Iryna’s Story

In the cool darkness beneath Bakhmut’s soil, Iryna Kholoimova found her calling.

More than two hundred feet underground, inside limestone tunnels carved decades earlier, millions of bottles rested in silence. The temperature never changed. The air barely moved. Time felt different there.

At twenty-two, Iryna began as a laboratory assistant in those caves. She tested acidity, studied balance, and learned patience from the rhythm of fermentation. Over the years, that patience turned into responsibility. Eventually, the final character of Artwine passed through her hands.

Her path was not built on ambition, but on precision.

As she grew into the role of head winemaker, she oversaw grape selection, blending decisions, aging times, and final releases. Small adjustments mattered. A few more months on the lees. A different balance in the blend. A willingness to wait when others might rush.

When access to Crimean vineyards was lost in 2014, the winery faced a defining challenge. Grapes had to come from new regions. Styles had to adapt. Quality could not decline. Iryna traveled across southern Ukraine, walking vineyards, tasting fruit directly from the vine, deciding which grapes were worthy of becoming wine.

She believed winemaking required more than chemistry. It required atmosphere.

It was during this period that she introduced classical music into the underground halls. Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart played day and night through the caves. She believed the rhythm mattered. Not because it could be measured, but because it shaped the care people brought to their work.

The wine matured in silence and sound.

Then the silence changed.

When the full-scale invasion began in 2022, Bakhmut was no longer just a city known for deep cellars. It became a frontline.

Explosions replaced routine. Power failed. Roads became uncertain. The question inside the winery shifted from how to perfect the next vintage to whether any of it would survive at all.

Millions of bottles rested underground.
Decades of craft.
A cultural legacy.

As russian forces moved closer, the team faced a decision that felt unthinkable: destroy everything to prevent it from being taken, or attempt to save it.

“We thought we had to blow it up,” Iryna later said. “But we couldn’t.”

Instead, they chose to preserve what they could.

With electricity gone, workers descended into candlelit tunnels. Generators powered only the essentials. Bottles were riddled, disgorged, and packed by hand while shelling intensified above them. As soon as pallets emerged from the caves, artillery strikes often followed.

Some shipments never reached safety. One load was destroyed in a warehouse. Others disappeared in transit.

Each loss erased years of careful aging in seconds.

Still, they continued.

The war did not only take wine.

Two members of Iryna’s team, her assistants in the cellar, made the decision to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They had stood beside her in the tunnels, learning the craft bottle by bottle. Now they were leaving for the front.

She embraced them before they left. She promised to keep the winery alive. They promised to return.

After that, messages became rare. Silence stretched longer between updates. Work continued, but with an absence that was always present.

In May 2023, after months of siege, Bakhmut fell. Millions of bottles remained trapped underground. The music stopped.

But the craft did not.

Artwinery restarted in Odesa.

There were no limestone caves. No deep tunnels insulated from the world above. Only a warehouse near the Black Sea, salvaged equipment, and a smaller team determined to rebuild.

Iryna traveled through dangerous regions to inspect vineyards, sometimes in areas where bombing had recently occurred. She walked rows of vines marked by shrapnel, tasting grapes that had survived the same war as the people tending them.

Production resumed slowly. Smaller volumes. Fewer labels. Limited resources.

When the first new bottles were filled in Odesa, the room went quiet. It was not celebration in the traditional sense. It was recognition. Something fragile had continued.

Today, Iryna oversees production in exile, training new hands and setting aside bottles for a future she believes will come. At times, when the warehouse is empty, she plays classical music again.

For her, wine is memory in a bottle. It carries the stillness of the caves, the discipline of the craft, and the resilience of the people who refused to abandon it.

When someone opens a bottle from the Bakhmut Collection, they are tasting more than sparkling wine. They are tasting years of patience, the weight of decisions made under pressure, and the quiet determination of a woman who chose preservation over destruction.

One day, she believes, the music will play underground again.

And when it does, the wine will be ready.