Ep. 1883 Roza Zharmukhambetova  | Voices With Cynthia Chaplin

The Italian wine podcast is the community driven platform for Italian wine Geeks around the world. Support the show by donating at italian wine podcast dot com. Donate five or more Euros, and we'll send you a copy of our latest book. My Italian Great Geek journal. Absolutely free. To get your free copy of my Italian GreatGeek journal, click support us at Italianpodcast dot com, or wherever you get your pods. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm Cynthia Chaplin, and this is voices. Every Wednesday, I will be sharing conversations with international wine industry professionals discussing issues in diversity, equity, and inclusion through their personal experiences, working in the field of wine. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate our show wherever you get your pods. Hi. This is Cynthia Chaplin. And today, I am at the Vine Italy International Academy Italian wine Ambassador course. This is the twenty seventh edition in verona. And with me, I have Rosa from Kazakhstan, who is one of our Via students. Welcome to the show, Rosa. Thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you so much the invitation? It's my pleasure, and you've kindly given up your lunch hour. Did have a couple of minutes of chat with me. So first of all, I'm gonna ask you to say your last name because I will undoubtedly pronounce it wrong. So my last name is Jarmuhan Beethova. I was never gonna get that. Let's be honest too. So Rosa, I know, you know, a little bit about you. I know you grew up in Kazakhstan. Your parents didn't drink wine. How did you get interested in the wine world? So my story with wine actually started in China. For seven years, I've been living in China. I'm originally, like, my major is a teacher, English, and French. So I was teaching languages there, and then I realized I want to transfer to another industry. And my French professor from the university. He he just gave me an advice to look for some French companies, actually, doing some luxury products. And after that, I decided that I need to like this category, luxury category, very broad, and I need to focus on one thing. And I decided that, like, I love teaching kids, but then I realized al alcohol was much more interesting than the kids. And sometimes you need alcohol if there are a lot of kids around. So and after that, I got interested in wine. I started learning wine first. It was a self study. Then I found some important companies who made some wine classes. Also in Beijing, there is a school, wine school called Dragon Phoenix, run by We know Dragon Phoenix. Yes. Two masters of of wine. And I started descending their classes, then my WSets level two was also in Beijing because of some regulations WST was stopped there for two years. Then I decided to go back to my country because, it was very hard not to see the family during COVID and, like, three years and a half. I haven't seen them. Then I decided to go because of some family reasons. And after that, I decided to focus on Italian wines and About Vin Italy, I actually I participated in some exhibitions. I went there as a guest while I was working as a sales manager for the, Chinese company. And I was thinking about taking the Italy course But because of COVID, everything was, postponed. And then once I, came back to my country, I decided to focus on my studies and traveling. So for now, like, it was a sabbatical year for me, like academic year. I decided to spend more time with the family, travel, and focus on Italian wines. And that's why I'm here. And last year, I participated in Longgekors and Puerto Poricello. And there I met people from the Italy community, and I loved it. Are you enjoying this podcast? Don't forget to visit our YouTube channel, mama jumbo shrimp. For fascinating videos covering Stevie Kim and her travels across Italy and beyond, meeting winemakers, eating local foods, and taking in the scenery. Now back to the show. I heard about the community. I heard that everyone was so friendly that it is an ecosystem, but when I saw it with my own eyes, I decided that definitely I want to be a part of this community. And if I want to be an expert in Italian wines in the future, that I have to take I have to take this course. That makes me so happy because community management at Via is something that we're very serious about. We love having all of our ambassadors and all our students back to visit for events that we do in verona. We know that you will all be networking together it's a wonderful, really helpful three hundred and sixty degree global community. So I'm glad you already know about that. And you've been here today is day two. So you're still looking pretty fresh, not too worn out yet. You just had thirty wines this morning. So how are you finding the course? You wanted to do it, and now you're doing it. How is it going for you? It is intense, but all of my friends who took the course before they were telling me that it was intense. I knew where what I was, signing up to. So that is why I I love it. I love everything, and I love the course, even if it's hard and intense and it's a big amount of information, first of all, but I love that Via is looking at wine from different aspects. I love history. And, secondly, I love Italy, even before entering the wine industry. I was in love with this country. I love the language. It's, for for me, food language, wine, than people, most importantly, All of these aspects, they kinda came together. You're singing my song. This is why I moved to Italy and decided to finish my career in Italy. Exactly for those reasons. The wine is great. The food is great. The people are nice. The country is beautiful. So it's, it's something that I can really relate to. So after the course, and it sounds like you were well informed, and you're probably very studied up. So I'm gonna give you the old, I hope you pass and good luck. I expect to see you at the pinning ceremony with a little pin like the one I'm wearing. What are you gonna do next? When you're newly minted Italian wine ambassador, what would you like to do? First of all, I I really want to be become an expert in the future. On Italian wines. The next thing that I'm gonna do, probably find a mentor who could guide me because I'm just in the beginning of my career, but I love it. I know it's gonna be hard, from time to time, but the support that I got from my friends from from this community, it's pretty big. Good. No. I'm really I'm so happy to hear this, and I'm looking forward to seeing you with us more in the future, hopefully on our Gietas Galaska trips that we take and coming back for wine to wine business forum in the autumn that we hold every year. I hope you have a great rest of your via week. There are going to be a total of one hundred and forty eight wines tasted, and then two blind on the exam. So one fifty in the space of five days, which is quite a lot. Hopefully, some wines you haven't had a chance to try before and some new things. And I'm looking forward to seeing how you do. So I wish you all the very, very best, and we're so glad to have you here with us. Thank you, Rosa. Thank you so much, Cynthia. Thank you for listening, and remember to tune in next Wednesday when I'll be chatting with another fascinating guest. Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcast in the world and the only one with a daily show tune in every day and discover all our different shows. You can find us at Italian wine podcast dot com, SoundCloud, Spotify, Himalaya, or wherever you get your pods.