Natalie’s Story

Before the war, Natalie Lysenko carried Ukraine’s sparkling wine into the world.

Tall, bright-eyed, and relentless, she introduced Artwine to international markets that often did not even know Ukraine made wine. In early 2020, at a New York trade show, she convinced skeptical importers to taste bottles aged deep beneath Bakhmut’s soil. The wines spoke for themselves.

By 2021, nearly a million bottles were exported abroad. For Natalie, each cork opened outside Ukraine was more than a sale. It was a story being poured.

But the story she was telling was larger than business.

Natalie grew up in eastern Ukraine speaking Russian, one of three sisters in a tightly knit family. She often described Kyiv as “our fourth sibling,” a city that felt as personal as family itself. Wine, for her, was not simply a product. It was heritage, pride, and continuity.

When the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, everything shifted overnight.

Air-raid sirens became part of daily life. Explosions echoed across cities that once hosted tastings and trade shows. Natalie was nine months pregnant when the war began. On March 16, 2022, she answered a call from her American importer while standing in her bathtub for safety, sirens wailing outside.

“The bastards are bombing 10 kilometers away,” she said calmly. “So what are we going to do about your next wine order?”

She did not mention she was about to give birth. Her focus remained steady. Not because wine mattered more than safety, but because preserving what they had built mattered.

As russian forces advanced toward Bakhmut, fifty million bottles of sparkling wine rested underground in the limestone caves. Decades of craft. Generations of knowledge. An entire chapter of Ukrainian winemaking.

The team faced an impossible decision: destroy everything to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, or attempt to save it.

They chose to save it.

By late 2022, with the city largely without power, workers descended into candlelit tunnels and worked by generator light. Bottles were riddled, disgorged, and packed by hand under constant threat of shelling. As soon as pallets emerged from the caves, artillery intensified. Some shipments were destroyed in transit. Others reached warehouses that were later struck by missiles.

Each loss erased years of patient aging in seconds.

And still, they continued.

When Bakhmut finally fell in May 2023 after months of brutal siege, millions of bottles remained trapped in the occupied caverns. The classical music that once filled the underground tunnels went silent.

But not everything was lost.

After an eighteen-month effort, approximately thirty thousand rescued bottles reached safety overseas. When Natalie learned they had arrived intact, she called it the happiest day of her life.

Those bottles are now among the last remaining from the original Bakhmut collection. To Natalie, their value is not measured in price or rarity. It is measured in survival.

Each cork opened is proof that something endured.

In late 2024, Natalie traveled abroad once again, but this time with a different purpose. She became an ambassador not just for wine, but for resilience. While air-raid alerts continued to sound in Kyiv, she poured Ukrainian sparkling wine in cities thousands of miles away, telling the story of the caves, the evacuation, and the people who refused to give up.

At events and tastings, listeners leaned in. They were no longer hearing about a beverage. They were hearing about colleagues who worked by candlelight, about trucks moving under threat, about a winery that refused to disappear.

Today, Artwinery continues its work in Odesa, rebuilding production near the Black Sea while the original Bakhmut cellars remain under occupation. Natalie helps lead this new chapter, connecting vineyards, partners, and supporters across borders.

For her, this is not simply a career.

It is responsibility.

It is identity.

It is the belief that beauty does not have to vanish in times of destruction.

When someone opens a bottle from the Bakhmut Collection, they are not just tasting sparkling wine aged underground. They are tasting survival, effort, and a story that refused to end.

And Natalie is still carrying it into the world.