The hems of his jeans rolled, Ahsan* climbs barefoot up a tree to pick the grapes dangling from climbing vines, defying hostile religious injunctions against alcohol to celebrate a wine-making tradition in the mountains of Pakistan.

Every autumn in the remote village near the foothills of the Himalayas, Ahsan joins the many agile young people taking to the trees for the long-awaited harvest under the watchful eye of their gnarled and chiselled elders.

Drenched in sunlight, bunches of grapes crown the treetops, where they are safe from the opportunistic reach of greedy farm animals.

Ahsan — slim, and with an aquiline nose — begins to pick the forbidden fruit.

Working with his bare hands, he places the green and crimson grapes in a wicker basket that is lowered to the ground along a rope.

The fruit is tossed into the 'khor', a cement tank washed with icy glacier water, where barefoot villagers trample it to press the juice.

Then, beneath the permanently snow-capped mountains, the villagers concoct their tangy, golden wine with undercurrents of peach, as well as brandies of grape and blackberry.

"We learned from our fathers and grandfathers, who were already making wine," smiles Ahsan, who pressed his first grapes and tasted his first sip of wine at the age of "eight or nine."