Quality wines

Reference is made to the letter entitled Water Into Wine by Colin Burn (October 10).

Camilleri Wines is a relatively new enterprise that is investing hefty resources into an industry that has been heavily battered over the years and has nonetheless thrived steadily. We all know that the Maltese wine industry has had its own skeletons in the cupboard in the past as did the affluent Italian counterpart as well as the mighty French one. We are not here to deny this part of Malta's past, however we are confident in the way this industry has corrected its ways and managed to achieve the status of a worthy ambassador to our country.

It is in this light that we react to Mr Burn's unfair, cynical remarks. We actually welcomed Mr Burn upon his request for assistance for his dissertation and despite him being a stranger to us, we assisted him very generously. Should he have discovered that his findings did not tally, the least one would have expected was for him to repay our kindness by bringing such doubts to our attention for verification before pelting the entire Maltese wine industry with damaging allegations derived from a student's homework dissertation. Camilleri Wines takes great offence at Mr Burn's allegations on wine-making practices in Malta as it daily pumps substantial sums of money into its products and commits its resources in order to further strengthen an industry that ever since Malta's accession to the EU has taken quite a beating with the influx of floods of cheap wine into our market and has had to dig its heels in so as to hold its ground.

In steps Mr Burns who, with blatant and certainly uncalled for abuse of our generosity and very dubious intentions yet with passionate cynicism tries to damage the hard work many of us are endeavouring in.

Nonetheless we are confident that readers can read through Mr Burns' derogatory comments and trust that their faith in the Maltese wine industry holds firm despite this insignificant yet hurtful attempt at harming it.

We at Camilleri Wines will continue to produce and offer a quality product to our customers. We remain confident that these customers will continue to purchase our products based on our important relationship between price and quality.