A Life and Art in Progress

Carolina Muñoz is a traveller, an artist, and a winemaker. She has lived in many countries, experienced many cultures, and applied her creativity to many disciplines. From photography to singing, her artistic inclinations have taken her around the world, but it wasn’t until she found her place in Portugal that she found her true passion in the wine industry. 

Let’s join Carolina as she shares her stories of adjusting to a new life and language, her creative pursuits, and her job as she helps people around the globe to enjoy and experience the perfect bottle of wine.

What you will learn from this episode:

• Gain knowledge of the various tastes and flavours of wines to help clients in selecting the best one for their taste and food combinations.
• Uncover immersive techniques to pick up a new language quickly and how to adjust to day-to-day life in a foreign country.
• Find out how art and winemaking intertwine and unleash that creativity within.
• Learn about courses that broaden your understanding of wine.

Carolina Muñoz Ospina was born in Colombia in a city called Medellín, where she grew up in a family surrounded by art.

Her father sings and her mom used to do everything while listening to music. She spent her childhood singing with her sister and cousins on her mother’s side and also dabbles in drawing.

She also focused on photography, then worked as a professor of arts and photography performing some photography exhibitions and some other art-related activities for a while. 

She married a brilliant engineer who turned out to be extremely passionate about the arts and especially music as well, which is why they had an instant connection after their meeting.

In 2014 they lived for 4 years in Brazil for her husband’s doctorate where their first son was also born. After that, they returned to Colombia where their second child was born. 

In 2019, while on a trip through Europe, they fell in love with Portugal, and found a way to move to Portugal at the end of 2020. The cultural shock was immediate but led to interesting discoveries including how important wine is in the social fabric of this country.

Carolina always loved wine, but the only access she had were wines from Chile and Argentina. Since Colombia is not a wine producer, her knowledge about wines was non-existent and possibilities of changing that were very remote.

Portugal presented her with a plethora of wine choices beyond what she could have imagined, so she delved deeper into this world of wine and pursued a course of study. She studied wine tourism and wine marketing, where she learned more than 200 types of grapes, various methods of winemaking, and all the different terroir.

It made her realize that good wine is like a good work of art… lots of variables perfectly combined to make a masterpiece. It was the connection between her two passions.

Now, she lives in a wine-producing region of Portugal (Alentejo) with a very long history of winemaking, learning every day, getting to know many different people from different backgrounds, and sharing a little of her passion and the little knowledge she has acquired.

Connect with Carolina Muñoz:

• Email: carolartphotography@gmail.com 
• Web site (of photography): https://carol-art-photography.webnode.pt/ 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enwineme/
• https://www.instagram.com/carolartphotography/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile
  

Topics Covered:

02:13 – Residing in a place deeply rooted in a history of war and wine

03:46 – What brought Carolina to Portugal

07:51 – Studying and learning wine tourism and wine marketing

09:46 – Being fluent in three languages, including English, Spanish, and Portuguese [how she got to learn English and Portuguese]

15:17 – Gifted with a beautiful, mesmerizing singing voice that could pass for opera

16:01 – Living and breathing art: comparing winemaking to art

18:38 – Learning the skill of knowing the taste and flavour of each variety of wines

23:00 – Explaining her role in the customers’ wine-buying journey

24:42 – Food choices to go best with full-bodied red wines 

27:43 – What it was like relocating from one country to another

29:31 – Capturing stunning images with her photography skills

Quotes from Carolina Muñoz:

“I was born in Colombia in Medellin.”

“We fell in love, crazy in love with Portugal.”

“We found a very beautiful place, full of stories, full of history, full of beaches, full of castles that we don’t have in Colombia.”

 “I always loved wine, but Colombia doesn’t have wine.  We don’t have seasons.”

“The access that I have to wine is very limited.”

“I study wine tourism and wine marketing.”

“It’s a very nice job because I like to meet people from around the world.”

“The only logical way is to get involved and get used to the sound of the language.”

“The first thing I did is to watch every news that you have at hand because they have a very neutral accent.”

“The way the Portuguese people pronounce the same words from Brazil is completely different.”

“Winemaking is some kind of art. You come up with some ingredients, some stuff, and you put it together in a magic formula to come up with something amazing.”

“Each experience makes you adapt to the new culture, the new people, the new language, and is a process of creativity.”

“You have  to modify yourself, then you become an art piece.”

“The art is always going to be in my life.”

“It’s more like a thing, the connection with the other, something more social.”

“I just capture moments and I collect them.”