(Forbes) - After traveling through the great wine producing regions of Europe, Zeinulla Kakimzhanov had an idea: why not revive wine culture in Kazakhstan? Knowing that his country once had a great wine tradition, he formed a cooperative, pursued investors, and began cultivating 70 hectares of forgotten vineyards near the village of Karakemer, in the Assa Valley just outside of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s most dynamic and populated city. Kakimzhanov called his new winery Arba Wine, and high-end wine began being produced in Kazakhstan once again.

Kazakhstan doesn’t necessarily come to mind when we think of the world’s great regions for viniculture, but the country actually has a long — ancient, in fact — tradition of growing grapes and producing wine.

“It is mentioned in the old manuscripts, the old Chinese manuscripts,” Kakimzhanov began. “In the sixth or seventh century, a Chinese monk traveled here. He wrote about the very nice grape culture.”

Grapes made their way to Kazakhstan via two separate migrations. The first was along the Silk Road, as traders brought grape seeds and the knowledge of wine making up from Europe and Turkey, and the second was from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, as stronger religious conventions pushed wine production out to the fringes of Central Asia in the 10th – 13th centuries. Although neither of these traditions were to last.

“A lot of changes happened here,” Kakimzhanov explained. “Ghengis Khan, the Chinese Han Empire. To survive during any war it’s better to be mobile, but for grape culture you have to be settled, you have to stay in the same place, you can’t leave, not even for a month. So logically this culture had been lost.”

Although viniculture was bound to return to Kazakhstan. This time it was the legendary agronomists of the Soviet Union who would spearhead the reintroduction.

“When the Soviet Union started making plans to develop the country they decided that this region should be for grapes, for wine and for the table,” Kakimzhanov explained.