While Tom Bove may have acquired international fame as the man who sold his home and vineyard, Château Miraval, to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, locally he is better known as the American who has bought, restored and sold over a dozen vineyards in the past 30 years.
His amazing energy leaves a telltale trail of quality as each vineyard achieves recognition for producing organic wines of distinction.
Scroll down for tasting notes and scores for a selection of wines from Tom Bove’s key estates
Timeline of Tom Bove’s principal purchases:
Château Miraval: bought in 1992, rented to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in 2008, sold in 2011.
Domaine Saint Jean de Villecroze: bought in 1993, sold in 2000.
Domaine Lafoux: bought in 1999, renamed Bergerie d’Aquino, sold in 2008.
Château La Mascaronne: bought in 1999, sold in 2020.
Mira Luna: 110ha purchased from Miraval in 2008.
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Bomont de Cormeil: bought in 2008.
Piccolino, in Cinque Terre: bought in 2014.
Domaine de la Bernarde: bought in 2015. Some land was sold, some was integrated into Château La Mascaronne.
Domaine de Fontlade: bought in 2016 and renamed Château Bellini.
Bove has a keen eye for terroir and location, and his purchases of whole estates hide another story of buying and selling individual parcels, redefining even his neighbours’ estates.
For example, when he sold the Miraval estate in 2011, he kept his favourite parcel, Mira Luna. He also sold a parcel from his Mascaronne estate to neighbouring Peyrassol when it made more sense for them to own it. He is currently restructuring and re-planting his new estate, Château Bellini, formerly Domaine de Fontlade, outside of Brignoles, and he even introduced his friend George Clooney to a neighbouring estate.
During a visit in 2021, Château Bellini was a busy building site. Bove, with an energy and pace which belied his years, whizzed round the vineyards that were being restructured and terraced. Several hectares of Rolle and Grenache had recently been planted, a north-facing slope had been cleared for Syrah – one of his signatures – and the new cellar and manor house ruins transformed into a luxury hotel.
A map showing the Mira Luna parcels in relation to the Miraval estate.
(Image credit: www.mira-luna.com)
Charting the course
Surprisingly, Bove has not always been in wine. He started his career as an officer for the US Navy’s nuclear submarine programme, before founding The Rochem Group in 1973, a global wastewater treatment systems company.
Miraval was his first purchase, back in 1992. As he recalls, when he ‘first came to Provence there were few good wines being produced’, and the 2km drive to Miraval was potted with half-metre deep holes which were full of water from the heavy rain the night before. The air was ‘laden with the beautiful smell of spring flowers and trees’.
The Miraval estate.
(Image credit: REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo)
Arriving with his wife Jane, two of his five children and two dogs, he recalls thinking there was no chance he would own the property. Miraval was ‘decaying yet still magnificent, made up of a large number of buildings constructed of different materials in different architectural styles spanning 800 years. It was so massive that all the incongruous styles made a beautiful congruous whole.’
Nevertheless, Bove fell in love with the property. ‘The minute I saw it I decided to find the money to buy it,’ he says. This started what has proved to be a 30-year passion. ‘I love to fix domaines, châteaux and vineyards that, in my eyes, are worthy of repair. This has led me to purchase 10 of them, supported by friends that got infected with my “malady”.’
Although this is now a wine story, it did not start as one. Bove did not even think of making wine at Miraval at first. His Italian grandparents, who had immigrated to Indiana in the USA, had made a couple of barrels of wine for home consumption, but it was hardly a winemaking family. Miraval came with 24ha of vines as well as winemaker Emmanuel Gaujal. Gaujal is the oenologist for a large handful of well-known estates, and according to Bove, it was he who taught him about repairing and restructuring vineyards, including purchasing and merging the neighbouring 100ha Vireiguet estate with Miraval.
Together they replanted most of Miraval with Cinsault, Grenache, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Rolle. They also began specialising in white wines which, on the limestone soils, showed great promise, in direct contrast to everyone else who was focusing on rosé and red wines. They even made two botrytised wines, the last of which was made in 2005. The wines rapidly achieved recognition locally, and the white wine, Lady Jane, named after Bove’s wife, was highly regarded. Tragically, Jane died in the New York-Geneva plane crash in 1998.
From one estate to the next
In 1999, Bove purchased Château Lafoux, ‘a beautiful property which had been defaced by its last owner who, in my opinion, had no taste for wine, land, vineyards, nor houses’, he says. He renamed it Bergerie d’Aquino, after Thomas Aquinas, who was born in Roccasecca, the town Bove’s grandparents were from in the Lazio region of Italy. The vineyards were planted with old vines of Mourvèdre, Syrah and Grenache on poor, stony soils, in a cool and windy corridor.
The Château La Mascaronne estate.
(Image credit: www.chateau-lamascaronne.com)
Around this time he also bought Château La Mascaronne, in partnership with his friend from the Naval Academy, Jack Moynehan. He remembers it as ‘a complete mess except for the land – a small mountain facing southwest full of stone.’
In 2008 Bove then bought Bomont de Cormeil, a small estate at 550m altitude in the far north of Provence, which reminded him of Côte-Rôtie. He replanted it with Viognier and Syrah in the Coteaux du Verdon IGP. He combines his passion with pragmatism and environmental awareness, claiming that organic viticulture is ‘a real philosophy of life and an obvious choice in Provence […], we are thinking about biodynamics, but we already follow some of its principles, such as ploughing with a horse at Bomont de Cormeil to limit soil compaction, as well as planting in a favourable moon.’
Ploughing with a horse at Bomont de Cormeil.
(Image credit: www.bomontdecormeil.com)
The sale of Miraval in 2011 freed up more opportunities, and in 2014, with his second wife Sally and ‘an equally crazy friend’, he bought a small estate that they named Piccolino in Cinque Terre.
Following that in 2015, he bought Château La Mascaronne’s neighbour, Domaine de la Bernarde. This estate had 25ha of vineyards, including a lot of Syrah. In true Bove fashion, he carved out a terraced amphitheatre which surrounds the cellar. Any parcels which did not fit the Château La Mascaronne identity were sold, and others were incorporated into Château La Mascaronne. In 2020, Bove sold the estate to investor Michel Reybier, who also owns Bordeaux estate Cos d’Estournel.
In 2016 he acquired Domaine de Fontlade outside Brignoles. A great lover of art and opera, Bove renamed this domaine Château Bellini, after the opera composer Vincenzo Bellini and the Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini (he had already named his dog Bellini, too).
While none of his later estates included the same magnificent buildings as Miraval, it was the terroir which always attracted him, and the potential to create great wine.
‘I love rebuilding things. I like not screwing things up,’ says Bove, ‘I only touch them if I see there’s an underlying beauty to bring out.’
An outsider and a trail-blazer
Bove continues to buy and restore neglected Provence wine estates. Behind him he leaves an unmistakable trail of high-quality wines and a passion for the landscape. Some of his trademarks are a simple range limited to one wine of each colour, stunning whites, lots of Syrah and full ripeness. ‘We allow the grapes to come to full maturity even though that sometimes brings us into the risk of bad weather,’ he says. The wines speak for themselves.
Bove has left an undeniable impact on the wines of central Provence. He chats with Brad Pitt, his neighbour George Clooney, and George Lucas, who now owns Château Margüi up the road. He has certainly brought international attention to the region. ‘My objective,’ he says, ‘is to have my production recognised by non-Provençals who come here for the art of living and who leave talking about the wines.’
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Elizabeth Gabay MW has specialised in the wines of south-eastern France and Hungary since the 1980’s. Working as an independent wine merchant and consultant, she graduated as a Master of Wine in 1998 and moved to southeast France in 2002.
Her book, Rose: Understanding the pink wine revolution, was published in 2018 and she has continued to write about and judge rosé wines for Decanter.
Aside from Decanter, she has written for Drinks Business, Harpers, The Wine Merchant, VinCE and Nomacorc.
She is the lead instructor for the Provence immersion course run by the French Wine Society and she has judged at numerous Decanter World Wine Awards since 2007.
