title: A Problem of Taste: An American Connoisseur’s Travels through the Soviet Union’s Black Sea Vineyards and Wineries
abstract: A Problem of TasteAn American Connoisseur’s Travels through the Soviet Union’s Black Sea Vineyards and Wineries Stephen V. Bittner (bio) By the middle of the 19th century, members of the Russian elite often spoke of the empire’s Black Sea territories as a domestic Midi. Crimea was the new Languedoc, a place that will “make us forget Champagne and Bordeaux,” and New Russia, which encompassed much of the southern Ukrainian steppe, a European version of California.1 Beyond patriotic embellishment, 
journal: Kritika