Château La Mission Haut-Brion

The château

The Lazarist priests took over the vineyard of La Mission in 1682, turned the remaining scrub into vines and in 1698 built the chapel of Notre-Dame d’Aubrion, which gives the second wine its name. The wine had a rank long before any official list. William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, reproduces the Bordeaux prices of 1745, and at Pessac, under a single first growth, Haut-Brion, at 1,500 to 1,800 livres, the second growths are La Mission and Savignac, at 1,200 to 1,300. A survey of the Graves published in 1866 put it where the trade still puts it, between Haut-Brion and Pape-Clément, with only the departmental road between it and Haut-Brion. From 1868 Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, reported that its fame had crossed the sea, that the Americans of New York and New Orleans were very fond of it, and that an English jury had given it a medal at the London exhibition of 1862; in 1898 they gave it about 15 hectares, a size unchanged in a century.

Frédéric Otto Woltner, a Bordeaux négociant (a merchant who buys from the châteaux and sells on), bought the estate in 1919 and, from 1926, with his 2 sons, brought it into the modern era, with enameled steel vats and, from the 1927 vintage, a white. The Dillon family’s offer was accepted in 1983 and the sale took place on November 2. La Tour Haut-Brion made its last vintage under its own name in 2005, and in 2014 it and Laville Haut-Brion were merged into La Mission in the Graves classification.

The vineyard covers 29 hectares across the road from Haut-Brion: close to 25 of red, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, and a little over 4 of white, Sémillon and Sauvignon, on gravel 20 centimeters to more than 3 meters deep over clay, sand, limestone and shell limestone. In 2024 the whole vineyard was mapped by soil conductivity. La Chapelle de La Mission Haut-Brion is the second wine, made in small quantities. The white, long sold as Château Laville Haut-Brion, took back from the 2009 vintage the name Woltner had chosen, Château La Mission Haut-Brion Blanc, and La Clarté de Haut-Brion is the white the 2 estates make together.

The style of La Mission is darker, smokier and more brooding than that of its neighbor, and it lasts. The 2012, which I tasted in November 2025, was all graphite, dark cherry and the smoke of Pessac-Léognan, the tannins fine and polished and the balance already in a beautiful place. The 1970, that same month, still had smoke, warm earth and dark fruit, and the density of La Mission that seems to go on forever. The 2024, which I tasted with the whole Dillon range in April 2025, was structured, complex and very alive, and the white fresh and vibrant, with intense aromas.

At a glance

Appellation

Pessac-Léognan

Classification

Cru Classé de Graves, 1953 and 1959; La Tour Haut-Brion and Laville Haut-Brion merged into it in 2014; Michelin Guide, 2 grapes (2026)

Owners

Domaine Clarence Dillon, the Dillon family, since November 2, 1983

Vineyard

29 hectares: close to 25 of red, a little over 4 of white

Soil

Gravel 20 centimeters to more than 3 meters deep over clay, sand, limestone and shell limestone Terroir of Pessac-Léognan →

Grapes

Red: Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc; white: Sémillon, Sauvignon

Wines

Château La Mission Haut-Brion (red and white); La Chapelle de La Mission Haut-Brion; La Clarté de Haut-Brion (white, with Haut-Brion)

In history

Planted by the Lazarists from 1682; a second growth of Pessac under Haut-Brion in the prices of 1745

Took in

Château La Tour Haut-Brion