HÂTEAUX HAUT-BRION and La Mission Haut-Brion, two of Bordeaux’s most historic wine estates, are situated either side of a small road in what are now the southern outskirts of the city. The setting may be unremarkable, even humdrum, but everything else about these ‘two households both alike in dignity’ is full of intricate and noteworthy detail. The relationship between the two is not (thank goodness) fraught with bloody rivalry like that of the Montagues and Capulets, but there used, perhaps, to be a certain competition. Although it was Haut-Brion that was classified in 1855 as a Premier Grand Cru Classé (it was, in fact, the first of the First Growths to be created, by the enterprising Pontac
