Moving Forwards at The Domaine

Unfortunately, as you all may have heard from the news and our social channels, our beautiful region was hit by a terrible wildfire across mid-August. The fire burned for several days sweeping across the Var region and Massif de Maures nature reserve and mountains, destroying approximately 7000 hectares and sadly taking two lives. 

As the wind changed direction and headed towards our estate we were extremely lucky that our domaine and animals were saved. We will be eternally grateful to the incredible dedication of our local firemen and famer who fought against the fires throughout the night to spare our domaine from a wave of destruction. We have sadly lost a hangar, a garage and some vines have burned but this is a very little loss compared to the surrounding nature reserve and local winemaking community that were devastated by the fires. 

The nature reserve is home to the endangered tortoise species “Hermann”, some of which were sadly not able to escape the flames. A number of our neighbouring vineyards have also been hit very hard and have lost most of their grapes along with vital farming equipment and agricultural estate.

Throughout this difficult time we have been comforted by the incredible words of support from our community around the world. We cannot thank you enough for your kindness and the purchases that you made of our very special La Réserve wine to support the reinstatement of our regenerative farming mission here at the domaine. It was also an incredible moment coming together to support our community by bringing awareness on social by raising a glass to Provence. 

This difficult period has served as a further wake-up call to the devastating effects of climate change and our founders Jeany & Stephen have used this time to continue to raise awareness of this global issue and ways in which our land can be managed to mitigate these natural disasters that continue to be experienced around the world at increasing intensity. 

Our hand-picked harvest at the Domaine: 

The outbreak of the fires left doubt as to whether we would be able to harvest this year’s vintage but after assessing our vines and preliminary tests we decided to go ahead with this year’s harvest. 

Earlier this month the Mirabeau team came together for the harvest at the domaine to pick our Vermentino (Rolle) grapes by hand. Harvesting took place over night to ensure grapes were picked at their coolest to limit heat exposure and oxidation to protect their delicate aromas and achieve a pale fresh style of wine. 

It was a fun but tiring night for the Mirabeau team as we stayed up late to prepare for the harvest. We began the evening with a team supper and set out after amongst the vineyards with our gear with music and torches in tow! 

Completing our team harvest just shy of dawn the grapes were then brought to the cave for the vinification process and will move through to oak barrels for ageing. Despite the devastating events this summer all is currently looking positive for our domaine cuvée and we are continuing to monitor the progress of our wine. We hope to be able to share it with you next year! 

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