November 2009 | Kosovo’s total wine exports have decreased by more than half as a result of Serbia’s boycott following the country’s declaration of independence.

“In the first half of 2008, Kosovo exported 5.2 million litres and during the same period this year only 2.2 million litres,” Nesim Morina, chief of the Agriculture Ministry's winery department, said, quoted by Reuters.

Serbia has not only banned Kosovo-marked products but also barred their trans shipments to other Western European countries, according to the publication, which – in the case of the Stone Castle winery, increased transport costs by 25 per cent.

This has forced the Rahovec-based winery, the only of four state-owned ones dating back to the Yugoslav era to have been sold successfully and a producer of 90 per cent of all of Kosovo’s wine, to look to the international market as the only way to survive.

In 2008, according to the report, Stone Castle produced only 10 million litres and exported 95 percent, mainly to the European Union and Serbia, its former ruler, before it banned Kosovo goods.

Wine-making has roots that run deep in the region, Reuters wrote, as testified by the second-century wine amphorae discovered by archaeologists. But the trade, it adds, has always suffered from the twists and turns of history. When the Ottoman Empire conquered the region in the fifteenth century, they prohibited winemaking. Rather than losing the taste for alcohol, the inhabitants of Kosovo turned to brandy from grapes and plums. Now, these preferences of yesterday are forcing Kosovo’s contemporary winemakers to depend on Europe for survival.

Kosovo, with its continental climate, fields located at a height of 300-400 metres above sea level and more than 200 sunny days a year, is a good place for wine production. But more than 50 percent of the region’s vineyards were destroyed during the 1990s Balkan wars.

Read more about Kosovo on BalkanTravellers.com