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Katrin Walter has travelled far in every respect. Born in East Berlin, she first got a taste of wine in Wiesbaden as well as in the nearby wine-growing areas, and from there she went deep into the south: to Italy. From 2002 to 2014, she first lived in Milan, later in the Oltrepò Pavese wine region. There, as early as in 2002, she completed a sommelier training in, of course, Italian.

Katrin Walter In the meantime, she has come back to Berlin, but the country is not only a piece of her past, but continues to be an important part of her life, her everyday life, and her business. The lively, communicative copywriter and marketing expert has been speaking excellent Italian for many years and combines the world-famous culture of enjoyment with her copywriting, communications and sales work from Berlin.

At first, she only wanted to acquire a little knowledge in her sommelier studies in order to be able to better market Italy in communication. But wine became interesting, fascinating and eventually one of her life's themes. At that time, she was on the road almost every weekend to visit vintners - and there are a lot of them around Milan.

Now all she needed was a job that went with Italy and wine. She surfed the net - and found Wein-Plus. So Katrin emailed a little with Utz Graafmann, and soon the matter was clear: In August 2005, she started as a representative for the vintners in Lombardy and Piedmont. It worked, and so Katrin took over the sales work for the whole of Italy except South Tyrol from 2007. Moreover, she takes care of the Italian website(www.wein-plus.it), does a lot of communication and representation work, communicates to the vintners in their language what is happening at Wein-Plus and writes articles about current and exciting Italian topics. So, the Italian from Wein-Plus is a Berliner. It is exactly this tension between the worlds that she likes about her work.

What made you choose wine, of all things, as your professional focus?

It came about through my first job in Italy for an advertising agency that was involved in projects to promote the various regions and their products. For Italians, food and drink are not just food consumption, but part of the local, cultural identity. This love and passion as well as the pride for the own territory as well as their products strongly impressed and captivated me. It was and is the people with their heart and soul that inspired and still inspire me.

You work as a copywriter and author, writing is your profession. Is the topic wine an easy or a difficult subject for you?

I translate quite a lot on wine and food topics. This is quite easy for me, because almost everything I know about wine and good food I learned in Italy. My mother tongue is Italian when it comes to wine and not German like with the other subjects.

Well, and in addition I write a lot of advertising texts, because at Wein-Plus I'm mainly responsible for sales and communication to Italy. That's a lot of fun for me, because copywriting and "copy for use" are exactly my thing: for example, daily communication, mailings, instructions for use to seemingly simple answers to customer inquiries. I like to anticipate and answer questions before the customer asks them. When leading customers or in customer service, I don't leave anyone out in the cold. It's so ingrained in me, and I'm always happy to see it work.

Still, the categories of "easy" and "hard" don't quite fit for me. Even if it's a lot of fun for me, and the result looks easy, there's hard work behind it. In the end, I'm not writing about wine directly - others can do that better. I communicate with those who produce wine and sell wine. If I come across an unusual story, I write it down.

You are from Berlin, but you lived in Italy for twelve years. Did this time change your perspective on wine? If so, in what way?

I learned everything about wine in Italy. When I went there in 2002 to work in an advertising agency for location marketing, tourism and food & wine, I also started my sommelier training to get the right background for my job. It was only then that I really found my way to wine - and eventually built my center of life around it. Until today, I prefer to drink Italian wine, above all good and long matured "Metodo Classico" wines. For me, they are the crowning glory of the art of winemaking.

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