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Do you listen to music while working? I would like to, because I like music, and like to think of myself as a cultural enthusiast, but also because I’m sitting in front of my laptop in an empty kitchen and I worry that the incipient silence will encourage the rodent community I suspect are loitering beneath my floorboards to come and say hello.

Right now, I’m listing to Painless by Nilüfer Yanya, because Pitchfork says that her “sophisticated spin on heartbreak music” puts her at number 56 of “the best 100 albums of the 2020s so far”, and because the songs are just unfamiliar enough I can’t sing along. But, already I can feel my fingers twitching towards Spotify because although it is “mesmeric”, it’s also a bit jangly and I’m in danger of becoming distracted.

Listening to music while working is generally considered a good thing. I’m just very bad at it. Numerous studies have been undertaken that found that music in the workplace can increase mood, productivity and performance, whether that work is performing tedious menial repetitive tasks in a factory, or a comprehension test. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired its first edition of Music While You Work on 23 June 1940, in the midst of the war effort; it ran until 1967. Its up-tempo soundtrack was designed as a 30-minute vibe, loud enough to be heard on the factory floor but not too racy — the corporation forbade the playing of any rumbas. According to letters sent to the broadcaster, its impact was “incalculable”, with many factory owners estimating that productivity increased by up to 15 per cent.

I’m listening to one of its earliest recordings right now via footage dug up on YouTube, and it does indeed have an upbeat, jazzy bombast with occasional flavours of marching band. Just the kind of pep those factory “munitionettes” would have needed to keep the shells stuffed with ammo. But it’s a bit too robust and patriotic for 2024: and so I’ve moved on to Max Richter, the patron saint of ambient somnambulism, whose facility for extemporising on a handful of chords has accompanied dozens of soundtracks. The Blue Notebooks, conceived initially as a protest against the war in Iraq in 2003, has since been used to convey alien encounters (Arrival), mental breakdown (Shutter Island) and male friendship (The Leftovers). Richter is one of the most popular contemporary composers, masterful in his ability to elide mental focus and mood, but, for the purposes of writing this, it’s a bit of a downer, so I’m skipping once again to my brother’s top work-song recommendations, the “looped and repetitive” electronica of things like Bonobo, Aphex Twin or late Radiohead.

In our office, there seems to be a generational divide between those who work in silence and those who must be plugged into their headphones

Nah. Not happening. I can’t find my soundtrack: much as I want to, nothing quite hits the mark. I’ve tried listening to classical, because I mistakenly thought it would be calming and restful, and most of it was so syncopated and unhinged it felt like listening to a panic attack. “Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken,” wrote Ludwig van Beethoven of his contribution to the creative process. But listening to any of his symphonies, I find, feels like taking a tab of acid. Not helpful.

Neither do Bach’s celebrated cello concertos, universally considered to be the ultimate in ambient bliss, do it for me. It all feels a bit performative, as though I’m trying to play a role in someone else’s life: richer, more culturally profound and inhabited by people like Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy. And I’m a George Michael kind of girl.

Of course, one’s choice of soundtrack all depends on whether your sounds are designed to be enjoyed by all simultaneously, or squirrelled into headphones and enjoyed in your own aural hideaway. Productivity is said to be increased by musical accompaniment, but what if your cohort insists on listening to Whitesnake? Or Abba? I still get PTSD symptoms on hearing the first few bars of David Gray’s studio album White Ladder because it played on a loop in the restaurant in which I waitressed at the back end of the 20th century. Play me the first notes of “Babylon” and I’ll try to serve you a grass-reared steak, medium rare, with a side of chunky chips.

In our office, as with many, there seems to be a generational divide between those who like to work in silence and those who must be plugged into their headphones. For the purposes of the group dynamic I’m not a huge fan of the “locked-in syndrome” that seems to have possessed Gen Z workers to block out all extra-sensory stimulation. I can’t understand why they wouldn’t want to hear my fascinating witterings, which I offer frequently and freely. Nevertheless, they like to beetle away while tuned into Steve Lacy’s “Atomic Vomit” or “Take Me Home” by PinkPantheress. And who am I to argue?

Sorry for the brief interlude . . . Just had to accompany Miley Cyrus in the chorus of “Used to be Young”, the best track, I would argue, on her seminal 2023 album 2023 album Endless Summer Vacation.

And here we are, at the column’s end. And Fleetwood Mac has popped up on the Spotify playlist (a compilation of “Work Music” based on my own listening preferences. A last resort solution). Is there ever a circumstance in which the answer isn’t Stevie Nicks?

This week’s contribution was brought to you by a host of artists: but I still haven’t found my optimum soundtrack. Help me knuckle down. I don’t want to sit in silence: so please send me your best suggestions . . . 

Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com

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A CHARMING three-bed flat has come onto the market for an affordable £290,000 – but you’ll have the opportunity to live like a king in a multi-million pound home.

The cosy property is part of a grand castle on the outskirts of Scotland’s Edinburgh – and it’s on sale for the price of a typical home in the UK.

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The three-bedroom flat is part of an imposing fortress in Bonaly, an old village just over five miles south west of Edinburgh’s city centre.

The historic building has a high tower and turrets, and sits at the foot of the Pentland Hills, surrounded by stunning grounds that include a stream.

It is called Bonaly Tower and sits on the site of a seventeenth century farmhouse that once stood at the centre of the village of Bonaly.

The farmhouse was the country residence of Lord Henry Cockburn, who extended the property into something with a little more grandeur.

The peel tower was reportedly added to the building in 1839.

Bonaly Tower was said to be the venue for frequent meetings of the ‘Friday Club’, a group of leading Edinburgh literati, which were hosted by Lord Cockburn.

It is certainly an impressive venue for such occasions, being set in beautiful private gardens.

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These gardens include a decorative wrought-iron gate and recesses filled with statues.

One of the statues is of Shakespeare, which was reportedly salvaged from the demolition of the Theatre Royal in Shakespeare Square in 1860.

Several other pieces of decorative stonework appear in the garden including urns, some bird baths and a plaque depicting Edinburgh Castle.

The flat is being advertised for sale via Glenham estate agents, which is inviting ‘offers over £290,000’.

The average price of a property in Edinburgh is £349,405, according to Zoopla.

It is around £20,000 higher than the average value of a home in Britain, which currently stands at £329,628.

Daniel Copley, consumer expert at Zoopla, said: “While a lot of us might aspire to live in a castle, it’s rare that the opportunity arises for one to have that happy ever after at such an affordable cost. 

“The property is ideally situated, enjoying excellent public transport links that make commuting into Edinburgh fast and convenient while idyllically nestled at the foot of the Pentland Hills.”

The flat for sale comes with three bedrooms and a Victorian-style bathroom. 

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The entrance is a large wooden door, which leads to a hall, living room, kitchen and a separate shower room. 

Natural materials continue to be showcased inside the flat with plenty of wood furniture, painted brick walls and wooden beams on the ceiling.

There are decorative sash windows, and a wood-burner sits in the living room.

Outside, there is a double garage and two allocated parking spaces for the flat at the front of the property.

The flat covers an area of 762 square feet, the equivalent of almost 71 square metres.

It sits beside the 290-hectare Bonaly country park, which has a ski centre, pony trekking and trout fishing nearby.

Bonaly has access to good transport links, with easy community via the city bypass and motorway.

The property is also between 1.5 and 2.3 miles of four train stations, including Wester Hailes, Slateford, Kingsknowe, and Curriehill.

Other facilities nearby include several schools, such as Bonaly primary school, Firrhill high school and Merchiston Castle School.

As well as being well served by amenities, the sale of the flat represents a rare opportunity to live in a historic Edinburgh landmark.

Balmoral Castle

BALMORAL Castle is a large estate house in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, near the village of Crathie.

The vast property is situated 6.2 miles west of Ballater and 6.8 miles east of Braemar.

The estate and castle are privately owned by the Royal Family and are not the property of the Crown.

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The existing house on site was found to be too small, so the royals purchased the estate in 1852.

In its place, the construction of the current Balmoral Castle was commissioned.

William Smith of Aberdeen was the architect, although his designs were amended by Prince Albert.

Historic Scotland classified the castle as a category A listed building.

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The new castle was completed in 1856, with the old castle demolished shortly thereafter.

Successive Royal Family members added to the Balmoral Estate, and it now covers an area of approximately 50,000 acres.

As well as the main castle, there are 150 other buildings on the estate, including Birkhall, the estate of King Charles, Craigowan Lodge, and several other cottages.

Balmoral is a working estate, including grouse moors, forestry, and farmland, as well as managed herds of deer, Highland cattle, and ponies.

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Since 1987, an illustration of the castle has been featured on the reverse side of £100 notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The crimson-coloured notes are the largest denomination of banknotes issued by The Royal Bank of Scotland and are still in production.

With less than three weeks to go until the Budget, speculation about potential pensions tax raids has reached fever pitch.

Those over the age of 55 are panicking over the possibility that the chancellor could slice the cap on tax-free cash to as low as £100,000. I do not think this will happen, but many people with large pensions are not willing to take this chance, and wealth managers report a surge in withdrawals.

Meanwhile, younger readers — especially those with young children — are fretting about a much more credible rumour that Rachel Reeves could charge national insurance on employer pension contributions.

Before we delve into the details, let’s look at the bigger picture. She’s going to have to increase taxes on pensions somewhere. The problem is how to do this without imperilling her central mission of delivering a Budget for growth, breaking manifesto pledges or upsetting the trade unions. I fear the much bigger problem of most people not saving enough for retirement risks being overlooked.

Reeves will want to target tax rises on those with the broadest shoulders and the biggest pension pots. But having delighted unions with above-inflation pay settlements in week one, she will not want to enrage them in week seventeen. For this reason, the pensions expert John Ralfe, tells me his acid test for Budget pensions rumours is “how would this affect NHS consultants?”

His theory is the political imperative to cut NHS waiting lists massively reduces the likelihood of any pensions tax changes that could prompt doctors to retire early or cut their hours. “The British Medical Association have an effective right of veto over UK pensions policy,” he adds, noting how Reeves was recently forced to U-turn on plans to reintroduce the lifetime allowance.

Cutting pensions tax relief for higher earners looks to be off the table as it would cause tax problems for doctors and other public sector workers. Now rumours about lump sum reductions are causing blue lights to flash.

Graham Crossley, an NHS pensions specialist at Quilter, has received many panicked phone calls from medics in their late fifties this week asking if it’s too late to submit their retirement application forms before the Budget.

Fiscal drag offers a more palatable solution. Freeze the maximum tax-free lump sum at £268,275 and, as inflation takes its course, people can slowly adjust their retirement plans. Crossley reckons the purchasing power of this sum will have dwindled to £150,000 after 10 to 15 years. But Reeves needs policies that could start filling the black hole within as many months.

Those of us toiling in the private sector typically pay into defined contribution (DC) pension schemes that are nowhere near as generous as defined benefit (DB) schemes common in the public sector. If Ralfe’s theory is right, tax rises that focus pain on the private sector are more likely.

Ending the inheritance tax benefits of DC pensions is one widely tipped Budget measure. Charging employers national insurance on staff pension contributions is another.

This passes Ralfe’s test, as public sector employers would be reimbursed for any extra costs. And it just about squeaks around Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise NI for working people. But raising NI on the pension contributions that private sector companies make for their staff is obviously going to have major consequences for workers in future.

A snap poll by the ABI found that nearly half of employers who currently pay more than the bare minimum into staff pension schemes would reduce their contributions were this to happen. There would also be knock-on effects for the labour market and your chances of getting a pay rise in future, which could short-change your retirement savings.

But it also threatens the future of salary sacrifice schemes used by most large private sector employers in the UK and, in turn, the ability of many readers to navigate one of the most costly cliff edges in the tax system.

Sacrificing more pay into your pension to avoid the “£100,000 tax trap” of high marginal rates and the loss of state childcare benefits is a tactic increasingly deployed by professional parents in recent years.

If one parent earns a penny over this threshold, this could instantly add thousands of pounds to a family’s annual childcare bill as “free” nursery hours and tax-free childcare are lost. Yet try and out-earn this problem, and you face a 62 per cent marginal rate of tax on income between £100,000-£125,125 as the personal allowance is tapered away.

Increasing your pension contributions to avoid both of these issues has been a valuable loophole. But for companies, using salary sacrifice schemes to avoid 13.8 per cent employer NI on staff pension contributions has been an even bigger one!

If the tax ratchet is only applied to private sector pensions, it will widen the gulf between public and private pension schemes even further

Could Budget day changes close this? The short answer is “perhaps”. Exchanging a slice of salary in return for a non-cash benefit means employers effectively fund 100 per cent of a worker’s pension contributions, and would be exposed to paying NI on all of it.

If Reeves imposed NI at the full whack, this could raise up to £12bn a year. Sir Steve Webb, the former pensions minister and now a partner at LCP, has suggested a much smaller levy of 2 per cent, saying this would still raise a couple of billion, but wouldn’t frighten the horses too much.

If that were the case, employers would likely still keep salary sacrifice schemes going — Webb points out they’d still be saving 11.8 per cent — and either absorb the extra costs, or cut the value of their contributions. Having started down this path, the chancellor could increase this levy at a future Budget. But this would make increasing employers’ default auto-enrolment contributions a much harder sell in future.

We don’t know if this will happen, let alone the precise terms of any new rules. But tax experts I’ve canvassed this week think a consultation would be required, meaning any changes would be pushed into the next tax year. Even if this did sound the death knell for salary sacrifice schemes, those navigating the £100,000 cliff edge could still opt to pay more into a workplace or private pension scheme, though this would involve much more admin, and potentially a loss of NI savings for workers too.

We have been warned to expect a painful Budget, but if the tax ratchet is only applied to private sector pensions, it will widen the gulf between public and private pension schemes even further. Whatever route the chancellor decides to take, improving retirement outcomes by incentivising all workers to save and invest should not be forgotten.

Claer Barrett is the FT’s consumer editor and the author of ‘What They Don’t Teach You About Money’. claer.barrett@ft.com Instagram @Claerb

In Silk Roads, the British Museum’s epic journey of a show, a sumptuous 7th-century wall painting portrays a courtly procession: a pale elephant, Zoroastrian priests, laden camels, women riding side-saddle, all against a lapis-blue backdrop. The six-metre mural was unearthed, almost intact, in the “Hall of the Ambassadors” in Samarkand — a major trading city on the historic Silk Road — flanked by scenes of India and China. On loan from Uzbekistan, the mural flaunts the artistry of a central Asian culture enriched by networks that stretched from Japan to Britain, Scandinavia to the Sahara, centuries before Marco Polo voyaged east from Venice.

Over at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Asian Bronze: 4,000 Years of Beauty, which opened the same week, explores the forgotten connectivity within Asia through one protean alloy. A Thai Buddha meditating cross-legged on a coiled, seven-headed snake wears an Indian-style robe and Mongol headdress. The Khmer inscription, in Javanese script, references a Sumatran king. On loan from Bangkok, this monumental sculpture from about the 12th century reveals a cosmopolitan south-east Asia long before Dutch colonisation.

These landmark exhibitions signal how Europe’s major museums are now rethinking global art history — and their own collections — for the 21st century. Each is unprecedented for its museum in using several core curators, rather than a lead specialist assisted by colleagues in the same field. “It’s unique,” Sue Brunning, one of three who collaborated on Silk Roads, tells me. While her own area is early medieval Europe, she worked with Chinese and Byzantine curators, “trying to tell stories outside academic silos”.

A tiny, green, copper-alloy Buddha from the 6th-7th centuries, seated on a double lotus, is the first of 300 objects on show in London. Made in the Swat Valley in today’s Pakistan, it was found on the Swedish lake island of Helgö in a 9th-century settlement. Once seen as an oddity, Brunning says, the Helgö Buddha now seems emblematic of what was a “deeply connected world”.

That Buddha embodies the show’s ambition to expand the desert-caravan “Silk Road” — so named by the 19th-century German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen — to a web of trade routes linking three continents by land, sea and river. Along them, ideas, religions, artistic styles, fashions, technology, languages and, at times, plague flowed every which way with people and goods. While an early form of globalisation began with Columbus, this show’s timeline is 500-1000AD — roughly the fall of the western Roman empire to Viking landfall in the Americas. Evidence is piled up to debunk the view that this was a relatively insular period (Europe’s so-called Dark Ages), with rigid divisions between east and west.

Meandering between 15 trading hubs in one huge room, the show begins in Tang China, Korea and Japan, when silk was both luxury commodity and currency. Silk bolts — a 3rd-century buff one survives — were carried on huge Bactrian camels, such as the one here modelled in 8th-century glazed earthenware. Other influences flowed eastward, in horseriding dress adopted from steppe nomads, and a robe dyed blue with cobalt from Iran.

A shipwreck found in the Java Sea in 1998 yielded crucial evidence of transoceanic trade between China and the Persian Gulf in the 800s. Among its 60,000 Tang-dynasty goods were a silver bowl with a rhinoceros motif and some of the earliest known blue-and-white Chinese ceramics, possibly inspired by Islamic designs.

As revelatory was the sealed Mogao Library Cave, discovered in 1900 at a Buddhist temple complex near Dunhuang in northern China, with some 70,000 books and scrolls from the 800s and 900s in languages from Mandarin and Tibetan to Uyghur and Sanskrit. The manuscripts record that enslaved people, too, were traded along this route (a 28-year-old woman named Xiansheng was exchanged for five bolts of silk) as they were by Vikings for silver dirhams on another stretch of the Silk Roads: the rivers of the Norse “eastern way”, linking the Baltic to Byzantium.

No one is likely to have made the whole Silk Roads journey, making it less a marathon than a relay. Networks stretched into al-Andalus in Islamic Spain — whose fusion culture used bilingual coins in Latin and Arabic — the kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia, and Ghana, renowned for gold. The earliest known chess pieces, found in Samarkand, were made in the 700s of Indian ivory. An incense recipe from Charlemagne’s Francia specifies Indonesian cloves and Himalayan musk (here, you can open flaps to smell musk or incense). In 8th-century England, the Mercian king Offa copied the Abbasid caliph’s dinar, with Arabic inscription, to emulate his power.

A timely reminder of the benefits of porous borders, the show underlines the tolerance that came with trade and travel. To secure safe passage, Tang China allied with Uyghur nomads, whose culture (now brutally suppressed) is manifest in the 10th-century funerary banner of a bearded noble in riding boots. The Bamiyan Buddhas, blown up by the Taliban in 2001, were admired by earlier Muslim travellers as divine wonders.

The show’s expansiveness (which, oddly, misses the Caucasus) risks overload. Yet the sheer weight of evidence helps overturn entrenched views of the past. Gold clasps from the Anglo-Saxon ship at Sutton Hoo in east England were newly analysed; the garnets in the Byzantine-style gold work from this 7th-century royal burial came from as far afield as Bohemia, Rajasthan and Sri Lanka.

Recent scientific work also bolsters Asian Bronze, whose three core curators were joined by a metal conservator. Among 75 masterpieces gloriously showcased as art not ethnography is a solid, two-metre-high 12th-century Shiva Nataraja statue from Tamil Nadu. European artists could make only hollow casts on this scale. The Rijksmuseum director, Taco Dibbits, tells me the museum lacked big enough scanners to confirm its solidity, so the dancing deity in a ring of fire was scanned through Amsterdam’s container port, affirming the skilled Chola-dynasty artistry that “brings casting to an incredible level”.

Taking a cue from the cross-cultural Bronze (2012) at London’s Royal Academy, this thematic show begins with the material: a versatile alloy of copper and tin, the latter rare but most abundant in south-east Asia. Initial works are a female figurine — one of the earliest known lost-wax sculptures — from Mohenjodaro, on loan from Pakistan, beside a rhinoceros on wheels, on loan from India. Both are from the Indus Valley civilisation of 2500-1500BC, now split by a frontier, though, as Dibbits says, “tin mines predate borders”.

The sacred sculptures are breathtaking, but even functional objects inspire awe, from a 12th-century BC Chinese wine vessel shaped like an elephant, to 15th-century AD Vietnamese incense burners resembling mythical lion-dogs. Master craftsmanship was handed down as living tradition: a lobster-shaped incense burner from 18th-19th-century Japan harks back to samurai armour-plating. The latest object is a bronze mirror made in Kerala for the show, so polished it resembles glass. Through them, the show not only traces leaps in an art once deemed static, but stylistic influences that rippled around the continent.

“It was always said that connecting the world was started by Europe,” Dibbits says. “But the story starts much earlier.” Uncovering buried connections between past worlds, these shows open up new ways of seeing our own.

‘Silk Roads’ to February 23, 2025, britishmuseum.org; ‘Asian Bronze’ to January 12, 2025, rijksmuseum.nl/en

The first French wine producer to set up shop in California was Georges de Latour, who founded Beaulieu Vineyard in the Napa Valley in 1903. Since then, French wine producers have played a part in the state’s viticulture. But why have so many flocked to buy American wine estates since 2013?

The modern wave began in 1973 when Moët & Chandon chose Napa Valley as the location of its second non-French sparkling wine facility, the first being in Argentina. Three years later, the Judgment of Paris blind tasting demonstrated that California was producing wines that France’s wine gurus preferred to their own top wines — a moment that passed with surprisingly little comment at the time, but which has since been judged seismic. One of the tasters, Aubert de Villaine of world-famous Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in Burgundy, quietly started joint venture HdV with a Napa grape grower the following year.

Then in 1979 came the shock announcement that Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Bordeaux first growth Ch Mouton-Rothschild, no less, was going into business with Robert Mondavi of Napa Valley to produce a California wine in the image of red bordeaux. (It would eventually become known as Opus One.) The fact that the Dewavrins, who ran the eminent Bordeaux château La Mission Haut-Brion, decided to buy a wine property in Napa Valley in 1980 eventually led to such a rift in their family that La Mission was put up for sale the next year.

Another wave of French investment in California came soon after François Mitterrand became president in 1981 and his Socialist policies spread doom and gloom in the French business community, especially among those producing champagne. Louis Roederer, Mumm and Taittinger all established sparkling wine outfits in northern California, and Bordeaux’s Christian Moueix laid the foundations of his Dominus Estate in Napa Valley.

But the major wave of French investment has come in the past 11 years. In the vanguard was Artémis Domaines, which made an out-of-the-blue approach to buy Araujo Estate in Calistoga, renaming it Eisele Vineyard. Biodynamic techniques were already firmly established at the California property, while they were still in their infancy at Artémis’s French properties.

Another of Bordeaux’s best-financed wine producers, the owners of luxury fashion house Chanel, acquired St Supéry in 2015, entailing quite a step up the ladder of glamour for this Napa winery. Since then, French investment has come thick and fast, including from the giants of Champagne.

Champagne Louis Roederer went on a buying spree, adding Merry Edwards of Sonoma in 2019 and terroir-driven Diamond Creek Vineyards in 2020 to its initial sparkling wine investment in Roederer Estate. Similarly, LVMH added a majority stake in Napa Valley’s luxurious Colgin Cellars in 2017 and then bought Joseph Phelps in 2022.

So why has there been such a transfer of funds from l’Hexagone to the golden state? According to Christian Seely of AXA Millésimes, it decided in 2016 that it wanted to buy in Napa because, “It’s rather logical and quite interesting to see somewhere else that makes great Cabernet but is very different.”

And transatlantic transactions have not been restricted to northern California. Several Burgundy producers, including Drouhin and Louis Jadot, have invested in Oregon, intrigued by the challenge of applying their expertise in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to the west coast. More recently, Étienne de Montille, from one of Burgundy’s most famous families, decided that “having another hectare of a [Burgundy] Premier Cru would not move us forward. So [we thought] let’s go outside of our comfort zone.” They looked all along the west coast of the US, eventually plumping in 2017 for Sta Rita Hills in one of the coolest parts of Santa Barbara County for their impressive Racines label.

But experimentation, and the realisation that France may not have a monopoly on fine wine production, are far from the only drivers of the current phenomenon. French wine producers, especially those in Bordeaux, are becoming increasingly frustrated by their distance from their end consumers. Not only does this mean they don’t know enough about them, it also involves handing over part of their potential income to intermediaries. The California model of selling wines direct to consumers, via wine clubs, mailing lists and preferably on allocation, has become increasingly attractive to them.

Furthermore, owning an American wine producer gives them the precious right to sell their French wines direct to American consumers.

The most recent purchase, by France’s powerful Bouygues family, has been on the east coast. Lost Mountain, a small but successful venture in Virginia, is the latest recruit to a wine group now known as Eutopia Estates. General manager Pierre Graffeuille explained to me over email why they are so pleased to have a foothold in the American market. “Owning a vineyard in the US gives direct access to one of the largest wine markets in the world. Moreover, US wineries have a great expertise in ‘direct to consumers’ through their wine club and hospitality programmes which can be inspiring.”

And it goes without saying geographical diversification is particularly useful when the weather is increasingly unpredictable.

Recently, I attended a daring tasting in London hosted by one of these new arrivals. Florence Cathiard of Ch Smith Haut Lafitte, which has owned Cathiard Vineyard in Napa Valley since 2020, invited 10 of us to a blind tasting of their 2021 vintage. Their two wines were up against eight stars of the Napa Valley Cabernet firmament, including Screaming Eagle and Scarecrow ($2,450 and $824 a bottle, respectively).

The group ranking is in the box, but it differs slightly from mine. I chose the least expensive wine, Founding Brothers from the Cathiard Vineyard, as my favourite, as did Anthony Rose of The Independent, who has been writing about wine for almost as long as I have.

Florence, who also tasted the wines blind, was mightily relieved to see Cathiard Vineyard’s principal wine do so well. Her husband, Daniel, less convinced by the tasting exercise and possibly nervous about the outcome, stayed at home.

But the tasting, and my experience of the produce of virtually all of the names mentioned, seems to suggest that French wine producers are capable of making excellent wine in the US, while being able to sell their French wines more profitably to millions of American consumers.

Referring to the traditional sales system for Bordeaux wines, the Place de Bordeaux, Florence Cathiard admitted that she and her husband had “made our small fortune in wine thanks to the Place, but now that interest rates have risen, the Place is sick”. She mimed slashing her throat. “My niece is now running our Napa boutique, selling our wines at the same price as the Place but at a much higher margin.”

I wonder how many more French vignerons are currently scouting westwards.

Tasting notes, scores and suggested drink dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. International stockists on Wine-searcher.com

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