Sky News with Ian King: Mirabeau on the Provence Wildfires

On Monday 6th September 2021, our Co-Founder Jeany Cronk was on Sky News‘ Ian King Live, the daily business programme on Sky News to discuss the recent wildfires in the Maures Mountains and its devastating impact on our Domaine and our close-knit local community of farmers and winegrowers.

In a live segment raising awareness of the wildfires that tore through over 7000 hectares of land and protected fires in Provence, Jeany gives her first-hand account of the fires: “What started as a tiny column of smoke in the distance ended up as a devastating fire that ran up the hills and moved towards the sea (…) After 24 hours it came back to our vineyard and engulfed us on all four sides”.

The full extent of the impact of the fires on Domaine Mirabeau and the region are still being assessed, but our Domaine was sadly ravaged from 360 degrees and the remains of the outbuildings and trees tell their tale of how violent and close it was. Even though we’ve suffered a great deal of damage, we are some of the lucky ones as Jeany goes onto to explain the fire resilience of vines and our plans to continue this month and next year’s harvest with the plots affected showing less longterm vine damage to that of our estate’s neighbours. Other neighbours were sadly not so fortunate with the fires also tragically taking two lives.

With their slow-burning properties, Jeany then highlighted vine trees’ usage as natural fire breaks when planted amongst vast expanses of forest areas. Highlighting viticultural methodologies as a “way of fighting climate change at large (…) to make the conditions less favourable to these events” Jeany outlines how such viticultural practices have come to shape our regenerative farming journey on Domaine Mirabeau as our region continues to experience the affects of climate change with hotter summers and less rain.

Read Stephen Cronk’s opinion piece on the Provence wildfires & climate change here