£54,000 a year from JTI. The payments came to light when a September 2001 email from the Scrutons to JTI was leaked to The Guardian. Signed by Scruton's wife, the email asked the company to increase their £4,500 monthly fee to £5,500, in exchange for which Scruton would "aim to place an article every two months" in the Wall Street Journal, Times, Telegraph, Spectator, Financial Times, Economist, Independent, or New Statesman. Scruton, who said the email had been stolen, replied that he had never concealed his connection with JTI. In response to The Guardian article, the Financial Times ended his contract as a columnist, The Wall Street Journal suspended his contributions, and the Institute for Economic Affairs said it would introduce an author-declaration policy. Chatto & Windus withdrew from negotiations for a book, and Birkbeck removed his visiting-professor privileges. Move to the United States The tobacco controversy damaged Scruton's consultancy business in England. In part because of that, and because the Hunting Act 2004 had banned fox hunting in England and Wales, the Scrutons considered moving to the United States permanently, and in 2004 they purchased Montpelier, an 18th-century plantation house near Sperryville, Virginia. Scruton set up a company, Montpelier Strategy LLC, to promote the house as a venue for weddings and similar events. The couple lived there while retaining Sunday Hill Farm in England, but decided in 2009 against a permanent move to the United States and sold the house. Scruton held two part-time academic positions during this period. From 2005 to 2009 he was research professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia, a graduate school of Divine Mercy University; and in 2009 he worked at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., where he wrote his book Green Philosophy (2011). Wine, opera From 2001 to 2009 Scruton wrote a wine column for the New Statesman, and contributed to The World of Fine Wine and Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine (2007), with his essay "The Philosophy of Wine". His book I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine (2009) in part comprises material from his New Statesman column. Scruton, who was largely self-taught as a composer, composed two operas setting his own libretti. The first is a one-act chamber piece, The Minister (1994), and the second a two-act opera, Violet (2005). The latter, based on the life of the British harpsichordist