While this is in no way funny, it’s sort of spectacular. Nobody actually used this exact phrase in the wine reviews. But somebody said “Delicious, deep and dusty. It should cost more.” And somebody else said “Rich deep flavours and a long finish.” And the computer sussed out that it could say “Delicious, deep flavours.” It even got the punctuation and capitalization correct. It’s fun to focus on the zaniest reviews the computer generates. But some of these boring ones are actually much more impressive.
“really, really solid quaffing red. It tastes True again. Nice wines. Thanks again. Good effort”
I like this one for all the reasons mentioned above. The simple parts are remarkably accurate. And the note that a wine tastes True again is amazing. You could actually get away with saying that in a review. Although I think if I had a greater respect for line breaks, there would have been a big gap betweent tastes and True. I’ll look into that.
“The 2008 Trah Lah Lah Lah Lah Lah Lah. No, sorry.”
Lest you think the computer only generates positive reviews of my wine… 😀 Aside from being a hilariously curt negative review, this also demonstrates one of the most amazing things about recursive analysis. My wine is called Trah Lah Lah. So the computer has about a 50/50 chance of saying the whole brand name any time it decides to say Trah. Trah is always followed by Lah. And Lah is followed by Lah about half the time. And by a period or another word about half the time. So you see a lot of Trah Lah and a lot of Trah Lah Lah in the generated reviews. But occasionally, you get lucky and the computer just strings together a ton of Lah Lah’s. If I were using trigrams, this probably wouldn’t happen as often. But for now, here we are. And actually, in this particular negative review, it sounds like they’re making fun of the name of the wine.. so it’s perfect!
“Gorgeous fruity New World Wines, with their ‘old fashioned’ flavour”
Program I used
I’m using Gibberizer for now. I might write something on my own later, but for now it’s all thanks to this beauty: http://code.google.com/p/gibberizer/
The settings are
Read input as: Lines
BatchSize: 1
Similarity: 7
Persistence: 5
Disallow input echo
Disallow duplicates
What changed since the last post?
If you read the last post on this subject, you’ll probably notice that these reviews are much more sensical. So what’s different?
First and foremost, I changed the data input. Instead of feeding the last 100 comments I received on Naked Wines, I submitted only tasting notes for the 2008 Trah Lah Lah. That’s 113 reviews. They tend to be a little shorter than comments, so the data file is about the same length, but all the language is about drinking wine. This means that the computer generates fewer comments about technical aspects of the website like the MarketPlace and the vineshare program we’re running.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to generate comments of that nature too. But I just need way more data for that to work. Tasting notes are easier because even the real ones sound a bit like gibberish… and people often get so drunk while tasting the wine that the reviews tend to be a bit slurred by the end.
I should also mention that lots of the reviews are still total gibberish.. for example:
“A bit tannins as well. As a Rhode Islander to breathing” for a good 🙂 will buy again.”
Work in progress!
This is an index of an ongoing series of posts about what people can do in and around Carcassonne. Millions of people visit the medieval citadel (the Cité de Carcassonne) each year, but what should they do after walking those gorgeous castle ramparts?
I obviously recommend visiting my winery at O’Vineyards. We offer a full tour of the winery, and our unique history (we’re first generation winemakers) means that we can talk to you like normal human beings about the sometimes scary or pretentious subjects of winemaking and wine tasting.
But I also want to offer a full list of possible activities because there’s a lot to do in and around Carcassonne other than visiting me!
Things to do around Carcassonne
Walking distance from Cité de Carcassonne
Drink good wine
Eat good food
Visit castle ruins and historic sites
Cave spelunking
Walk, Hike, or Cycle
Ville-Basse
Walking Distance from Cité
This is a list of activities I’ve written about that are walking distance from the medieval castle of Carcassonne. This may overlap significantly with the other categories on this page, but it was a very popular question so I have to talk about it separately.
Carcassonne is beautiful wine country and you don’t have to know a lot about wine to appreciate the rich flavors of the local producers. The greater Carcassonne area touches five major wine classifications:
The rest of this is a work in progress. If you find this article unfinished and you’d like more information, feel free to email me at ryan@ovineyards.com
Eating around Carcassonne
I plan on writing a bit about different dishes and meals that are typical to the south and southwest of France. I’ll also include some addresses of favorite restaurants.
Castle Ruins & Historic Sites
I plan on writing a bit about all the castles and ruins other than Carcassonne like the Chateaux de Lastours.
Small wineries and vineyards around Carcassonne, often lack the infrastructure to receive tourists year round. This post will attempt to list some of the wineries that are well-known in the area for receiving visitors regularly.
If you’d like to visit a particular estate (eg your favorite producer), it’s often a good idea to call ahead of time to make sure the winemaker is available to receive you and taste through some wines. But if you’re fine visiting a winery you’re unfamiliar with, here is a list of folks open to last minute visitors.
Wineries really near to Carcassonne:
O’Vineyards – Directions from the castle – This is my family vineyard and we’re generally happy to receive people year round. It’s always best to call before hand because we are a working vineyard and could be busy. It’s convenient to book one of our wine & food experience on our detailed website . We receive dozens of last minute visitors each year. Visiting us is fun because you’ll actually hang out with the winemakers. We’re also native English speakers and we enjoy sharing with people who know very little about wine. So don’t be intimidated!
885 Avenue de la Montagne Noire
11620 Villemoustaussou
33 (0)6 30 18 99 10
Chateau Pennautier – Directions from the castle – A prestigious estate north of Carcassonne that has a tour of the chateau as well as wine tastings. They have staff dedicated to these tour groups so you can show up without any reservations.
L’Hospitalet – This is a bit farther away in La Clape (by Narbonne), and it’s a bit more of a gift shop tour. But what’s cool is that it unites wines from all of Gerard Bertrand’s properties in the Languedoc Roussillon. So in one place, you’ll get to taste wines from lots of different parts of the region. And Narbonne might be worth a day trip anyway.
Le Bouis – This one is near Narbonne too and has a cool restaurant. It’s technically in the Corbieres but it’s not lost in the mountains to the south. It’s in Gruissan, really close to the coast and makes an easy addition to a Narbonne day trip. You might also consider seeing the salt flats in Gruissan after visiting the winery.
Route Bleue
11430 Gruissan
33 (0)4 68 75 25 25
Wineries in the mountains of the Corbieres
Driving to these wineries will take some time as they are in the mountains (see map of corbieres wineries). But this can be a gorgeous road trip. Avoid the motorway and take the small mountain roads. But don’t drink too much or you won’t be able to drive back! 😀
Embres & Castelmaure – This cooperative winery has some great wines and display them at the gift shop. You can do the tasting for free but they only do winery tours if you make a reservation.
Mont Tauch – Same deal. A great cooperative winery where you can taste the wines for free, but winery tours must be booked ahead of time and are generally reserved for larger groups.
Les Vignerons Du Mont Tauch
11350 Tuchan
33 (0)4 68 45 41 08
I’ve written about a few other cool wineries in the Corbieres, but you might have to call ahead for some of them.
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
This is a post about the price of participating in wine fairs (especially expensive trade fairs) and its effect on the cost of wine. I look specifically at participation in the London International Wine Fair. I think the costs of these fairs makes conventional participation too expensive for small independent producers, but the fair does make sense for larger producers or grouped producers.
What is a trade fair?
A trade fair is a large exhibition of wine producers intended for a professional audience (as opposed to a salon or foire which is generally open to the public). Trade Fairs can feature some public speakers, but they tend to center around the wine exhibition (as opposed to conferences which tend to be more about speakers). You don’t really sell bottles at a trade show. The hope is more to make deals for larger quantities.
note: this photo is of Millesime Bio which is actually one of the most reasonably priced and scaled trade fairs. Instead of hiring a stand, you get a table. And everybody has the exact same table and table cloth. No massive two story buildings for the bigger wineries. Just the same plain white table. An interesting twist.
Throughout the year, there are many trade fairs such as the LIWF (London), VinExpo/ViniSud (alternating years in Bordeaux/Montpellier), and ProWein (Düsseldorf). These are massive wine fairs full of stands (hundreds or even thousands of them) intended largely for professional audiences consisting of retailers, importers, negociants, journalists, etc.
You pay a pretty penny for your stand (thousands of euros for a small stand at an event that lasts a few days) and you hope to rack up as many business meetings and journalist sightings as possible.
How much does a trade fair cost?
The short of it is that trade fairs cost a lot. There is the basic cost of getting a stand. Then there are all sorts of ancillary costs like travel, lodging, and stand furniture. In the best case scenario, a fair like ViniSud might cost just over 1,000 Euros for the small stands. In the more extravagant scenarios, shows like VineExpo and the LIWF can cost thousands just to get in the door. And then you still have to furnish the stand and make it look different than the hundreds of other stands within line sight of yours. And if you want electricity, lighting, ice to chill your whites, or really anything other than a carpeted stand, you’ll probably have to pay for it.
I don’t want to be purely theoretical, so let’s grab some real numbers from the official trade fair websites.
– Shell package at £346/per sq.m. – Space only at £291/per sq.m
Shell Package is a pre-built stand with walls, lights, name-plates, shelving and a counter, which you just need to ‘dress’.
Space only is the name given to an area with nothing whatsoever on it. You are literally renting an empty ‘space’ on which you must build your own stand.
I’m not sure what the minimum space is at LIWF, and they’re not answering my emails (probably busy organizing the event which is just around the corner). But, from memory, the smallest stands still seemed to be at least 6 square meters. You might think thrifty winemakers always choose to self-furnish, but it’s not that simple. We can’t generally bring furniture on the RyanAir flight to Stansted. It often comes out cheaper to rent the conference’s furnishings. So you come out to 2400 Euros for a tiny stand. That doesn’t include the cost of shipping wine over, travel, lodging, etc.
270 Euros / square meter with a minimum 16 square metre space (4320 Euro minimum). And that’s for the cheap spaces that are only exposed on one side. There is separate pricing for the stands that are exposed on two, three and four sides. And that is just the stand price. There are additional registration fees just to open an dossier or to gain the right to be an indirect exhibitor (600 to 740 Euros).
To give you an idea of what exhibitors spend, VinExpo now has a clef en main offer where you really get a furnished stand where all the work has been done for you.. it’s 16 square meters and costs 9,920 euro. It includes “moquette, cloisons mitoyennes, 1 fronton avec logo de l’exposant, 1 bar comptoir avec évier et branchement eau, 1 vitrine, 1 réserve avec étagères de rangement, 1 patère, du mobilier (1 table ronde, 3 chaises, 2 tabourets hauts, 1 frigo, 1 poubelle), de la décoration florale, électricité (2 prises 24H/24H éclairage), le nettoyage journalier, l’assurance.”
ProWein is one of the most reasonably priced trade fairs which probably explains why it’s gaining so much popularity as an International event. Every year, they get more and more International visitors, apparently. I actually haven’t been so I can’t talk much about it. But even a less expensive fair is still going to end up costing the thriftiest exhibitor 1000+ Euros.
How do trade fairs affect cost of wine?
Well, it really depends on what kind of winemaker you are.
Some of my favorite producers like Domaine Revelh have barely 2 hectares of vines. They’re producing just a few thousand bottles of wine each year. Participation in a single trade show can easily raise the price of a bottle of their wine by 20-50 cents!
On the other hand, producers who put out 3 million bottles each year can amortize the cost of all the major wine fairs over 3 million bottles. In that case, the expense of a much larger stand at each of these fairs, and employees to occupy said stand only add fractions of a cent to each bottle.
It’s hard to generalize, but for your average boutique wine (where production tends to be less than 100,000 bottles per year) attending several trade fairs can mean a significant increase in cost on the wine (several cents per bottle).
As a winery, you’re hoping to generate long term sales. Even if you only make a couple one pallet sales, there’s a chance those merchants reorder your wine again in a few months and again after that. Alternatively, you can meet up with everybody who already buys your wine and taste the new vintage with them. Or you can get some press attention while all the journalists are in town (and again, hopefully this leads to sales).
As a wine drinker though… you have to feel a bit cheated. The cost of the trade fair gets incorporated into the overhead of running a winery and it gets tacked on to the final bottle price. It’s a cost that doen’t improve the quality of the wine.
Additionally, you won’t even benefit from the experience of the the trade show since it isn’t even intended for consumers. Whereas participation in events like Le Grand Tasting can at least be enjoyed by the general wine-drinking public, participation in trade shows is never meant to trickle down to consumers. The only potential benefit to the consumer is that a trade show can create a better supply chain making the product available in your market. But generally speaking, trade shows represent a cost that does not improve the end user’s experience of the wine. So is it worth it? Hmmm..
My UK importer, Naked Wines, strongly discourages its winemakers from expensive trade shows like this. Their philosophy is that all the money we spend should go into making the wine better. However they are pretty keen on some of my low-cost shenanigans which I talk about elsewhere.
What do you think? Are trade fairs a necessary means of finding supply chains? Or are they a bit of bloat that inflates wine prices unnecessarily?
Basically, 29 or so wineries have signed up to host picnics in their vines. This is a great opportunity for people to visit vineyards throughout Aude. O’Vineyards isn’t participating in this event, but I will certainly attend another winery’s picnic. And I might be organizing a similar idea for our new vineyard owners from Naked Wines.
Map of villages with picnic locations
Because the list of winemakers is a little intimidating and contains lots of tiny villages you’ve never heard of, I made a map of all the villages that hava a participating winemaker. Look at the map to find the picnics nearest to you. And then consult the full list below to find out which winery is hosting the picnic.
Lots of depth. Dangerous because this wine is heaven with a box of chocolates!
Our review of the week from a customer at Naked Wines. It’s true that the Trah Lah Lah 2008 goes great with some dark chocolate truffles. A real delight. A feedback loop of hedonism that only the bravest foodies should embark on! 🙂
Just went through a hugely informative slide show about marketing French wine. Lots of information. Lots of charts. Infographics. It’s all about the digitization of the wine trade. They look at the influence of ecommerce and digital marketing on the wine world.
I highly recommend that French speaking wine professionals take a swing at reading this entire slideshow which was put together by Nadine Couraud, Estelle Neveu, Clémence Coppey, Mathieu Venet, Luc Bourcier, Vincent Tessier et Thierry Pires from the MBA MCI Part Time 2011 program, in the Pôle e-Business de l’Institut Léonard de Vinci. Found this via Bourgogne Live.
If you’re a winemaker, maybe it’s more important to just skim it and note some of the websites that get listed. Especially in the e-commerce section. Maybe there are some leads you can follow up on.
I know they miss a couple of things, and the entire study is very franco-centric, but it’s an admirably large collection of information. Bravo to the team who did this.
80% des viticulteurs, experts, marchands de vins de Californie interrogés par le WineIndustry Financial Symposium Group en 2010 déclarent utiliser Facebookprofessionellement (Vs 46% en ‘09)
En France, les interprofessions sur les réseaux sociaux:
« Il faut des occasions de montrer que le vin est quelque chose d’accessible » – J-M. Guiraud (InterRhone)
Le vin sur Facebook
Marketing-Communication > Réseaux sociaux
Danny McCubbin and his photography assistant Anthony just came through the south of France. We were very happy that they could stop for three days in Carcassonne and taste the wonderful food and wine of the region. They participated in all our vineyard tours and workshops (i.e. they toured the winery, ate a 5 course lunch at the winemaker’s table, and shot some video of the recipes my mom teaches in her cooking workshop).
Danny is the editor for jamieoliver.com and has been working with Jamie for almost a decade now. He was as nice as you’d expect for a member of the Jamie Oliver team. It’s always a pleasure to share the region’s food and wine with folks visiting Carcassonne and it’s especially fun when the visitors are totally unpretentious food lovers like Danny and Anthony.
They also visited the medieval cité de Carcassonne and stayed in the historic Hotel de la Cité. Jerome Ryon, a local chef at La Barbacane, sat down with them to talk about cooking and food and how it’s about working with good ingredients and keeping things simple and accessible. Jerome insists this is true even at his professional level of cuisine (La Barbacane is a Michelin starred kitchen).
It was Easter weekend so we got to see a few of the neat things going on around Carcassonne. Easter egg hunts and chocolate making workshops. And it’s asparagus season. 🙂
And we organized a tasting on Easter where we enjoyed wines from all over the department of Aude. Some of Ben Darnault’s wines from Minervois, St. Chinian and Picpoul. Some Minervois from Hegarty Chamans as well. A whole lot of fun!
You Can Visit Too
And you don’t have to be a journalist to get these tours. If you want to visit us and have fun with wine and food, you only have to email me. Costs vary depending on what you want to do, so check out the tours and workshops we offer visitors and let me know what you want to do.
Some people say that adding your website to relevant directories will help Internet surfers find your website. Not only can they find you through the directory, the links can also help search engines figure out what your site is about. This second part is only true if you use really relevant directories.
I’ve previously written about regional directories. I might add a few wine specific directories.
Well curated directories like AllTop are divided into dozens of highly specialized blog categories. I’m really honored to be included in the top wine blogs. The directory has very few winery blogs and TWO of us are Languedoc producers (the other winemaker is Iris).
O’Vineyards was also featured in the World Wine category of TripBase’s blog directory. Another honor. A quick look at the other blogs mentioned makes me feel like I’m in very good company. This sort of well-curated blog directory or award listing is very helpful.
WineBlogger is a project that has very specific categories for different wine blogs. This sort of specific categorization means that search engines (and users) will know a lot more about your site. Not only is my site about wine, it is commonly associated with these other websites that use the same types of words (typically in a winemaker’s vocabulary).
Vinography tries to keep a list of all the wine blogs out there. You have to be running for a while with regularly updated content.
The Winery Website Report has a “complete list” of wineries, but their submission form requires you to put a US state so I guess it’s not for wineries outside of the US.
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.
