A restored Inglenook's French connection

For the first time a Frenchman has been lured across the Atlantic from a Bordeaux first growth to run a California winery, film director Francis Ford Coppola's Rubicon Estate. Philippe Bascaules (pictured), Paul Pontallier's number two at Château Margaux, is to make this big leap in time for the 2011 harvest, thereby making Coppola's 'dream come true'.

The news has only just been released because Bascaules had made it a condition of his appointment that the news should not be revealed until after the excitement of peak Bordeaux primeurs week had subsided. This reassured his boss-to-be. 'When you see someone...