Like all the great music and art festivals, Vinisud draws a lot of talent to the area where it’s held (Montpellier). So every day, after the fair ends, the party is just beginning for other people.
The French refer to afterhours parties and tastings as “OFF’ events. This is a run down of all the OFF events I’ve heard about so far. Feel free to add your own in the comments section or email me if I’m missing some.
If you find this list helpful, consider tweeting about it or sending a link to your friends by email.
Events that require a reservation or paid entry are marked as such. Note that virtually all of these events are meant for wine buffs. Especially the ones that are invitation only. You should probably only attend if you’re in the trade or press, or if you can demonstrate a pretty professional enthusiasm for wine. The dinner events are probably more open to amateur visitors. Don’t get mad at me! You know I don’t make the rules. 🙂
Sunday OFF Events
Le Vin de Mes Amis – 14h-19h – Domaine de Verchant 34170 Castelnau le Lez
RSVP to charlotte.senat@gmail.com
Cost 10€
Vin de Mes Amis blog
PDF of invitation vdm 2012 pdf
A huge list of very good wines. A lot of the usual suspects from Changer l’Aude en Vin, but tons more to boot. See page 2 of the Vin de Mes Amis PDF for details. I heard that this might be at Trinque Fougasse O’Nord but the invitation says Domaine de Verchant. Look into it if you’re interested!
Haut les Vins! – 10h-20h – Chateau de Flaugergues (in Montpellier)
official website
list of participants
A large group of winemakers from all around France, and a couple from Portugal, Spain and even Serbia. This gang will be doing their tasting at a Domaine that is actually located within Montpellier’s city limits. My buddy Benoit will be pouring his zero dosage Champagne and lots of other good winemakers are in attendance. It’s open all Sunday so if you get to Montpellier early, this is a great way to ease into ViniSud. But don’t party too hard as you have three days of salon ahead of you!
ViniFilles – 18h30 – Jam 100 rue Ferdinand de Lesseps 34000Montpellier
invitation required
contact presse@vinifilles.fr
This group of Languedoc Roussillon winemaking women are having a rock show and tasting at the Jam. There’s a buffet and ample wine. The bands playing are Les Gazelles de Bruxelles and La Mal Coiffée. But there is a guestlist so you have to contact them if you want to get in.
Chateauneuf du Pape, Tavel & Rasteau – 19h – Chateau de la Banquiere Vauguieres le Haut 34130 Maugio
dinner & music
invitation only
contact: soiree.crus@hotmail.fr
The AOCs Chateauneuf du Pape, Tavel & Rasteau are organizing a nice dinner with music and winemakers from the three appellations presenting their wines around a buffet dinner.
Monday OFF Events
G-Night, Occupy Grenache – 19h-2h – location not yet announced (underground ;D)
PDF of invitation G-Night Invite Vinisud 2012
Facebook event page
A night devoted to Grenache. Run by the same people who organized the Grenache Symposium at La Verriere. Should be fun. The location is still a surprise so I expect they’ve got something fun in store to reveal it closer to the date.
Le Vin de Mes Amis – 10h-19h – Domaine de Verchant 34170 Castelnau le Lez
RSVP to charlotte.senat@gmail.com
Cost 10€
Vin de Mes Amis blog
PDF of invitation vdm 2012 pdf
Les amis this time around are Jean Yves Bordier with butter and cheeses from Saint-Malo, Irene et Julienne Daniaux with glass art, and Antony Cointre a roving chef. And a huge list of very good wines. A lot of the usual suspects from Changer l’Aude en Vin, but tons more to boot. See page 2 of the Vin de Mes Amis PDF for details.
Haut les Vins! – 10h-18h – Chateau de Flaugergues, Montpellier
official website
list of participants
If you’re not in town on Sunday, they’re doing it all over on Monday.
Contains Sulfites…Mais Pas Trop! – 18h – Le Ban des Gourmands, Place Carnot, Montpellier
Official blog
RSVP required on the official blog
This hilariously named group of reasoned winemakers are doing an event on Monday night at a restaurant. It might be a sit down dinner… the invitation just bills it as an Intergalactic journey. 😀 Reservations should be made before the 10th so hurry up!
Mas de l’Ecriture – 18h-20h30 – Chez Boris (brasserie)
invitation only, for wine trade and press
contact: louisehurren@wanadoo.fr
A 12 year vertical of Mas de l’Ecriture. Pretty stunning opportunity, but very limited space in the venue.
Tuesday OFF Events
Mardi Gras des Gaillardises – 11h-20h – Aeroport Hotel Maugio/Montpellier
blog post about the event
facebook page
25 winemakers will present their wines at the Aeroport Hotel which is easy to get to by using the regular airport shuttles from the Parc des Expositions. There are some really top notch producers from all over France. And of particular interest to my blog readers, there are a couple of Internet superstars including my mom from O’Vineyards, Iris Rutz-Rudel from Domaine Lisson, Isabelle Perraud from Cotes de la Moliere, Amy Lillard from La Gramiere, and Lilian Bauchet from Les Bachelards. So if you’ve been reading our blogs and wondering if the wine is as good as the words, here is your chance. Full list of vignerons available in the link above; you’ll see there are some heavy hitters.
Mas de l’Ecriture – 18h-20h30 – Chez Boris (bistrot)
invitation only, for wine trade and press
contact: louisehurren@wanadoo.fr
A 12 year vertical of Mas de l’Ecriture. Note the venue changes from the similarly named Chez Boris Brasserie to Chez Boris Bistrot. But still limited space.
So OFF that they’re ON
There are a few events that are structured like OFFs or have the spirit of an OFF, but they’re actually going to take place within the walls of ViniSud.
The Outsiders will be teaching you new ways to communicate about wines.
on Monday afternoon at 16h @ the Pavilion 2.0
and
on Tuesday morning at 10h @ the Pavilion 2.0
The 2012 edition of Vinisud includes a space devoted to the web called Pavilion 2.0
I’ll be spending a lot of time there. Additionally, I’ll be doing a presentation with some of my buddies from the Outsiders
on Monday afternoon at 16h
and
on Tuesday morning at 10h.
Each presentation will consist of a 10 minute talk about new opportunities in wine communication afforded by the Internet, followed by a tasting workshop where we’ll encourage people to talk about our wine with images instead of words.
Facebook event page
Invitation to the event
It should be a lot of fun. It’s a focused, high-energy event. Each producer is bringing just one wine to be tasted so it’s a small sampler platter of the Outsiders that will hopefully inspire you to visit the stand of your favorite producers. And we might revolutionize the way you think about wine writing while we’re at it. 🙂
Every two years, I meet lots and lots of people at ViniSud who are there for their first time. If you’re not a part of the trade specialized in Mediterranean wines, it can be an overwhelming experience. Even professionals who are native to this region organize their salon far ahead of time and have meetings booked all day. So for Languedoc newbies, it’s easy to get lost.
This year, I’ve written a couple posts that might help out the odd journalist or tradesperson who doesn’t have their whole trip planned out.
Vinisud is a massive wine trade fair in Montpellier. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of mediterranean winemakers, so I’ve compiled a list of southern French wines that I think are genuinely interesting.
If you ever feel overwhelmed, just take a deep breath, pick somebody from this list and visit them. I’m sure they’ll treat you well. I picked people who are pretty spread out across all the halls so wherever you have your wine-induced panic attack, you’ll be near one of these producers.
If you find this list helpful, consider tweeting about it or sending a link to your friends by email.
- Chateau de Nages – Michel & Tina Gassier – Hall 11
- Chateau de Gaure – Pierre Fabre – Hall 7
- Clos du Gravillas – John & Nicole Bojanowski – Hall 9
- Chene Bleu Rosé – Nicole Sierra Rolet – Hall 11
- l’Oustal Blanc Naick blanc – Claude & Isabel Fonquerle – Hall 6 (tuesday afternoon only)
- Domaine des Homs – Jean Marc & Anne de Crozals – Hall 10
- O’Vineyards – That’s me. – Hall 1
Chateau de Nages Vielles Vignes 2011
Tina & Michel Gassier – Costieres de Nimes
Hall 11 Aisle A Stand 99
This wine is one of the strongest arguments I’ve ever tasted for exploration of organic and biodynamic practices at my own vineyard. That’s a pretty hefty statement, so let me explain myself. I am not convinced that organic wine is inherently better from a moral or ecological perspective. I am therefore only interested in it to the extent that it can make my wine taste better. Gassier makes my style of wine, big, dense, rich, etc. while preserving a certain level of freshness and acidity that keeps the wine from becoming overbearing. He also has a relatively huge property. Something like 6 times as big as O’Vineyards. So if he can do it, I can. And he swears that his wines have benefited from it. So I’m intrigued. More at the Gassier blog or Nages website.
Chateau de Gaure Campagne Chardonnay 2010
Pierre Fabre – Limoux
Hall 7 Aisle A Stand 74
Pierre Fabre started making wines a bit south of my vineyard at almost the exact same time. On top of making fantastic wines, he’s a great artist and every vintage gets a different painting of his. He’s recently released a new white wine where the label is painted by his five year old son! It’s a great wine with some real value and the painting hilariously looks like his style at first glance. He’s got a huge smile and loves to share his wines with strangers. more at gaure website or blog
Clos du Gravillas Lo Vièlh Carignan
Nicole & John Bojanowski – St Jean de Minervois
Hall 9 Aisle B Stand 46
St Jean de Minervois is famous for its muscat, but I’m sending you to the crazies up on the hill that make a pure Carignan. They famously defended the grape to Jancis Robinson and other journalists who sometimes looked down on the variety. You can taste a 100% Carignan done right and decide if it’s worth all the fuss.
Chêne Bleu / Domaine de La Verrière Rosé
Nicole Sierra-Rolet – Southern Rhône
Hall 11 Stand C64
This year, you can taste a rosé made for red wine drinkers. It’s direct press and serious business. If you go to their stand and say “Go ahead, make my day,” they’ll pour you their Clint Eastwood styled rosé. 🙂
To their merit, Chêne Bleu was one of the few wineries that sent me an email so good I just wanted to publish their words:
Chêne Bleu takes the Clint Eastwood approach to winemaking – it’s not an adventure if someone’s done the same thing already – so when we set out to make a rosé, we wanted it to be different from the norm and to stand proudly alongside our critically acclaimed reds and whites. This rosé is not for knocking back by the pool. It’s one of the few direct press rosés made; and we call it our ‘anti-rosé rosé’ because we believe that even those who aren’t usually rosé fans will love its ‘chewy’ texture, long finish and ability to stand up to lovely rich Mediterranean food and spicy Eastern dishes. Through the years it’s won accolades all over the world including designation as a ‘Vin Mythique’ in La Revue du Vin de France. Come by the stand and, if you use the password ‘Go ahead, make my day’, you can see if you agree with us, and the critics, in a taste test alongside some spicy food.
L’Oustal Blanc Naick Blanc
Isabel & Claude Fonquerle – la Liviniere
Hall 6 Aisle A Stand 13 (Tuesday afternoon only)
A brother from another mother, the high end reds at l’Oustal Blanc remind me of a more mediterranean version of my own wines. But what’s really intriguing is their 100% Grenache Gris. A white wine for red wine drinkers. This is one of the whites that pushed dad and me over the edge and made us decide to harvest our white grapes and make a white wine in 2012. Claude will only be at ViniSud Tuesday afternoon. You can also catch this wine at an OFF event we’re doing together on Tuesday at the Aeroport Hotel.
Domaine des Homs Paul 2011
Anne & Jean Marc de Crozals – Minervois
Hall 10 Aisle A Stand 8
I met these winemakers because we both make Cabardes wines, but I think their true specialty is their organic Minervois estate. In a blind tasting I once confused this wine with a 60 € bottle from a more notorious estate, and the Cuvée Paul is thankfully much more affordable. 🙂 It’s a minervois that manages to capture ripe fruit without getting overbearing. And they were some of our first neighbors to have us over for a drink when we got to the region. So cheers.
O’Vineyards Stranger, Stranger 2007
Joe, Ryan and Liz O’Connell – Cabardes
Hall 1 Aisle B Stand 21
I’d be remiss if I didn’t invite you to come visit my family’s stand. My parents, Joe and Liz O’Connell, don’t usually get a chance to talk because I am always blabbing for them online. But at Vinisud, you can meet the silent majority of O’Vineyards! And they’re coming with a special treat. Ask about the “Stranger, Stranger” and they’ll give you a taste of a 100% Merlot they only made in 2007, in commemoration of all the strangers who helped us when we first moved to the Languedoc. This wine always cheers us up, and it was the first bottle my dad reached for when the New Orleans Saints got knocked out of the NFL playoffs this month.
This post is part of my guide to ViniSud 2012. It is specifically about my vineyard’s activities at Vinisud. If you’re looking for a list of all the winemakers at Vinisud, consult the official list on the vinisud website.
If you’re in Montpellier on February 20-22, there are many ways to interact with O’Vineyards while we attend Vinisud.
O’Vineyards official stand
Cité de Carcassonne – Hall 1, Allée B, Stand 21
We have a space in the Cité de Carcassonne space in Hall 1, Allée B, Stand 21. When you come into the conference through the main entrance, go straight forward and Hall 1 is the first building you’ll pass through. We’re one of the first stands you’ll see and we encourage you to start or end your day with my parents who will be at the stand. If you want to taste the wines with me (Ryan) then you should email me or tweet me ahead of time so that I can make sure I’m at the stand to meet you. But my parents are really awesome and you’ll enjoy meeting them too! 🙂
Mardi Gras OFF event
Aeroport Hotel (google maps link)
34130 Maugio, Montpellier
Tuesday Feb 21
from 11:00 to 20:00.
Hors d’oeuvres offered.
contact anytime for more info: 33(0)6 30 18 99 10
We’re also participating in an intriguing off event in a private conference room in the aeroport hotel. This is really really close to the airport so it’s very convenient for those of you coming from far away. And there are regular shuttles from Vinisud to the airport, so it’s easy to get to from Vinisud. It’s a laidback group that offers a more relaxed atmosphere than Vinisud (which can be very business oriented and sort of rushed with all the appointments you have to make). Come by for some excellent wines from all over France and a bite to eat. The uniting principle of this group is that most of the members have worked closely with Pierre Gaillard at some point in their careers, although a few of us (like O’Vineyards) are more friends of friends. Anyway, it goes until 8PM so you can come by after the salon and meet some great winemakers who understand the value of a soft sell. This is a room full of unique and interesting wines that will charm you without an onslaught of export figures and volume commitments.
The Web Pavillion
Pavilion 2.0
This year, Vinisud has an area devoted to the web. Presumably, it will have wifi access. And there will be several presentations devoted to the Internet’s effect on the wine business and the mediterranean. They’ve invited several bloggers and online wine communicators so it should be a fun area. It’s also relatively anglophone so brace yourself for that.
I will be here for a large portion of the fair since they picked me to represent France this year. I also have a couple of my short talks scheduled in this space over the length of the fair.
Outsiders: A left field tasting
Monday February 20th, 16h
and Tuesday February 21st, 10h
We’re doing this presentation twice. The first ten minutes (when I talk) will likely be similar. I want to introduce the notion that the Internet allows us to communicate about wine in a variety of ways that conventional print media does not permit. And then we’ll encourage you to taste several wines made by the outsiders and try to pair them with photos, sound, video and so on instead of boring old tasting notes.
Wine communication on a tiny budget
Date to be determined
A joint presentation with Charles Perez from Mas Becha, me, and maybe some others. Still ironing this out. We’ll basically show examples of massively successful communication efforts realized on miniscule budgets. A must see for bootstrappers everywhere.
on loan from J. Heritier
The land and vines that we refer to as O’Vineyards have been around for a very long time and they’ve had many names and many farmers. I’m always picking up little bits about the vineyard’s history, and a friend just loaned a book to me that might help shed some light on the vineyard’s origins.
Cartulaire et Archives de l’Ancien Diocese de Carcassonne par M. Mahul.
Editeur: Philippe Schrauben
Mémoire de la Société des Etudes Scientifiques de l’Aude
One passage on Villemoustaussou’s agricultural history notes that in 1777:
“Lorsque Monsieur, comte de Provence, qui depuis a régné si glorieusement sous le nom de Louis XVIII, passa à Carcassonne, on servit à ce Prince des vins de Limoux et de Villemoustaussou; il eût la bonté d’en faire l’éloge à M. de Bezons. Le vin de Villemoustaussou provenait d’une vigne qui appartenait depuis longtemps à la famille Don” (Journal de la Société d’Agriculture de Carcassonne vol IV p. 137)
Basically Villemoustaussou’s wines were served to somebody pretty important and they impressed him. What’s particularly interesting is that the vines were owned by a M. Don, and we bought our vineyard from a M. Dons. That’s likely a coincidence as locals have told me there were several owners between 1777 and Dons. But still a fun discovery! Wouldn’t that be interesting to find that Dons’ family owned the property long before him and made remarkable wines back in the 18th century!?
Learning more about the vineyard is a complicated process because we’re located on the edge of three different villages. Each of the villages may have records of the property and all under different names. And each of those names can change and evolve over time. Often, the area we call O’Vineyards is locally referred to as “Le Thou” or “Lieu dit Le Thou”. I see some records of places called Le Grand Tou (could easily be Le Thou since the H is silent) as well as Dittou (could easily be a name derived from lieu DIT THOU) but I’ll need to do some more reading to see if these are different areas. I can probably also mention that Thou is a common word in old english texts so that makes searching a bit complicated too. While searching for the uniquely named Villemoustaussou is a bit easier, it should be noted that there are lots of alternate spellings and older names (latin texts refer to it as Villamostansio, Villamonstantion, and Villamonstantione).
Some of the local vines still carry their older names, notably Barrau, Brau, Rivalz and La Mijeane. Unfortunately, I don’t see much about a winemaking estate named Thou or Tou. One passage describes a property called TISSOT that is on the high ground separating Villegailhenc from Villemoustaussou (this is a very accurate description of our vineyard, especially the Syrah parcel), and there is a Chemin Tissot near the vineyard. But I can’t be sure without further research on the name TISSOT to see if it is not referencing some other vineyard. A preliminary search shows we might be very very close to a property called “les hauts de TISSOT” and we can imagine that the Thou might have been part of a larger TISSOT estate. More to come.
Also, by extraordinary coincidence, there is an area in Villegailhenc that was called Podium like one of our wines. Podium Giberti, its full name in 1380, is now called Pechibert.
A lot of people ask me what wine regions are closest to Toulouse, because they’d like to get out of the city to taste some wine. I thought I’d write up my wine tasting recommendations in one place.
If you want to spend a day visiting a wine region near Toulouse, I’m naturally going to recommend that you visit me at O’Vineyards or spend the night in our B&B. I’m a little more than an hour’s drive from Toulouse and after you visit O’Vineyards, you can spend some time at the Cité de Carcassonne. But this page has information about all the other wine regions you can visit near Toulouse.
photo: DalGobboM
Wine regions close to Toulouse
- Gaillac (near Albi) – Probably the closest wine area that people talk about frequently. You can check out Albi’s cathedral or the Toulouse Lautrec museum on the same day as they’re in the same area as Gaillac.
- Cabardes (near Carcassonne) – The Languedoc-Roussillon appellation that is closest to Toulouse, Cabardes is just a few kilometers away from the Cité de Carcassonne, so that can be an interesting day trip or weekend.
- Cahors – This is the original home of Malbec, a grape varietal made popularized in Argentina. Try to find a winery that makes real black wine, so dark you can add water and still not see through it.
- Madiran – A southwestern appellation that has gained notoriety more recently for it’s highly tannic wines generally dominated by the Tannat grape variety.
- Cotes de Millau – I don’t know much about the wines, but it’s made right around where they make Roquefort cheese (and you can often visit those cheese caves). So if you’re into salty blue cheeses this would be a pretty epic day trip.
- Armagnac – Not strictly wine, but worth mentioning, as this spirit is distilled from wine. Similar to cognac but aged differently. Check it out if you like spirits.
These are generally ordered by a combination of how interesting I think they are and how far they are from Toulouse. It’s not an exact science because some wine regions are very large and oddly shaped and so even though most of the region is farther away, some wineries in it may be closer. To illustrate this point, the map here shows all the southwestern French wine designations, but Cabardes (which is technically Languedoc-Roussillon and not southwestern France) is not shown even though it is much closer than most of southwestern France. Such is life!
Here is a more complete list of wine areas classified as Southwestern French wines which includes some regions that I don’t know as much about:
- Côtes du Frontonnais
- Vins de Lavilledieu
- Gaillac
- Cotes de Brulhois
- Cotes de Buzet
- Cotes du Marmandais
- Cahors
- Cotes de Saint-Mont
- Tursan
- Madiran / Pacherenc du Vic Bilh
- Bergerac
- Cotes du Duras
- Montravel
- Monbazillac
- Saussignac
- Pecharmant
- Rosette
- Marcillac
- Vins d’Entraygues et du Fel
- Vins d’Estaing
- Cotes de Millau
- Bearn
- Jurancon
- Irouléguy (Basque country)
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!
I had to reorganize all the photos on our computer systems and I found some real pearls from the first few years at O’Vineyards (some of them are back when it was le Domaine du Thou! and not even called O’Vineyards yet).
Nostalgia time
The first year we were at O’Vineyards, there wasn’t a winery or anything. And then we had a really hard time obtaining a permit, so we had to install our wine tanks, barrels, cooling system, and everything on a slab outside. And then the municipal government kindly let us build a winery/hangar around the slab we had already poured.
So the picture at the top of this post is of me cleaning off equipment after decuvage… but the crazy thing is that the winery is being built around me.
6 Years Ago – Back in 2005
The photo data shows it’s from October 19th 2005. I was only 20! I look like I’m 14. Also, this is just a couple months after Hurricane Katrina hit my city and my school. I had only just discovered YouTube a few months before this photo was taken, and I thought “this is really cool but there aren’t a lot of videos on here”. . . Back then, the US had only been in Afghanistan for 4 years. Back in 2005, I thought selling great wine would be easy. 😀 HOW YOUNG WE WERE.
Here are some more photos to take us down memory lane.
