Winery owner fears the worst after seeing property burn on TV in Victoria bushfires

Having fled the fires, the owner of Australian winery Jinks Creek believes that his property has been destroyed after seeing footage on television, as the country experiences its hottest summer since records began.

Vision from the news chopper shows a home in Victoria exploding as bushfires continue to burn in and around the Bunyip State Park. #7News pic.twitter.com/pP7CBInga1

— 7 News Brisbane (@7NewsBrisbane) March 3, 2019

Andrew Clarke, owner of Jinks Creek winery, fled the Bunyip State Park Fire in Australian state of Victoria, which is currently burning an area of 11,524 hectares, according to the latest statement. 

Speaking on Nine Network’s Today programme, the winemaker said that he believed he’d seen his property, which includes a wine bar, gallery and accommodation, go up in flames in footage broadcast on Sunday 3 March.

He said: “I don’t want to see the devastation, but I am going to have to face up to it, we lost our entire … it is my life’s work and we have lost our cellar door which we built over many years.

“I suppose everyone can imagine seeing your house go up in flames, I mean with all your clothes in it – you don’t realise what possessions you have got until they are gone. It is all gone.

“My insurance won’t cover it, there is no way, my livelihood’s in tatters. I don’t have any way of earning any money, I don’t know what to do, I have got to support my family, so I’m stuffed pretty much.”

Clarke told the programme that he’d just purchased brewing equipment from Germany. He estimated that all of the gear destroyed in the blaze was worth around half a million (Australian) dollars.

He laid blame for the ferocity of the fires with Parks Victoria, which he claims were not following the rules “of the Royal Commission” and had not been doing any “burning off”.

Clarke has worked for the likes of Brown Brothers and Rick Kinzbrunner of Giaconda as well as Dry Creek in Sonoma and Château Giscours in Bordeaux. In 1979, he was the second recipient of a winemaking scholarship from the Victorian Wine Industry Association and in 1984, he set up his own viticultural consultancy business.

The first acre of vines at Jinks Creek, consisting of equal parts Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, was planted in 1979. It has since expanded to over eight acres with Sauvignon Blanc planted in the 1990s. Clarke now oversees 10 vineyards, ranging in size from 1 acre to 50 acres.

A Go Fund Me page has been set up in support of the Clarke family. To visit, please click here.

According to a statement from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, persistent periods of significant heat in December and January have resulted in the country’s warmest summer on record.

Bureau climatologist Dr Lynette Bettio, said: “The heat we saw this summer was unprecedented. While the final numbers are yet to be analysed, we know it will be the warmest on record for Australia as a whole, and many individual locations will have broken summer heat records as well.

“There was a noticeable absence of strong cold fronts that would normally bring relief during summer. Rainfall was also well below average for many places, apart from areas in northern Queensland.”

With severe weather events, including bushfires, to contend with, the AU$6 billion Australian wine industry is starting to feel the effects of the hot weather.

Speaking to CBS News, Andrew Margan, winemaker at Hunter Valley’s Margan Wines, said: “The difference this year is that the grapes are ripening quicker, so we’re harvesting earlier.

“There’s a compression of vintage so that historically, the white varieties would ripen at different times and now they’re all ripening together.

“So we’re looking at picking reds two weeks earlier than we normally would as well, and Shiraz in particular.”

With all the grapes coming in at once rather than in more manageable stages, wineries are faced with storage pressures and a struggle to find tank space.