PARIS — “I always saw myself, wherever I was in life, staring out the window,” Angelina Jolie once said, adding she would tell herself there must be a place where she can eventually put down roots and be happy. That place could have been Miraval — a stunning estate in Provence, near the village of Correns in the Var department. It’s a wild, untamed region, just an hour from the airports of Nice or Marseille, where international stars drift in and out, seeking refuge from the media frenzy. Nestled among breathtaking gorges and scrubland, it’s a haven seemingly untouched by time or human hands. Jolie dreamed of making it her permanent home with Brad Pitt and their blended family. But that was back in June 2007, and the dream has long since faded into history.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
Jolie is no longer the radiant, beautiful and in-love young mother that Tom Bove — a Missouri industrialist turned kingmaker of Provençal vineyard estates, including the 600-hectare Miraval property at the time (now 1,000 hectares) — saw emerge from his helicopter like an angel descending from the sky, accompanied by her partner, the handsome star of Thelma & Louise (1991), and their daughter Shiloh, just a few months old. The couple was searching for an estate in the South of France — both to honor a promise Jolie had made to her mother, Marcheline Bertrand (1950–2007), who died of ovarian cancer at 57, and to celebrate their French roots, as well as to make a financial investment.
Between film shoots and the intense demands of Jolie’s humanitarian work — over 60 missions from 2001 to 2012 as a UNHCR goodwill ambassador — the search for a property ground to a halt. Nothing seemed right. Then their real estate agent caught wind of a secluded property coming onto the market, which boasted thousands of century-old olive trees, truffle oaks and 40 hectares of vineyards (now 50 hectares).
Heaven into hell
Miraval lies like a treasure at the end of a long, rocky road through the Val d’Argens, winding between streams and forests. The Hollywood couple was only supposed to spend half an hour visiting — a time slot dictated by the schedule of the former Lara Croft actress. Thirty minutes, no more, no less, but that 30 minute visit in the early summer of 2007 lasted far longer.
At the heart of the conflict was the rosé wines produced under their name at Miraval.
What began as a glimpse of paradise slowly turned into a nightmare, one marked by endless renovations driven by Pitt’s architectural whims — and the rise of a thriving wine business over which the former lovers — and parents of six children, Maddox Chivan (now 22), Pax Thien (20), Zahara Marley (19), Shiloh Nouvel (18), and twins Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Léon (16) — have been at odds ever since.
At the heart of the conflict was the rosé wines produced under their name at Miraval — a masterstroke by Pitt. A commercial powerhouse, built on the combined star power of Pitt and Jolie and in partnership with the Perrin family, who have been celebrated vintners from Châteauneuf-du-Pape for five generations, and not least because of their powers of negotiation. The Pitt-Jolie-Perrin partnership was a hit: Since 2012, millions of bottles have been sold worldwide (110 countries), accounting for 70% of Miraval’s production.
After the export breakthrough of Château d’Esclans, thanks to Sacha Lichine’s Whispering Angel, Miraval followed in its footsteps. This was a winning strategy that acted as a catalyst for the entire region, which was already renowned for its expertise in rosé. Its delicate, almost translucent shade seems reminiscent of Jolie’s complexion.
Jolie’s struggles
The actress is generally an open book, so when she appeared on the red carpet at the 77th Tony Awards in New York on June 16, 2024 wearing a sumptuous blue-green velvet gown draped at the hips by Atelier Versace and showing off a new tattoo on her décolletage, it was hard not to read into it. “The Outsiders,” a show produced by the 49-year-old actress, won the award for Best Musical.
Jolie appeared with her shy 16-year-old daughter Vivienne, the youngest of her children and a volunteer assistant on the production. It was Vivienne who persuaded her mother to bring S.E. Hinton’s novel to Broadway, a narrative that had already been adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983. It is a story of rival teen gangs fighting to survive, which Jolie had likely read and watched during her punk-junkie years in Los Angeles. A time when she dabbled in every excess, heroin, anorexia, self-harm, etc. — torn by the resentment her mother, Marcheline Bertrand (known as Marche), harbored toward her father, Jon Voight, the unforgettable star of Midnight Cowboy (1969), who had abruptly left her for another woman. Jolie was only a few weeks old at the time.
Bertrand was so traumatized by this that she could no longer bear to see her daughter who reminded her so much of Voight, and relegated Jolie to a pristine room several floors above the family apartment, where she lived with James Haven, her two-year-old brother. For nearly two years, Jolie was raised in this “ivory tower” under the care of rotating babysitters. Now, by producing “The Outsiders,” Jolie is aiming to be attentive to her own daughter’s worries. Was her new tattoo, a swallow across her chest, a symbol of Vivienne’s impending independence — or the beginning of a new era of freedom for the actress herself?
“That which nourishes me also destroys me”
From a distance, the tattoo on her chest could pass for a baptismal medal on a chain. Except that the former Tomb Raider star has little appetite for matters of religion or chains. She has “That which nourishes me also destroys me,” tattooed across her lower abdomen, and she later added to the message with a verse by American poet Tennessee Williams, celebrating the need for freedom: “A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages.” Has she achieved this, freedom, then?
She has erased Pitt from her life, with all six children following suit by dropping their paternal surname.
After their separation in 2016, following a particularly violent incident on a flight from Nice to Los Angeles — during which Pitt, likely under the influence of alcohol and drugs, attacked his wife and one of their sons — the divorce was finalized in April 2019. The next five years were riddled with legal battles over child custody, and especially the fate of Miraval. Jolie wanted to rid herself of the estate which was too laden with memories and associated with her ex-husband’s drinking. Since then, she has erased Pitt from her life, with all six children following suit by dropping their paternal surname, just as she did with Voight’s.
Pitt and Jolie’s love lasted 12 years — a whirlwind romance which sparked during the filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and ended in a spectacular implosion, reminiscent of the house blown up in the film’s final scene which sees the spy couple, now each other’s worst enemies, wandering stunned and stripped on the sidewalk outside their home. Fortunately, Miraval has not yet been destroyed, rather the château, its outbuildings, and its music studio are more alive than ever, as is the success of its wines.
