedoc, so I’m anxious to hear everybody’s reports.  I hope everybody has a piece of the magic we had here in the Languedoc Roussillon!  Thanks again to Rick Bakas for organizing a wonderful Cab Day.

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!

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!

As ridiculously happy as I was when one Japanese customer paired my wine with AC/DC’s “Let There Be Rock”, I was more than a little surprised to see the band was actually teaming up with a winery in Australia to release some AC/DC wines.

You Shook Me All Night Long Moscato

Soon, wine rockers around the world will be able to get a taste of the Barossa and Coonawarra regions of Australia with clumsy names like “You Shook Me All Night Long Moscato” and “Highway to Hell Cabernet Sauvignon”.   I’m sad that people won’t need to pair my wine with AC/DC anymore (assuming they’ll pair AC/DC music with AC/DC wine from now on).  But on the other hand, I could never pull off the sleeveless hard rock thing.

Hopefully fun gimmicks like this can get some decent wine into the hands of people who normally wouldn’t be drinking wine.

AC/DC can be a gateway wine for people. 🙂

This summer, we were very excited to be featured in a special wine issue of L’Express magazine in France.  This is a national magazine and the equivalent of TIME in the United States.  So it’s got a wide reach, and the people reading it aren’t necessarily wine geeks.

Billing me as an American in Carcassonne, Nicolas de Rouyn shares our journey in a fun, relatable way.  “Mazette. Grosse affaire,” as the article says. 😀

We’re happy with the coverage.  Especially because this publication is designed to be read by normal people.

So often the wine world tends to limit itself to other wine professionals or initiated wine lovers.  But most wine is consumed by normal people who only think about wine a few minutes a week!

Hopefully this sort of article can get us out of the omphalocentric wine beltway and get the word about O’Vineyards out into the big open public.

This whole issue of l’Express was pretty interesting.  They had something like 12 pages devoted to wine bloggers (where O’Vineyards was mentioned a couple times as well).  The Languedoc Roussillon was well-represented throughout the issue.  Hopefully, the French wine blogosphere can benefit from this exposure and get more people interested in wine.

But then, seeing the way some people reacted to the article, I don’t have TOO much hope for getting the French wine blog world popular exposure.  We still seem pretty preoccupied by petty rivalries, alliances, and vendettas.  If you don’t have the patience to read through the 200+ comments in this thread, suffice it to say that people disagreed with the selection criteria for the Express articles.  Thankfully, most people will never be privvy to this squabbling (despite my willingness to link to it ;D) and most people will just think “Oh there are French wine bloggers. That’s cool!”

I managed to take some pictures yesterday.  Lots of photos of the Syrah and Cabernet finishing veraison.  That’s the period when the plant turns the grapes purple.

I also found some baby birds newly hatched in the Syrah!

For more pictures of grapes turning purple, check out this Love That Languedoc post about veraison in the Languedoc-Roussillon.

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.

Everybody likes wine!  Okay, not quite everybody.  But besides the President of France, really a lot of people love wine.  And it’s time for wine tourism to take this into account.  This post summarizes some of my philosophy on our winery tours and travel activities by thinking about normal people and what they want when they visit a vineyard.

Wine tourism falsehoods

• False: Only wine snobs will enjoy a winery tour
• False: A vineyard tour can take place in one room
• False: All potential vineyard visitors use wine guides
• False: If you don’t drink, you can’t enjoy a winery tour
• False: Young people aren’t interested in wine

To put it more positively:

Wine tourism TRUTHhoods

Normal people think wine is cool

About half of the people who visited O’Vineyards this year have never visited a vineyard or winery before.

There’s this very old notion in France about wine tourism.  If somebody is averti (ie “in the know”), they will find out about a winery in a guide book, they will call ahead of time to arrange a visit, they will taste the wine during that visit, and then they will purchase a significant amount of wine.  This is a fine way of doing things for wine nerds.  But only a tiny number of wine drinkers are wine nerds.

Most drinkers are totally normal people who drink wine 2-4 times a month and have never even considered buying a magazine about wine.  If they are visiting a place like Carcassonne, it will not take long for them to realize they are in wine country.  The land between villages is covered in vines.  They will get curious about visiting a winery. And they are frequently surprised to see how hard it is to find a good vineyard to visit.

These people don’t know a ton about wine, but they want to learn a little.  Wine tourism should focus more heavily on this demographic because they’re more fun than snobs and they are more statistically significant.  If we could only sell wine to wine nerds or normal people, we’d choose normal people.  And if we could somehow forbid wine snobs from drinking O’Vineyards, we probably would.

Standing in a gift shop is rarely fun

Our goal is to entertain winery visitors.

The thing about entertaining normal people is that it’s marginally more difficult in some ways.  Wine nerds are so desperate to be immersed in wine culture that they will put up with almost anything.  For normal people who have never thought of listing “wine” as an interest on their facebook profile, we’re going to have to be a little more entertaining.

That said, it’s not very hard to be entertaining.  Wine is inherently cool.  You have to fight pretty hard to make it boring.  And I’m surpised that some wineries spend a huge amount of resources making themselves uninteresting.  One of the most common ways for a winery to develop tourism is to build a giftshop.  More accurately a caveau de degustation or a tasting room. And a tasting room is important for lots of reasons.  But it shouldn’t be the only thing you do.

My tasting room at O’Vineyards is just a really comfortable living room.  There’s no cash register.  There aren’t price tags.  You sit down and enjoy some wine.  And there are direct views on the vines at all times.  If I didn’t have a view on the vines from the tasting room, I’d probably encourage people to taste in the winery.  Again, it’s just more interesting.

Most wine retailers would kill for the opportunity to show their customers a vineyard. To taste the wine in situ surrounded by barrels or by vines.  Winemakers have this opportunity.  And instead we spend tons of money to build tasting rooms that are totally removed from the vineyard!

Normal people don’t read wine magazines

There are other ways to let normal people know they’d have fun visiting your vineyard.

Normal people don’t think about wine all the time, and they don’t invest in wine guides and wine magazines.  While it is logical to advertise winery tours, wine camps, etc. in wine magazines, it also makes sense to reach out through other non-wine media.  I remember a story from one of the people at mesvignes.com who mentioned that their ad campaigns in so-called “feminine magazines” were infinitely more successful than their ads in wine zines.

I obviously do a lot of Internet work.  But you don’t need to follow the same path as me!  Consider at least adding your property to TripAdvisor.  And encouraging visitors to leave a review when they get back home.

Consider your working relationships with hotels, B&B, gites, and house rentals in your area.  Can any of them send traffic your way?  What about restaurant staff?  If a restaurant sells your wine, the staff there are in an amazing position to send drinkers your way.

Working with retailers is harder because they sometimes fear the tourist will circumvent the middleman while visiting the vineyard.  But consider giving your cavistes gift certificates for a free winery tour and tell them to distribute them for purchases of 6 bottles from your estate (or whatever).  A clever retailer will be able to upsell one-time clients on your wine, and you’ll increase your overall sales while getting some travelers to come by.  And even though you don’t make any direct cash off of those tourists, they will go home and talk about you, and you are going to sell more wine to that retailer.

Brochures and signage are good too.  However, in my experience, word of mouth always beats a stack of brochures or dilapidated roadside sign in the shape of a wine bottle.

And don’t ignore trade press or wine press.  They’re important too.  Just for different reasons and different audiences.

Wine is only one weapon in your entertainment arsenal

A lot of people who visit O’Vineyards don’t drink wine.

I know it seems crazy that somebody who doesn’t drink wine might visit a vineyard.  But this happens–all the time.  Pregnant ladies, young teenagers, religious abstainers, and people who plain out dislike red wine.

This is because people visit a vineyard expecting to be entertained.  And wine tasting is only one possible method of entertainment. Education and personality are big here.  People generally expect to learn something.  If this is their first winery, they’re probably curious about really simple stuff like how wine is made.  What does a vine look like?  How often does it give fruit?  What’s the difference between red and white and rose?  Normal people don’t know this stuff, but they’d like to know.

Of course, it’s not just about conveying information.  It’s about having a good time.  Think about going to the bar.  People can drink at home, so why do they go to a bar and pay more money?  It’s usually for the social element.  Guests to your winery will appreciate meeting a winemaker and finding out what a winemaker is like.  It’s pretty rare for most people.  Like meeting an astronaut or a racecar driver.

Although I should also mention that you shouldn’t treat these tourists like idiots.  They don’t know a lot about wine, but they’re still intelligent.  More than a few tourist attractions in the region have developed expensive but meaningless light shows.  Wine tourists are not THAT easily entertained.  Actually, I’d argue it’s even easier to entertain them.  You don’t need to build a light show.  You just need to open up and share what you know.  Tell a funny story.  Tell a sad story.  Listen to their stories too.  Wine tourism, like wine should be a fun social experience.

Wine tourism is no longer for curmudgeonly snobs

Get them young!  (but not too young!)

Don’t underestimate 20-something year-olds.  Remember the sweet spot that we’re looking to hit is normal people who think wine is cool but don’t necessarily know a lot about it.  Blank slates, if you will.  A lot of young people fit that description…almost by definition.  Americans can’t start drinking wine til we’re 21 so it’s difficult for somebody in their twenties to know much at all about wine other than “I like it!”

If you are looking at developing wine tourism, consider the vast potential of this market.  We tend to like authenticity which is wonderfully inexpensive in terms of communication, ads, and PR.  Also, converting young people gets you a brand advocate that will market you and your wines for a lifetime to come.  I have a lot of twenty-somethings who visit the vineyard and end up recommending it to their parents and grandparents.

Caveat

I will confess that this post is where I stand today, and my views will almost certainly evolve over time.  And I should also mention that a lot of winemakers complain about a sort of looky-loo tourist that I have never met.  They spend an hour or two at the vineyard, tasting for free and then they leave without buying anything or they buy a single bottle of the cheapest wine or somesuch.

Honestly, this is why I charge for tours.  I still offer free giftshop tastings if that’s what people specifically ask for.  But then they also know that it’s thirty minutes and then I gotta run.  And (knock on wood) I still haven’t had any bad experiences.  I really enjoy meeting all the kooks who come through this vineyard.  And they mostly seem to enjoy meeting us too.  Here’s to hoping I never have to complain about visitors!

Grape harvest in the south of France

The grapes are changing color and that reminds us that harvest time is right around the corner.  We get exceptionally busy around harvest, but we leave the door open and let tourists come to the vineyard and see exactly how harvest goes down.  Some people actually roll up their sleeves and work for a bit too!  It’s the perfect way to get immersed in the wine from the region while you visit Carcassonne.

Who is this workshop designed for?

This is great for anybody who is curious about how wine is made.  You don’t need to know a lot about wine.  It’s interesting to every level of wine drinker.  We’ve actually had visitors who don’t even drink wine but still love the tour because they get to see a really fascinating process that defines the life of our entire region for an entire month.  Wine is really the backbone of the Languedoc Roussillon and visiting a vineyard is a quintessential experience!

All that said, if you do already know a fair bit about wine, this is a great way to take it to the next level.  You’ll see soooo much in a short period of time.  It will certainly be time well-spent.

When is harvest 2011?

Harvest should start around the second week of September.

But this is the toughest part of planning the harvest workshops.  Folk lore says that harvest starts 45 days after the grapes change color. And they’re changing color right now.  According to that, you can expect harvest to start around the second week of September.  But that’s not set in stone.  On the bright side, if you come right before harvest, there is still a lot of interesting stuff going on.  We’ll be tasting the grapes to see whether they’re ready to be harvested.  We’ll be setting up the winery for harvest.  And we’ll be doing some last minute work to prepare the parcels that are going to be machine-harvested.  You might also get to peek in at our extremely limited white wine production (just a couple of barrels).

Harvest should end around the second week of October.

But even toward the end, there are lots of interesting things going on.  Vinification for example!  How do we turn that grape juice into wine?  In many ways, the end of harvest is the most interesting time to visit because you’ll see freshly picked grapes (generally the Cabernet Sauvignon comes in last) side by side with the first grapes we picked (and they’re generally finishing their fermentation by the end of harvest).  The downside is that we’ll be exhausted so you’ll meet a much less energetic version of the O’Connell family. 😀  But we love to receive people and share the harvest so don’t be shy!

What do you see and do at harvest?

You’ll see everything.  There are no closed doors.  You’ll see how we pick the grapes and bring them into the winery.  You can see the sorting table in action.  You’ll see how we bring the grapes up to the tanks without any pumps.  You can see us mix yeasts or sulfites that will be added to the fermentation tank.  All this is open book.  Last year, a group from Barcelona took some brilliant harvest photos that really showcase how much access they had to every step of the process.

A lot of tourists choose to participate actively in some of the easier jobs.  Spend fifteen minutes at the sorting table to contribute to the quality of O’Vineyards 2011!  Help pick a row of grapevines.  Or do more technical stuff like learn how to take sugar density measurements on the incoming juice and calculate the potential alcohol level.  Whatever tickles your fancy (within reason… we have to be careful about insurance issues).

How to book a harvest tour

You should email us at ryan@ovineyards.com and let us know what day or days you can come by.  We’ll tell you what’s likely to be the best day to visit.   Also tell us if you want the tour (25 Euros / person) or the more involved harvest workshop (95 Euros / person, lunch included and more time with the winemakers).

I hope to see a lot of you very soon!