An old estate with a cellar, a chapel and a recording studio.

Château Miraval stands in the village of Correns, just north of Brignoles in the Var department of Provence. English Wikipedia dates the château to 1841 and describes a house of some thirty-five rooms set among gardens, a moat, fountains, a pond and a chapel, with vineyards, terraces of olive trees and the garrigue and pine woods of the surrounding hills. The estate says the site was inhabited before Roman times. The large wine cellar, English Wikipedia says, was built in 1850 by Joseph-Louis Lambot, the inventor of reinforced concrete, who owned the neighbouring domaine of La Celle.

Much of the name’s fame before wine came from music. In 1977 the French jazz pianist Jacques Loussier, then the owner, and the sound engineer Patrice Quef built a recording studio on the property and called it Studio Miraval. Architectural Digest reported in 2021 that Pink Floyd recorded parts of The Wall there in 1979; the Associated Press listed Sting and The Cranberries among later visitors in 2008, and Andrew Ridgeley’s 2019 memoir places Wham!’s Make It Big at Miraval in the summer of 1984. The Daily Telegraph reported in 2006 that Muse had used the studio for Black Holes and Revelations.

The estate then passed to Tom Bove, an American owner from Indiana, who modernised a vineyard that had been producing simple country wine. English Wikipedia gives two dates for his purchase, 1993 in its article on the château and 1998 in its article on the studio. Under Bove, the estate says, the Guide Hachette des Vins counted Miraval among France’s top 500 producers.

A Provence rosé made with a Rhône family.

In 2011 the estate was bought by the actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who had leased it since 2008, English Wikipedia says. For the wine they turned to the Perrin family of Château de Beaucastel in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Wine Spectator reported in March 2013 that the partnership was called Jolie-Pitt & Perrin, and that the Perrins would distribute the wine; Decanter later described Marc Perrin, a fifth-generation winemaker at Beaucastel, as the winemaker behind Miraval’s rosé.

The first release was a Côtes de Provence rosé of the 2012 vintage, an organic blend of Cinsault, Grenache, Syrah and Rolle, put on sale in March 2013. Vanity Fair and Time reported that the first 6,000 bottles sold out within hours. In November 2013 the wine was placed No. 84 in Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of the year, with a score of 90 points. The estate also makes red and white wines under the Côtes de Provence appellation and whites under Coteaux Varois, according to English Wikipedia.

The bottle was part of the launch story. Wine Spectator described a distinctive bottle with a Champagne-style punt, and quoted Marc Perrin as saying the owners had taken part in the blending sessions and helped design both the label and the bottle.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all French wine names: Château Lafite Rothschild, Château Mouton Rothschild, Pétrus, Château Margaux, Château d’Yquem, Whispering Angel and Miraval. French wine brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from old estates that have carried the same name for centuries to labels that now belong to families, investors or much larger drinks groups, and a single name can be poured everywhere from a neighbourhood bistro to a grand restaurant list.

A wine brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, added new wines or grown far beyond the estate where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its wine is actually grown, made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its wine is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From one rosé to a family of labels.

The range grew around the first rosé. In January 2019 the estate announced Studio by Miraval, released worldwide on 5 March that year; Decanter and The Drinks Business reported that its name honours Loussier’s recording studio, that it blends Cinsault, Grenache, Rolle and Tibouren, and that it comes in a slimmer bottle in keeping with the estate’s minimalist, perfume-style look. In January 2020 Wine Spectator reported that Marc Perrin had confirmed Fleur de Miraval, a rosé Champagne made with the Champagne grower Rodolphe Péters. In May 2021 the estate announced Muse de Miraval, a rosé it says comes from its two oldest parcels and is sold only in magnums, in a hand-made bottle it describes as art deco in style. An organic olive oil in black stoneware bottles followed in 2017, Ikon London reported.

The studio came back too. On 10 October 2022 Brad Pitt and the French producer Damien Quintard reopened it as Miraval Studios; Billboard reported that Sade was the first act to record there, and Architectural Digest described a refit with a hybrid analogue and digital console and Dolby Atmos.

Ownership has also changed. In October 2021 one of the two founding owners sold her stake to Tenute del Mondo, part of the Stoli Group, People reported, and a dispute over that sale was taken to court in Los Angeles in February 2022, the Associated Press reported; it was still before the courts in 2026.

The name needs care online: Miraval is also the name of an unrelated resort and spa brand in Arizona. The estate’s own site is miraval.com.

For a design guide, Miraval shows how an old Provence estate, a famous studio and a pale rosé in a distinctive bottle can carry one name across wine, Champagne and music. Compare Whispering Angel, the Côtes de Provence rosé from Château d’Esclans, and Château Margaux, the Bordeaux first growth. For this guide we use pale rosé, Provence stone and garrigue olive with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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