Brad Pitt hires a new representation over the ownership of Chateau Miraval, the French purveyor of every Bravo Housewife’s favorite mid-tier rosé.
In the new development of Brad Pitt vs Angelina Jolie case, Laura Brill of the Los Angeles firm Kendall Brill & Kelly has left, while John Berlinski of Bird Mirella has joined a team at New York’s Wachtell Lipton. Berlinski represented Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit against Disney over her Black Widow wages.
The Miraval dispute, in which Pitt says Jolie unjustly sold her stake in their winery to Russian tycoon Yuri Shefler, appears to be heating up.
Pitt’s 35-room manor residence and vineyard in southern France. The mansion, also called the “Mecca of Romance,” hosted the former couple wedding in 2014, over a decade after the pair met on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The Provençal wine, on the other hand, has had tremendous worldwide success with its Miraval Rosé. Accoridng to Pitt, it is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Pitt and Jolie purchased Château Miraval in 2008 — well their LLCs did. Pitt’s Mondo Bongo purchased 60%, while Jolie’s Nouvel purchased 40%. Five years later, right before the wedding, Pitt sold a 10% stake to Jolie for €1, bringing them even, as a token of love.
Pitt teamed up with French winemaker Marc Perrin to build a major global brand – who infact was in negotiations with Jolie. Instead, Jolie sold her stake to Tenute del Mondo, which is owned by Stoli Group founder Yuri Shefler and has been looking for Château Miraval since news of Pitt and Jolie’s divorce broke.
Pitt claims that Shefler’s ill-reputed professional associates threaten Miraval’s reputation for the foreseeable future. The statement says, “Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Miraval’s insurer has sought assurances that Shefler is not aligned with Putin and that affiliation with Stoli would not create commercial risk. That inquiry is no surprise; in the wake of Russia’s invasion, discarding bottles of Stolichnaya vodka, Stoli’s signature product, has come to signify solidarity with Ukraine, and boycotts of Stoli-affiliated products became widespread.”
Pitt and Jolie have enlisted a massive range of foreign legal specialists, from law school professors in France who are well-versed in the country’s company law to the former chief of Luxembourg’s Supreme Court.
