Two thousand years of vines. Twenty-five years of coming back.

The White Drin cuts a corridor south-west through the mountains, and warm Adriatic air follows it inland. Vines sit between 300 and 600 metres on clay and limestone, under a reported 270 days of sun a year. Rahovec alone accounts for 2,426 of Kosovo's 3,472 hectares — Suharekë and Prizren take most of the rest.

In the late 1980s there were around 9,000 hectares here, and wine from this valley was the best-selling red in West Germany. The 1990s took most of it. What survived is being rebuilt bottle by bottle — and, for the first time in a generation, bottled under its own name.