Commitments

Since it was first established, Domaine Clarence Dillon has been involved, in France and internationally, in patronage activities and philanthropic donations that promote the cultural influence of French heritage and the arts. This commitment follows the example of its American founder, Clarence Dillon, an aesthete and Francophile, who bought Château Haut-Brion in 1935. Truly passionate about the French art of living, he even took cookery lessons at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School. This Franco-American love story and strong bond with art continues among his descendants. His son, Douglas Dillon, after having been Ambassador for the United States in France, became President and Chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and notably founded the Asian Wing of the Museum.

Protection of the environment is age-old, linked to safeguarding the terroir, passed down from one generation to the next. This involves showing careful consideration for the soils and their characteristics, limiting the number of interventions and using no insecticides. Château Haut-Brion’s and Château La Mission Haut-Brion’s grounds have a wooded area of 4.5 hectares, including a park of 3.5 hectares that is home to a great variety of birds, some of which are protected species. This diversity is further increased by the large surface area of the park and the variety of habitats it provides. At Château Quintus, the recent inventory of the profusion of auxiliary fauna and flora of the property, carried out with the assistance of a doctor of entomology and landscape ecology, reveals a rare abundance of species: 800 types of auxiliary fauna gathered, divided into 200 different species and 80 varieties of wild flower were counted at the estate. To supplement these natural assets and enrich this breeding ground of biodiversity, the vineyard workers sow wild flowers on fallow land on the escarpments of the hillside slope and in plots where vines are uprooted.