Region · 1 min read
Lake Skadar is now a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve
Jablan Winery · 26 June 2026
Our home — the Skadar Lake watershed — has been named a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Here's what that recognition means, and why it's woven into every bottle we make.
Big news from our corner of Montenegro. On 5 June 2026 — World Environment Day — UNESCO officially designated the Skadar Lake watershed a Biosphere Reserve. It honours the rare harmony here between local communities, a living rural heritage, and some of the richest biodiversity in the Balkans.
It is also a genuine milestone: Montenegro's first new biosphere reserve in fifty years, building on the legacy of the Tara River Basin, inscribed back in 1976.
What the recognition means
A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve isn't a fence around nature. It's recognition of a place where people and the landscape thrive together — where farming, food, and wildlife are part of the same living whole. That is exactly the spirit we try to bottle.
Why it matters to us
Our vineyards sit in Rvaši, in the rugged karst hills right above the lake — inside this protected ecosystem. The way we farm, low-intervention and biodynamic, is a direct response to where we are: the springs beneath the soil, the old vines, the lake breeze that comes up in the afternoon.
When you taste our amphora-aged Vranac and Kratošija, you're tasting the raw energy of a world-class terroir that the world is only just waking up to.
Come and see it
There is no better way to understand this place than to stand in it, glass in hand, with the lake below. Come for the wine — and stay for the region.
Book a tasting or an e-bike tour with us, or order a bottle from the shop and bring a little of Skadar Lake home.
