In 2007, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie took a helicopter ride across Europe in search of a place where their growing family could live happily, in peace, and as far from show business as possible. That is how they found Miraval (Miracle in French), a castle and vineyard recognized globally for making top quality wine. The couple immediately fell in love with the place, and on May 8, 2008, they bought the place for $27 million.
A short time later, the staff of Brad and Angelina came to make this castle a home. Nannies from Vietnam, Congo and the United States, personal assistants, cooks, waiters and bodyguards, were part of the team that the couple brought to Miraval. At first, Brad had no interest in continuing the wine business, leaving the castle’s former owner, Tom Bove , to get on with his work of creating some of the best wine in the world.
However, a conversation with cabinetmaker Frank Pollaro convinced Pitt that the property he had just acquired had the potential to produce the best wine in the world in industrial quantities. The actor would end up making a millionaire deal with Marc Perrin , producer of Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a globally celebrated red wine. After the agreement between Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Perrin, Miraval began to produce the best rosé wine in the world
“I thought that Miraval was special and that Brad had enough money, and that he had to maintain the quality of the wine we were producing. When he bought Miraval, we were producing 150,000 bottles of high-quality wine that were sold in very high-quality restaurants. Brad and Marc Perrin took those 150,000 bottles and raised them to 10 million , ”Bove recalled in an interview for Variety , assuring that the dumbbell between Pitt and Perrin was an obvious move.
Both the family and the business prospered remarkably for several years, with hundreds of high-end restaurants boasting bottles signed “Bottled by Jolie-Pitt & Perrin.” However, it’s well known that what goes up must come down, and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt officially called it quits on September 19, 2016.
Not only were the six children of the couple the ones who suffered this scandalous divorce, so did their piece of paradise: Miraval. According to Pitt, since the papers to buy the property were signed, he agreed with his then-wife never to sell their respective shares in Miraval without the consent of the other. By 2021, when the property dispute began, Jolie denied that such an agreement existed.
Brad Pitt assured that an agreement had been signed so that their parts would not be sold without the consent of the other. Jolie denied this claim
In a letter she sent to her ex-husband in an effort to try to negotiate “custody” of Miraval, Jolie confirmed her exit from the wine business, assuring that Pitt would have categorically rejected her requests to distribute any part of the winery’s profits to him. In addition to reiterating that the actor had many inconsiderate behaviors, had money spent in ways that she would not have approved and made decisions in which she was not consulted, despite the fact that the actress invested 60 million dollars in Miraval.
The drama may have ended in February 2021, when Pitt was about to buy out Jolie’s Miraval share for $54.5 million , but a new dispute broke out. As part of the child custody trial, Jolie presented a sealed document where she claimed to have proof of domestic violence she had suffered from Brad Pitt. Given this, the actor responded with a confidentiality agreement to ” prohibit Jolie from speaking outside of court about any personal conduct by Pitt towards her or the family .” The actress described this as an “inconceivable gag order”, so the deal could not be carried out.
Angelina ended up selling her part to a third party: Tenute del Mondo, firm of Russian billionaire Yuri Scheffler for USD67 million . By February 2022, Pitt sued Jolie again, assuring that the sale of her part had been illegal. The battle between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie continues. On June 1, Pitt started a lawsuit again against his ex-wife and Nouvel (the company that owned his shares in the Miraval estate) with the intention of reversing the sale that Angelina made to Tenute del Mondo, for which fate de Miraval is merely uncertain.
” Miraval for me died in September 2016 and everything I have seen in the years since has sadly confirmed it ,” said Angelina Jolie at the time.