Travel Guide VElika Hoča (Hoça E Madhe)

The village is called Велика Хоча/Velika Hoča in Serbian (pronounced "vélika rhotcha") and Hoçë e Madhe/Hoca i Madhe in Albanian. It belongs to the municipality of Rahovec/Orahovac and has about 700 mostly Serbian inhabitants. It is located 5 km southeast of Rahovec/Orahovac.A major religious and wine-making center since the Middle Ages, this beautiful village surrounded by vine-covered hillsides is one of the most isolated Serbian enclaves in Kosovo. Largely spared by the last war, Velika Hoča concentrates thirteen Serbian Orthodox churches as well as a dozen producers of wine and rakija (against 62 before 1998). The first wine-producing area of Kosovo during the Roman period, Velika Hoča experienced a strong development under the Nemanjić, then as a metoque (dependency) of the prestigious Serbian monastery of Hilandar of Mount Athos (Greece): the site counted up to 40,000 inhabitants and 24 churches and monasteries in the 15th century. Despite a sharp decline in the Ottoman era, winegrowers and monks continued with the presence of the Dečani monastery winery, which has been producing Kosovo's finest wines here since the 14th century. Once linked to neighboring Albanian communities, the village now lives almost cut off from the world with deep-rooted ancestral traditions such as the harvest festival (Miholjdan) on October 12 and the wine festival (Vinovdan) on February 14. Velika Hoča has experienced a small renaissance since the late 2000s thanks to the support of foreign associations and the Nobel Prize for Literature Peter Handke