(Scotsman) - IN THE 35 years from 1950, UK wine drinking started to grow rapidly – rising by 250 per cent, according to some estimates – and eastern Europe was an early beneficiary of this increased demand. Bulgarian cabernet, for example, became the everyday drink of choice for the chattering classes, and wine merchants’ shelves sagged under the weight of brands like Lutomer Laski Rizling (as it must now be called) and Bull’s Blood. Then the wine world shifted on its axis. As the Iron Curtain rose, so did the dominance of New World wines – at the expense of eastern Europe. This was partly because the broadly welcomed political upheavals in the old Warsaw Pact countries threw out the baby (the established framework of their wine industries) with the bathwater. The demise of the old centralised agencies removed many of the structures that linked growers with winemakers, grape varieties with their most suitable terroir and vineyards with long-term plant-management regimes.