Introducing you Ye Liu Jie, the first Chinese AIS sommelier
AIS sommelier courses are attended by Russian, Indians, Japanese, and in Milan the AIS Hosam Eldin Abou Eleyoun has Egyptian origins.
Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
Ye-Liu-Jie
Ye Liu Jie is the first Chinese sommelier graduated in Italy after attendine the 3 levels of AIS courses. Alessandra Coppola discovered her, and she dedicated her an article on Corriere della Sera. The important Italian newspaper from Milan and its wine blog DiVini, written by Luciano Ferraro, are always talking about unsual aspects of the wine environment, portraits and stories that can represent the most real actuality of wine.
Because behind the story of a person like Ye Liu Jie there’s the reality of young immigrants that every day try to invent their future with strenght and determination, most of times starting from nothing. Stories of everyday lives where the wine has an important role and becomes the chance of redemption for those young people with a talent. And this is Ye – that’s how customers call her using her last name, that it’s easier to pronounce – that arrived in Italy
Cantine-Isola-window
that she was 18 years old, to rejoin her mother, leaving from a small village close to Wenzhu. She didn’t speak Italian and so she had to attend high school again from the beginning. In 5 years, she graduated at Istituto Professionale for Tourism and she’s already atteding the third year at the university, studing economy.
Our small Chinese girl is kind and never tired; while she was studing she use to work for a wine shop, starting from the moost simple kind of tasks in the back of the shop in 2007, to become the right-hand woman of the owner Luca Serais. In the meanwhile, she obtain the degree of Sommelier, the first Chinese one in Italy. A woman sommelier…and this is also a very important point to strike the attention on, for all young Italians that do not accept to “cut their teeth”.
Cantine-Isola
The wine shop is the Cantine Isola in Milan, via Paolo Sarpi, a 40 squared metres wide shop where it is essential to be competent, have intuition and a strong aptitude to deal with people. “If somebody doesn’t like the wine I proposed, I really feel bad”, she says, confirming what is the secret for successfull sommeliers: they have to be able to guess the customer’s personal taste and offer him exactly the bottle he was looking for.
Ye has this talent and, in addition, she also has that typical oriental elegance that makes her so appreciated by everyone. Finally, she has also something more and unique: a big desire to become the spokesperson for Italian wines in China, and she has all the skills to achieve success. Moreover, the boyfriend is Chinese, he’s a hairdresser, and he doesn’t speak Italian at all. He met Ye via internet asking for some wine suggestions. He’s the first Chinese citizen she’s teaching the Italian wine.