Wine festival

Produced By Danas I Sutra

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Michaelmas in Velika Hoca. For the 650 residents of this village in Orahovac municipality, it is one of their greatest holidays. Including a few taverns, the cultural center and two churches, the Serbians from Velika Hoca feel relatively safe to move around in an area of about two kilometers, this means that they can work on approximately thirty percent of their vineyards. In days near Michaelmas, the sleepy place awakens, and life is, at least for a while, back to normal.

Dejan Baljosevic is a Deputy Director of the office for communities of the upper part of Orahovac and Velika Hoca

In Velika Hoca we often organize different cultural festivals with the purpose of the spiritual revival of Serbian population, in fact, we usually say, if we cannot provide better living conditions in such isolated enclaves, we can at least make life in isolation easier.

Before the war this area was famous for grapes and wine. The remaining Serbians form Hoca using traditional techniques, still keep the tradition.

Bozidar Petrovic is keen to preserve his family tradition and to pass it to the next generation.

Our old tradition is that our great-grandfathers produced vine and grapes here. That knowledge was passed from one generation to another, and I have accepted that. My younger sin also deals with the technology to save what our grandfather and great-grandfather have left us.

But today, Serbs from Velika Hoca and nearby Orahovac are facing the problem of their land being illegally used. According to Dejan Baljosevic, from the UNMIKs office for communities in Orahovac people can not rely solely on the wine production anymore to earn their living.

They (Serbs from Velika Hoca) traditionally produce wine. However, now Albanians illegally occupy their vineyards. So, only 10% of the wine yards belonging to the families from Orahovac are cultivated by them self now, as well as some 30% of the vineyards in Velika Hoca, and that is sufficient for the elementary needs. However, people also live from welfare, pensions, some people work in health and educational institutions.

Production of quality wine nowadays requires modern technology and equipment. The International Organization for Migration, IOM and a few others international organizations, have donated equipment to the local Serbians here in Velika Hoca, so that they are now more able to compete with the outside world in the production of quality wine.

Though their lives are far from being ideal, people from Velika Hoca hope the future will bring an improvement.

Thank God, we stayed here and didn’t go up north. Mostly the old remained, the young have gone, and we hope to stay here today and tomorrow. If the situation with them, the Albanians, and with us, changes and that friendship improve, we can try again. There is enough place to live for all of us.

When you are in Velika Hoca, the world seems far away.

Though far from other Serbian communities of Kosovo, like those in Gracanica, Mitrovica in further north, at Michealmans residents of Velika Hoca host numerous visitors. Their hospitality is very well known, and the celebration always last until late into the night.

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