So much for the truth with this wine

Paolo Gulminelli of the Italian navy has every right to commission a wine, named after Carmelo Borg Pisani, in his own country (Treacherous Tannins? September 21). However, like Borg Pisani he seems to be under the "irredentism" illusion that Malta was at the time an Italian island.

Malta became independent of Sicily when the Crusaders took it over in 1530. The Maltese then asked Britain (not Sicily or Naples) to help them throw out the French and, whether all Maltese liked it or not, Malta became a British colony. Just because Borg Pisani (and some others) believed Malta was Italian didn't, unfortunately for him, make it any less a British territory at the time. Furthermore, it's most unlikely that any country in the throes of all-out war would swallow the claim that a spy caught red-handed had shortly before changed nationality.

One trusts that Cdr Gulminelli understands that Malta is now neither British nor Italian - it's Maltese, and with a mother tongue, which is not Italian, to prove it.

Our second official language, English, has served well Malta's increasing prosperity of recent decades, having become a world language, and we are the only English-speaking location in southern Europe. I wish Cdr Gulminelli commercial success with his wine but cannot but feel sorry for Borg Pisani's misguided heroism.