Three years ago Juliana Grigorieva, a diminutive 27-year-old Muscovite, had never tasted wine. Last year she won Russia's second-ever national sommelier competition. The first time it was held, one year after taking her first sip of this cosmopolitan substitute for the vodka bottle, she had come second.
She was raised to become a musician, graduating from one of Moscow's conservatoires as a singer of Russia's stirring country music. But to earn extra money in the wake of Russia's economic meltdown in 1998 she took a job as a barmaid in one of Moscow's better restaurants, Nostalgie. The restaurant happened to...