Earlier this month, Angelina Jolie offloaded her stake in Château Miraval — the wine brand she co-founded with her now-ex-husband Brad Pitt — to Tenute del Mondo, a subsidiary of the Stoli Group. Pitt and his partners (new and old) are already moving on. Today, Miraval has announced the release of its newest wine: Champagne Fleur de Miraval ER2, the second edition of the rosé-focused winery's take on Champagne.
Billed as a "version of immense refinement," Champagne Fleur de Miraval ER2 (the "E" stand for "exclusively" and the "R" stands for "rosé") is "a celebration of the name of the Champagne House that is behind its conception, revealing an extraordinary bouquet of dried flowers where roses and peonies are delicately intertwined." The brand continues, "Notes of white flowers like hawthorn and honeysuckle, acacia and linden blossom complete this unique floral composition."
![Brad Pitt with a bottle of Champagne Fleur de Miraval](https://www.foodandwine.com/thmb/qpKO4ppxnJhpXC2GS9XMTc0zf44=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Brad-Pitt-Champagne-VT-2-BLOG1021-ff5e76aa40004aca83d16d6cfaaeb20a.jpg)
"I was impressed last year with the success of our first edition, Fleur de Miraval ER1," Pitt stated in the announcement. "With ER2, we pushed the limits even further, we created new extremes for quality. Being the only Champagne house exclusively devoted to Rosé Champagne, each edition of Fleur de Miraval is a constant quest for beauty, a desire to create space for all possibilities."
![Champagne Fleur de Miraval](https://www.foodandwine.com/thmb/RAaugrX1pxi5dgwuiIBgWHFFdz4=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Brad-Pitt-Champagne-VT-BLOG1021-f0e012ec5a5c48428b9157674dd0442d.jpg)
To get there, Miraval used a mix of Chardonnay grapes from different vintages — primarily 2017, but also 2012 and 2014 — to make up the bulk (75 percent) of the bubbly. The remaining 25 percent comes courtesy of young Pinot Noir vines from Vertus. The wine is then aged on its lees in the Champagne house's cellars for three years before being disgorged this past April.
Pierre Peters, the sixth-generation winemaker handling nitty-gritty of actually producing the Champagne, told People that Pitt wasn't just sitting idly by. "Brad was involved 200 percent with everything," Peters explained. "He wants to know, to understand the process. He trusts us to make the wine but he's involved with everything else, the label, the packaging, the marketing...."
Reportedly, 22,000 bottles are being released at a price of about $400 each — that's about 2,000 more bottles than last year's "ER1" batch but also at a price increase of about $10. Stoli didn't reveal what it paid to acquire Jolie's half of the Miraval brand but, hey, they gotta start seeing a return on their investment.