The taste of Valletta

I refer to the article titled The Taste Of Valletta In A Bottle ( March 27).

What? Are these people serious? After all the effort and investment being made by the local wine industry to bolster the image and quality of locally-produced wine, this slap-in-the face wine has the audacity to call itself Valletta, made in, of all places, Udine, that being in the Friuli region of northern Italy.

What's more incredible is that the new quality wine system in Malta, that being DOK and IGT, would not even allow a local producer to use the name because Valletta is not a "grape-growing region".

So, can a company of Italian origin do so?

I appreciate that the Knights have a bold heritage in our capital city and were even responsible for the re-introduction of wine and viticulture to our islands hundreds of years ago.

But if they truly wanted to be noble, they should have approached all recognised quality wine producers locally and offered them each the opportunity to supply the wine - Merlot for Delicata, Cabernet for Marsovin, Syrah for Meridiana etc... you get the picture - all under the "Valletta" label commemoration. Then it would truly be Maltese ambassadors representing Malta in Vinitaly, not wine made from one of the largest table-wine-producing regions in Italy.