05/05/2024 –
Six girls are sitting on stools in front of a high table. In front of them they have a glass of wine that has loosened their tongues. It’s a random Monday and this group of friends has decided to go tasting at the Ruzafa Winery, where a girl with an Eastern accent serves them. She is Kim Chemeryk, a young woman with a childish face who refills their glasses and lets them, somewhat tipsy, continue with a bawdy conversation. After a while it arrives Jairo Calpe, who is her husband and carries a cage with a rabbit inside. The couple has two at home: one is called Coco and the other Chanel.
The winery is a temporary job for them. Kim and Jairo plan to end up living off their Instagram account (@jairokim_travel), which already has almost half a million followers. Their forte, traveling as a couple. They, with the air of models, matching dresses, everything perfect, everything pretty, sell their image for hotels and some brands. And they already dream of a not-too-distant future in which they will split their lives between Dubai, where they would do business and make important contacts, and Bali, where they would hang out, between trips, to enjoy their dream life.
Kim is only 21 years old, but she has been living away from home for six years now. Since she was a teenager, she was a forward-thinking woman who left her country, Ukraine, before even realizing that they were living under the threat of a war with Russia. Her parents instilled in her and her brother, two years younger, that the Earth is very big. “All parents have their priorities, and mine was for us to see the world. That’s why we have always taken great trips to exotic and remote places like Mauritius, Fiji, Bora Bora, Costa Rica… Almost always to beach destinations because my mother loves the sea.”
A few years ago, in the middle of the pandemic, they sought respite in Ibiza. Kim uploaded a story to Instagram, put the location and it came out to Jairo. The Valencian, who is now 33 years old, twelve years older than her, liked what he saw and wrote to him privately. Before she hooked up in bars. Now, on social networks. She was flying out the next day and she doesn’t usually meet the first person who knocks on her door, so she gave him the slip. At that time, Kim was already living in Valencia. Before, at the age of 15, this young blonde with an elfin air left Rivne, in western Ukraine, a medium-sized city where she was also born. Sergei Lishchukthat center who won the EuroCup twice with Valencia Basket, and went to Houston (Texas).
Valencia, a refuge during the war
She liked the United States, but that teenager didn’t know how to take care of her diet, she let herself be carried away by the junk food that you can get everywhere and gained 20 kilos. Houston, we have a problem. Therefore, as soon as she finished the high school He ran out of Texas and went to live and study Tourism in Valencia, at the European University. A little earlier, his father began to smell that the tense relations with Russia could end with missiles flying over the skies of eastern Europe, and he dedicated himself to looking for a place, a country, to flee if war broke out. That place, after considering Barcelona, was Valencia, where that man dedicated to banking bought an apartment that, before being a refuge, became the home of this young Tourism student in the third country of her life.
After that summer in Ibiza, once in the city, Jairo wrote to Kim again. One night he told her that she was with some friends at Mya, the nightclub in the City of Arts and Sciences, in case she wanted to stop by. Coincidentally, the young Ukrainian woman was a few meters above, in Umbracle, so she came down and they met. “He always says that he fell in love at first sight, but I’m not like that, I don’t fall in love that quickly,” Kim recalls.
Jairo is the third generation of a family, the Calpe, that has always been dedicated to the distribution of wines in the Valencian Community. The first one, the one who opened the business, was the grandfather, Pepito Calpethen came Enrique and now, Jairo, who hopes to inherit the company when his father retires in a couple of years. Five years ago, to leave the domain of his father, who sold wine to the restaurants of Quique Dacosta, Ricard Camarena, Civera or Duna, the heir decided to open a small winery on Cádiz street, in the heart of bustling Ruzafa, to diversify the business. There, where there used to be a takeaway, Jairo opened Bodega Ruzafa in 2019, just before the pandemic and just before marrying Kim.
The Valencian wasted no time, as he saw that his girlfriend had to return to Ukraine to renew her passport and he knelt. “He was leaving on November 2 and on the 1st I asked him to marry me. When I found out that he had to leave, I went to the Rabat Jewelry Store, on Colón Street, I bought a ring, I talked to my parents, I prepared everything beautifully in the Albufera and I asked him if he wanted to marry me.” Kim laughs at the memory and adds: “He and his family are very religious.”
Three months before the war broke out, they were married in Ukraine, and two later, another wedding, now in Spain. “A little more and we wouldn’t have been able to get married there,” celebrates Kim, who has half of her family, her father’s, in Ukraine, and the other half, her mother’s, in Russia. Overall, they met in August 2021, Jairo asked her to marry him in November and they got married in December or January.
Kim likes to talk and tell her life. Jairo is more reserved and only wants to tell things related to his business. To the second question of the interview, he cut off the conversation to find out if he could return to the photographer and take some photos with the clients. A while later, impatient with so much chatter, he asks how many pages the report is going to have. And when he has to go attend to the six girls in the warehouse, when he sees that his wife, whose back is turned, won’t stop telling things, he makes a gesture at her, looking at the mirror in front of him, as if He will cut his throat to keep him quiet.
As soon as he can, he returns and starts talking over Kim: “We organize private events here and this works like an oenophile club. Members have some benefits, such as visits to wineries. In five years I have gained 2,400 clients.” Then he will proudly say that during the pandemic, on that stretch of Cádiz Street, only he, a supermarket and the pharmacy were open. “I also did tastings on-line and people connected to the video call in their pajamas to taste the wines. It was fun”.
Parents fled Ukraine
Jairo studied Administration and Finance, and Foreign Trade and Marketing. He says that he has dedicated himself to expanding his father’s company and during the conversation, from a comment from Kim, he deduces that he has other businesses. He is more distrustful and even hesitates to say that before he turned 18 he was already trying wines. As if there weren’t kids drinking at 16 or 17 years old. He is now a true sommelier who, in the winery alone, knows and works with around 150 references.
When the war started, Kim’s mother came to Valencia. Shortly after, her father was able to escape from Ukraine and began buying ground floors in the city to make tourist apartments. “He buys a place where there is nothing, builds a home and rents it. He has several in different areas. It is an investment and in a few years he hopes to make a living from this. Meanwhile, my brother, who is smaller than me, but he is very intelligent, helps him.”
One of the first decisions this couple made was to promote a joint account, as a couple, to the detriment of individual ones. After a couple of photos with luxury cars, their first post together is from February 18, 2022. “Let’s start… our best memories from the trip to Formentera”, a brief reel where they are already starting to come out dressed to match. Just 800 likes, a figure that multiplies by ten in a couple of years, when they already have a community of 476,000 followers behind them, which is what allows them to think about making a living from their Instagram account. “He was scared at first. His mentality made him keep everything more closed because he was afraid that people could come between us. There are many couples who break up on social networks. But we trust each other and it’s nice to do this together. This can open many doors for you and in Spain there is not much competition with couples accounts.”
She always had a taste for taking photos, editing them and uploading them. The science of community manager. His first trip was his honeymoon: a tour of Dubai and the Seychelles islands. The first one of work took them to Bali and Kuala Lumpur. Kim starts to tell that she had to go through Singapore because of a problem with her visa, but then he cuts her off again. “You don’t need to tell so much…”
The conversation gets a little complicated because Jairo has gone and brought some ‘gin and tonics’ to the girls’ table. After the second drink they start talking loudly and Kim has to raise her voice to explain how they approach the travel business. “Half a year before, we thought about the destination and started talking to the hotels to see if they wanted to collaborate. If it is a very luxurious hotel we understand that an exchange of stay for content is enough, but if it is not so luxurious, we can ask them for money. Sometimes they also contact us. It is more complex than going to a place and taking a nice photo. People only see that, but you take 200 or 300 photos, sometimes with the help of a drone, and we send the hotel content with everything set up.”
Their last trip took them through a frozen New York, Miami, Costa Rica and Tulum, Mexico. Almost a month away from home. Then, in addition to the trips, there is a minor category that they call a getaway, like the one they did a few days ago to Marbella and Seville, to the April Fair. The next trip will be to Polsitano and the Amalfi coast. With so much hustle and bustle, it’s hard to imagine that they can keep the winery open. Then they say that Jairo’s family helps them and that when they are away they are only open on Fridays and Saturdays. In exchange, they cannot move from Valencia either during Fallas or at Christmas.
Jairo hesitates between opening more wineries in other neighborhoods or leaving this one in the hands of someone he trusts and embarking on traveling. “The hospitality industry ties you down a lot,” warns Jairo, who in addition to being a businessman is a sommelier. And she adds: “The winery gives you stability, but it has some limitations. The travel business is unlimited, and the most important thing is to achieve financial freedom and freedom of location, to live wherever you want.
The girls are toasting and laughing out loud. Jairo ends the interview as soon as he can and Kim simply shrugs her shoulders. They have to take care of business. Traveling is great, but today they have to entertain six women who want to drink and have a good time.