Our panel of pundits put Eastern European wines to the taste test

Eastern European wines long had a reputation for being of inferior quality, often poorly made using antiquated equipment. However, heavy investment in the winemaking industries of several countries over the past 20 years has had a dramatic impact, and many wines are now of sufficient quality to be exported around the world, including Hong Kong.

At a recent Post blind tasting of wines from the region, our panel discovered that although a few wines were below par, many were of a far higher standard, if not yet world class.

Watch: Which Eastern European country has the best wine?

Wine production in these former communist countries generally had been about quantity over quality. Pruning vines to improve quality, for example, was unthinkable as co-operatives were paid, handsomely in some cases, to produce purely by the numbers.

"After world war two, the wine industry in most of Yugoslavia was focused on producing volume," says Robert Gorjak of Dveri-Pax winery.

"Food was precious, and the practice of cutting the grapes to concentrate flavour and improve quality would have been unthinkable for my grandfather.