Vintner and Regenerative Farming Champion Stephen Cronk on Conversation with Jason

This week on Conversation with Jason, we're excited to welcome Stephen Cronk, co-founder and president of Maison Mirabeau in Provence and co-founder and chairman of the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation. In 2024 Mirabeau became the first vineyard to be Regenerative Organic Certified in France.

In their conversation, Jason and Stephen discuss Stephen’s discovery of wine on a gap-year trip to Australia in the 1980s, how he launched into the wine trade upon his return to London, and what it was about wine (hint: it’s always the people) that he missed during a 15-year hiatus in another industry. Stephen shared the decision he and his wife came to in 2009 to relocate to Provence to start a rosé wine brand and how a conversation with a local industry veteran convinced him to focus on the 3rd “V” in the 3 V’s of wine business: viticulture, vinification, and vendre.

By 2019, Stephen was ready to buy an estate and found a lovely property near St. Tropez, but he found the soils to be depleted. During his transition to organic farming that began that same year, an article by @ericasimov, forwarded by a neighbor, led him to reach out to Mimi Casteel in Oregon, to launch into regenerative farming, and eventually to found the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation to act as a resource for other vintners.

Stephen shares what the surprises were about his push to become the first Regenerative Organic Certified vineyard in France and why he went through four different certifications. Finally, he explains the importance of the RVF’s #oneblockchallenge and why he wants to turn Domaine Mirabeau into a “vineyard of the future”.

All this and more in this week's conversation

https://www.maisonmirabeau.com/about/...
https://www.regenerativeviticulture.org/
https://regenorganic.org/

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