Legend has it that Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Probus never let his soldiers sit idle, so in peacetime he put them to work planting vineyards in the rolling hills of Alma Mons, present-day Fruska Gora in northern Serbia.
Over the centuries, winemaking became a noble and lucrative business across the western Balkans. Two world wars, communist-era neglect and a decade of turbulence at the close of the 20th century devastated the industry, but in Serbia there are green shoots of revival.
Exports of award-winning Serbian wines are soaring. State-run cooperatives that produced huge quantities of poor . . .
