We had arranged for the winery to send a car to pick us up, so we walked down to the roundabout outside the entrance to the castle.

The lady who picked us up was the wife of the guy who showed us around. It took around 25 minutes to get to the winery. As you drove up to the building it was like driving down a residential drive. We were greeted by a cobo winery employee.

Cobo winery covers around 37 hectares (91 acres) and is a family owned business. It specialises in native grape varieties like Puls, Vlosh, Shesh i Bardhë, Shesh i Zi, and Kallmet. The winery is ever expanding and receives 15,000 visitors from over 70 countries.

We were shown round the production area with the steel vats. The wine is fermented and the white wine is stored in the steel vats.

The red wine is stored in oak barrels.

And the sparking wine is stored and turned in the Champagnois method.

The old wine container and the wine themed mosaic in the cellar were a nice touch. The mosaic was from a local village.

The winery has a capacity of 80,000 bottles and they currently export around 10% of these. The oldest bottle they have is 25 years old.

After the tour we were taken into the gardens for our wine tasting. It was a lovely sunny afternoon.

We were given a variety of snacks; cheese, olives and breads to pair with our first wine. I learnt that the large olives are best to eat and the smaller olives are used to make the oil.

The first wine we tried was a dry white Puls wine. It was really nice and we ended up buying a bottle to drink over the rest of the holiday.

At this point we had a couple of furry friends join us.

The next wine we tried was a light rose wine. The skin is left on the grapes for 40 days to get the colour.

The next wine we tried was a new wine they were testing out. It was an orange wine and tasted really nice.

At this point were were given even more food; some hard cheese and sausage.

And our fourth wine came too. This was a red wine, Kashmer, made from 70% local grapes and the other 30% was a mixture of cabernet sauvignon and merlot. The bottle we tried was from the 2017 harvest. The wine is left in the barrel for a year, and then in the bottle for a further year.

We then tried another red wine, Vlosh. This is entirely made from local grapes. The winery produces 10 hectares of this grape and it is only used at Cobo winery.

The final wine was their sparkling wine, Shendevere. This was really nice, but the English sparkling wines are better.

After all of these wines we were offered a taste of their brandy, Spirit of Wine. This is left for 8 years in oak barrels and tasted delicious,and it was very smooth.

We sat and enjoyed the rest of the brandy, playing with the cats and also the dog who tried to scare them off.

The wine prices were really expensive so we only bought the white wine.

When we arrived back at the castle the sun was just starting to set, it looked beautiful.

We decided to take a walk over to the viewing point at the other end of the castle. The views were really nice.

As the sun went down the city looked very pretty with all the lights.

Nicola made a new furry friend too!

On the way back we passed a little shrine.

As we had such a good meal at Mbrica the night before we went back there again. This time we had the Albanian casserole, Shapkat, (corn pie with spinach and cheese) with mixed salad. We had the house red wine to go with it and were again offered a free raki at the end.

And after dinner we headed home to bed.