Ep. 2195 Giulia Stocchetti interviews Artem Lebedev | The Next Generation

I feel that, this is a very interesting place to be. So we start doing different events, and people slowly realized that, if you want to meet some new producers, to meet new professionals to do some networking, you need to come to Almaty. And, now this year, this idea works brilliant because we had, during Vin Italy, we had people from almost all the surrounding countries. Ben Venuti, welcome to the next generation. With me, your host, Julia Stochetti. Join me as I take you on a journey to discover young stars of the Italian food and wine world, Cronte and Yamu. Hello. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the next generation on the Italian win podcast. Today, I'm so happy to have here with me, my friend from Almaty Gazakhstan Artium. Well, just a couple of words about him because he's not even thirty five. I mean, he's in his early thirties, let's say, and he's done so much for the Italian wine world so far. First of all, he is a professional wine teacher and a wine communicator. And he's been working in the industry for, like, ten years now, I would say. He holds the WSTT diploma. He's an Italian wine ambassador and an Ask certified song. He is also the CEO of IWine KZ, the first Katzak, so many school and the founder of the Cadzakstan Son Association. So he's really, really into wines. Well, that's it. I'm excited to introduce you guys, Artion, Chower. Chiao Julie. Thank you for the perfect introduction. I'm almost thirty five, so not so young. Yes. You're so young. And, I mean, you've done so many things so far in the wine world. So I'm so excited to I mean, I have a bunch of questions for you. So let's try to to stay on time. First of all, I know you a little bit, but I'd like also our listeners to get to know you better. So can you please tell us a bit about your background and why and how you became a wine professional and a wine educator? I originally from Saint Petersburg, and I started my wine career there. So I did some, wct three, then I just doing some kind of educational small projects because my father, he is a professional teacher. He's a photographer and teacher. So it's in my blood. Then I just, visited few regions, in Italy, by the way, Vine regions during my auto stop journey back back there's a journey. And, I fell in love with the wine culture with all of this. And, yeah, I just decided to start working more and more. And the education probably is the best part the job which I like most of all. And it's also important because you educate people to enjoy wine in the right way and to dig deeper and deeper in the world of wine, especially Italian wines. So you choose a really important role within the industry, I guess. You were backpacking around Italy. I was working that time at the restaurant as a waiter. So I already knew something about wine, but then I met my wife Now she's ex wife, but that time it was a wife. She was my administrator at this restaurant. And then we fell in love, and we decided to go to Europe to make some hitchhiking. And we started from Italy, and I know that in Italy, there are binaries, and we just on the road, we stopped one man, and, it was Tuscany. And we asked him, where is the binaries here, and that he just told us, like, Vino, Vino, let's go. So we did not speak Italian. He did not speak any English but he brought us to to his binary anti bicycle, and we were, like, in thirty minutes completely drunk. And, because we have the safest moment, in my life, I decided that I want to enter this world. And I go back and in Saint Petersburg, I start doing so many courses. You were among the first doing so many courses there or there were already some schools in Saint Petersburg. It was, the familiar school at Notea, which is probably the one of the most important in this part of the world, let's say. But, I did some, small training in this, school, but it was on the beginning. And my teaching was, a to the European trip. And it was more or less at the beginning independence. So I did it for private customers. Nice. We always have to start some point. So that's cool. I mean, you fell in love with Italian wines in Kianti with Sanjay. That's amazing. And still still in love with the Cantiente and Sanjay. So I guess it's among your favorite wines. Yeah. Yeah. What pushed you to become an Italian one in Vasadore? It was, like, from the very beginning due to this trip that I was, in love with Italy, then I did, as I told you, like, w three three, then I finished my diploma. So I have pretty good knowledge about all, wines of, all the world. But, then I saw during Vin Italy, I saw, and I heard about the problem of, Italian wine ambassador, and I just fell in love with the idea and to go deeper to Italian wines. And, I saw that there are a lot of, people whom I know who already did it foundation. And I realized that, being in Kazakhstan, I can be the first one. So it was very exciting and I did it. This was the journey, the idea of journey. And how was your experience went to Hong Kong because, it was closer. I wanted to do it immediately. So I choose the dates, the dates were were in Hong Kong, and I never been there. So I bought the tickets, and, it was probably one of the most expensive spending in my life. Altogether because it was hotel. It was flights. I think from Austria because I were in Austria before the trip and the program and everything. So I came to Hong Kong, and, I was amazed. It was, big buildings, a lot of Italian people, a lot of knowledge, a lot of good Italian wine, and, I was very excited. So still remember it as it was yesterday. That's amazing. And could you have imagined that we have so many native varieties in Italy, like, more than five hundred. This is one of the top ideas for Italian wines because, you know, if you want to highlight any country in wine world, you need to choose sound topics. And the different countries speak about different topics, but Italian wines is, a lot about this native grape varieties. Every variety from every village has something special, which is not possible to do in any other places. So I like this idea. I like to travel, Italy plus by glass with these native varieties and also very good thing in that that, it's not very expensive. So you can try to drink one new grape every day, and you will and the whole year with these different glasses, and you will not spend, a fortune. It will be absolutely well priced. And, it's important, especially here in, Kazakhstan and Central Asia to be, you know, on your budget. And with Italian wines, perfect. Yeah. Italian wines, I guess, have the best value price on the market. I mean, also, like, when you were traveling, you totally, I guess you remember that when you had a glass of wine or a bottle of wine, it wasn't that expensive. I mean, it's affordable. Of course, they're very super expensive for new wines, but, I mean, spending the right amount of money, you can enjoy a really, really good wine. Yeah. Yeah. So you can find basically any price well, if you want, also very premium, ultra premium. But for the daily consumption and with the idea not to drink the same style every day, you can surf Italy by the glass. And it's amazing. When did you become an ambassador? When? Probably it was in two thousand nineteen. So now it's like five years ago. Nice. So five years ago, you became an international an ambassador. At this year, in November, you hosted at your own school, the Via course in Almaty. Right? Yes. And, I'm also very excited about them. From the very beginning, when I received the pin from, Vineite International Academy, I decided that we need to do something together because I, you know, I have a fine school in Almaty. I have a lot of educational projects here in Central Asia, and, I just wanted from the very beginning somehow to connect the national via, like, with the with my projects. But, only after five years, only this November, it finally happened. Yeah. That's beautiful. Congratulations. I mean, I guess it was a blast because I also was so lucky to be there helping out the team. And, oh my god, I was so impressed, like, how well you, along with Sarah Heller and W, the FIA faculty member, actually, you work really well together, and also your team the guys who are pouring the wines were so professional and so perfectly on time. So I have to say that your school is one of the most beautiful wine school I've ever seen and with beautiful people working in there, and everything is so, like, well organized and you feel so comfortable and you have all the comforts, you should ask for. Thank you. It is a perfect advertisement. I really wish we can do another one there for sure. I mean, that was amazing. Basically you're busy full time teaching and talking about wines. Right? Yep. That's your main job. Yeah. I have, private clients whom I sell the wines, but it's not the main. It's the education, different project, consulting, and it's both for professionals, for, you know, phone users for b to b, like, for the wineries and, etcetera. So I tried to create the idea geographically speaking about Central Asia as one of the most undeveloped wine markets in the world both in terms of production and consumption. So more or less, all the places in the world developed. And, here in Almaty, it's around London. We still have a lot of people who know my thing about Italian wines about the wines in general and, of course, about Italian wines. I feel that, this is a very interesting place to be So we start doing different events, and people slowly realized that, if you want to meet some new producers to meet new professionals to do some networking, you need to come to Almaty. And, now this year, this idea works brilliant because we had, during Vin Italy, we had people from almost all the surrounding countries. So I believe in future, it will be more and more. And for the producers who try to find, for Italian and producers, to trying to find new markets probably, Almatis, the best place to come, especially during this in Italy because, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, maybe some other countries in Russia were presented there. Amazing. And I remember you were leading to out of the four master classes schedule for that event, and they were all packed of people interested in, Italian wines and listening of course to you while explaining some stuff about the Sanja Viese and other interesting things. So I think that people are pretty interested in Italian wines, at least they're curious about them. So I was wondering, among all the people interested in Italian wines, how many persons are actually part of the younger generations? I would like to say that especially comparing with the Europe, we have very young average age of, wine professionals. So more or less, you know, we have situations here in Almaty when you go to the office, all the people who work in the wine industry, but not exactly with the wine, maybe some logistics and other stuff. They are older. And those who work directly with the knowledge about wine, all of them are very young, very young. And, this is for me very good because the average age of fine industry in the world are growing and, sometimes it lacks, you know, freshness that I would like to say. And Almati, we have a lot of this freshness during the master class, of the, in Avaya, in Almati. It was, like, two times more people than it was possible to sit down. I think more than half of them were very young, like, younger than I don't know, younger than maybe twenty five. Oh, wow. So really, really young as average. And that's beautiful because as you said, usually people are older when they're approaching wines, but there's freshness, as you said, in Almaty, and that's pretty exciting. But you can also tell it from the city. The city is lovely. It's vibrant. It, like, spreads positive vibes and, like, it's something different and something people should experience, I guess. So people take a plane and go to Almaty, especially now that it's ski season, there are amazing places to go on the mountains. And, I mean, amazing people to spend some time with. You get some Italian wines. You get two meats, Artio, and his team because there's also wine shop, right, right, under the school. So And also, don't forget that Almaty is situated eight hundred meters above sea level. It's pretty high. So normally, they hangover. They're way less than what's going to the sea side. And especially if you are going to the mountains, it's absolutely beautiful to drink some in among elegant Italian red wines. Because it opens up beautifully. Talking about restaurants. It's almost Christmas time. So do you have any special wine and food pairing to recommend like Italian wines with local food? Like, people from the industry like to pair local cuisine with Italian wines very much. So it's also due to the reason that, one of our special dishes, horse meat prepared in different ways. And, I know and probably also know that in Italy, there are regions, traditional regions, where people also eat horse meat, like, Veneto and Julian, and maybe Mariana and Dosthenin. So I would like to say that, our special emblematic horse meat dishes like, or Kaze very well with the wines of these regions, like, a Marona, maybe not Marona, maybe, but also with the primitiva, and, maybe with some super tuscany, which is, very, very important here in on the and also we had a lot of small different specialities in terms of local, as a cuisine which pairs very well with a lot of different styles of Italian wines. So it's a big place to discount. And all of that due to the reason that I would like to say that somehow the cuisine of Italy and cuisine of some regions of Italy and cuisine of some regions of Pakistan are very similar. Like, you have pasta. We also have pasta with a different name. You have ravioli. We also have kinds of, pasta down things. I don't know how to say it. So, yeah, there are a lot of things in common, and, we just discovering it now. But to highlight, I want to focus on a four smooth dishes I'm not joking when I say that, every day, you can drink new wine. And, I'm thinking about it for the long time to make this on Instagram to pour every day, some style of Italian wine. It's pretty expensive project, but I think it would be amazing, especially pairing it with the food center. And it would take, like, forever, for the huge amount of wines we have here. So You don't have to think about the tutorial on such for a long time. So it could be maybe a bit expensive in terms of wines, but, you know, to publish every day for the rest of your life, basically. Anyway, I'm drinking, like Italian wine more or less every day. So why not to make it more official. So I'm searching for the partners. Cool. So if anyone wants to send wine to our Kim, new producers out there, he's gonna publish it on his Instagram paired with a special typical local food from Almaty or Central Asia anyway. And I was wondering, is there anything special you're gonna eat on Christmas? It's a pretty difficult question because, we are not celebrating Christmas as much as in Europe. But, for us, it's, kind of connecting with a new year celebration. So the foods are more or less the same. So we have, like, olive, yeah, salad. We have, some kind of baked chicken or turkey or duck. We have a lot of different traditional foods, but, you know, they don't have any translation to English or to Italian. For instance, we have, followed it, which is absolutely fantastic dish, which is, basically, at the point of boiling meat. So it's not the meat, but it's the liquid, which then you freeze it, and then you eat it like a spoon. So the texture is kind of like, but, it's part of the bones, part of the meat, but in a liquid phase frozen one. So this is very strange. It looks strange. It smells strange, but it's very delicious, and it's very traditional for the regions. But speaking about Prasago with residual sweetness, like classic extra dry style, maybe maybe sweet, style of brewed, sweeter style of brewed could work very well. And an easy question now. What's your favorite dish during the holidays? Winter holidays? It's a difficult question, so that it's, you know, it's like asking what is your favorite dish? Let's say that my favorite dish is a pasta. So I would like to highlight my Italianity. So for me, It doesn't matter the holiday or not. I really am very big fan of pasta. So it could be some special pasta, which is, very difficult to cook in normal days because it takes so much time. Like, we discussed during the stay anomaly about, lasagna. So this could be a very nice option to cook lasagna on for this. You're definitely right. You're so Italian inside dot com. I mean, you have an Italian side that is priding up during this interview, and I really like it. I was wondering, do you have any advice for young people who would like to enter the wine world and maybe also become part of the wine industry these days Yes. Actually, I have a lot of, advices, but the main advice is to to support the idea, which is provided now by Vineet International Academy about this diversity of, grapes of terriers about history and, geography and geology because, you know, it's very interesting to investigate. It's, amazing when you find some grape, which is only grow in special conditions in, like, I don't know, maybe in small town, only in the whole world. And then you understand that, it's something special. You try to meet with the producers with people and you support real, middle business. Like, not a big company. It's not, nothing very, very huge, but, families, they're human beings. And, for me, this is, the wine world. I don't want to say anything against big users. But for me, Italy is, about, Konadena. This beautiful, beautiful world. I advise to dive into small varieties to small regions and don't look at the critics course because, normally a lot of critics never give high points to small producers because for them, it's useless. Think about your own ballot. Think about the idea of production and just support the small growers with all their beauty. I love it. Yeah. This is the main advice. And I wish people just follow it. And that if people from Central Asia or nearby countries are interested in dig deeper in Italian wines, don't hesitate to contact Aqiang, and he's cool because you can definitely have a really, really nice panorama of what the Italian wine world is nowadays, and it's always up to date. So feel free to contact that. Yeah. You know, we are doing, like, my extra course here in Almati, so level two. And I normally invite all of the people to come because it's not very pensive. And, it's amazing to start with, that course and then go to verona, meet with all these beautiful Italian people like you, Julia. Thank you. Yeah. This is interesting. So I guess we're running out of time. So is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up the episode? Or I always can add anything or something about Italian wine, but I think we cover all the most important topics. So I just will now go to some local restaurant and we will drink a glass of. Oh. And you know what? I remember a couple of my ago, I was interviewing. Now I'm spoiling something to you people. I was interviewing your bride to be Valentina. So I was wondering if you can also say hi to her and that it was a huge pleasure to have her as guest. During an episode here in the Italian win podcast for the next gen. It's amazing. Valentina, high five. And in future, we will be married Italian vine ambassadors together. Oh, gosh. I think it's the first couple of Italian win ambassadors. Wow. I'm so excited. So, Artillaum, I thank you so very much for your time. It was really, really a pleasure talking to you today. Thank you so much. I wish you amazing holidays and all the best in life Hopefully will see us soon again. Thank you for this beautiful opportunity. If any producers want to enter the market or need some advice as they can contact me, I'm answering very, very long. But finally, I always answer. So feel free to contact let's develop. Thank you so much, Artienne. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. I'll see you next Sunday for the third and the next generation of the Italian wine podcast. Gracie for being with me today and listening to the next generation on the Italian Mind podcast.