The banks of the Potomac River were largely undeveloped wilderness when the company that became wine merchants Berry Bros & Rudd was incorporated in London more than 325 years ago. The American capital that sprang up in its place, with its import duties, prohibition and lack of both rainmakers and tastemakers, was hardly a more inviting commercial prospect.
Yet Washington DC is where Berry Bros chose to open its first US branch, a glass-panelled corner shop mere steps away from the White House (and perilously close to the FT’s bureau). Favourable local regulations for importers were a factor but, as Jamie Ritchie, the mild-mannered British Sotheby’s alumnus opening Berry Bros’ American arm, told me, DC’s “wealthy community” was a big part of the draw.
A year ago, before I moved to Washington from New York, I would have mistaken Ritchie’s rationale for sarcasm. DC’s downtown is devoid of the opulence of Manhattan or Miami — a few jazz age hotels notwithstanding. Its city centre caters to the preferences, and wallets, of itinerant politicos and federal workers on tightly controlled salaries.
But as I have learnt on my weekend cycle trips through Washington’s suburbs, venture just a couple of miles north or west from the White House in Pennsylvania Avenue and you’ll see evidence of the real DC — the armies of lawyers, defence contractors, consultants and lobbyists who make recession-resistant fortunes from interacting with one of the world’s largest bureaucracies.
In no other major US metropolis will you find such uninterrupted vistas of wealth — neighbourhood upon neighbourhood of pristine colonial and Tudor-revival homes, set back from tree-canopied lanes, punctuated only by the odd country club. Five of the 10 richest US counties are DC commuter-belt suburbs in Virginia and Maryland, according to census data from 2020. You might even call it the swamp.
President Donald Trump’s proximity-dependent policymaking has prompted a fresh pilgrimage of elites to DC. Last spring, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg made the third-largest property purchase in the city’s history, buying a $23mn mansion in Woodland Normanstone, the most well-heeled of Washington neighbourhoods. He joined (part-time) billionaire residents Eric Schmidt and Jeff Skoll who have set up bases in the city since Trump won his first presidential election.
It’s not just the mega-rich who are descending on DC. Companies such as Netflix, Nvidia and OpenAI are expanding their presence in the city, no doubt mindful that regular facetime with the administration is something approaching a fiduciary duty in a country where closeness to the president can be the difference between punitive tariffs and generous government subsidies.
There are, of course, hazard lights flashing on DC’s dashboard, at least for the more modestly paid. Tens of thousands of federal workers were laid off by Elon Musk’s former so-called Department of Government Efficiency and many have recently reached the end of their severance period. A report released by the Brookings Institution think-tank in September found unemployment in the metro area that encompasses DC was rising more than six times as fast as the rest of the US.
Yet those with skin in the game are bullish about the city’s long-term prospects. Former AOL president Ted Leonsis, who championed DC long before Trump set his sights on the Oval Office, told me he believes Washington’s “primordial soup” — the “concentration of diplomatic and economic decision makers” — will bring yet more growth to the area. Already the owner of the city’s hockey and basketball teams, Leonsis is behind a plan to invest close to a billion dollars in renovating the arena in which they are housed, as part of a bigger bet on the downtown area.
Economists can better decipher whether Berry Bros’ new US clientele share Leonsis’s optimism about the future. Unlike European customers, they are mostly not purchasing Bordeaux en primeur wines to lay down. “[They ask] can I drink it now?,” says Ritchie. “Our range here is heavily focused on having mature wines that are ready to drink.”
A bold Ukrainian operation in Kursk has humiliated Russian President Vladimir Putin and upended some of the logic of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Column by Ishaan Tharoor The Washington Post , August 14, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. EDT; see also Ukrainian soldiers pose for a picture as they repair a military vehicle near the Russian border on Sunday. (Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters) Russia’s Kursk oblast is no stranger to war. In medieval times, the district was overrun by the Mongol horde, and was claimed and ceded down the centuries by Eurasian empires. During World War II, the environs of the city of Kursk became the site of the greatest tank battle in history, as Nazi Germany suffered a grievous strategic defeat at the hands of the bloodied yet unbowed Soviet Union . This past week, Kursk has been the site of the first major invasion of Russian territory since then. This time, it’s not the Nazi war machine rolling in — no matter what Kremlin propagandists insi...
Ukrainian and European officials say President Vladimir V. Putin has become emboldened by a lack of Western pushback. The police inspected the damage to a house caused by debris from a shot-down Russian drone in the village of Wyryki-Wola, eastern Poland on Wednesday. Credit... Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By Andrew E. Kramer Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine The New York Times , Sept. 11, 2025 Updated 8:49 a.m. ET An American factory in western Ukraine. Two European diplomatic compounds and a key Ukrainian government building in Kyiv. And now Poland. Over a roughly three-week period, Russian drones and missiles have struck sites of increasing sensitivity for Ukraine and its Western allies, culminating in the volley of Russian drones that buzzed early Wednesday over Poland, a NATO country. For decades, American and European military planners feared something else: a bolt-from-the-blue assault, like an all-out nuclear strike, from the Soviet Union or ...
Analysis by Nick Paton Walsh , CNN Updated 9:19 PM EDT, March 18 Orig inal article contains additional links and illustrations . See also Thomas L. Friedman , I Don’t Believe a Single Word Trump and Putin Say About Ukraine, The New York Times , March 18; and also A “no” is not a “yes” when it is a “maybe,” a “probably not,” or an “only if.” This is the painfully predictable lesson the Trump administration’s first real foray into wartime diplomacy with the Kremlin has dealt. They’ve been hopelessly bluffed. They asked for a 30-day, frontline-wide ceasefire, without conditions. On Tuesday, they got – after a theatrical week-long wait and hundreds more lives lost – a relatively small prisoner swap, hockey matches, more talks, and – per the Kremlin readout – a month-long mutual pause on attacks against “energy infrastructure.” This last phrase is where an easily avoidable technical minefield begins. Per US President Donald Trump’s post and that of his ...
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