Hint of nuttiness

I wish to refer to your regular column, namely “The wine list”, published in Weekend Life (13 
December). I have been puzzled, for years, by the existence of a self-appointed group of people with exquisite taste buds who call themselves Masters of Wine.

Masters who, in their majority, never toiled in a vineyard with sore backs, sore knees, sore hands and sore muscles. But they have refined taste buds.

However, your resident Master of all Wines should revise her knowledge of the varieties of the noble grape and of political history as well.

Bulgarian wine reviewed by her on Saturday is made from rkatsiteli grapes, which are not a Russian but a Georgian (Caucasian) variety (ie from Gruzia, of the Winter Olympics fame, on the Black Sea).

The name rkatsiteli is in the Georgian language. Further, the Bulgarian vineyard mentioned in the article is in the Stara Planina foothills rather than in the Danubian plains, and there, in Bulgaria (a country different from Russia), the wines were not threatened by Mr Gorbachev’s Soviet anti-vodka measures.

So, reviews like this can be described as nutty – one of the characteristics attributed to the reviewed wine.

(Dr) Paul Millar

Riselaw Crescent

Edinburgh