Leonid began his meteoric wine career in March 2013 by receiving a job offer to run a vine growing and winemaking start-up, Cote Rocheuse JSC, in the south of Russia, in the town of Anapa, Krasnodar Region.

A beautiful, quality-oriented vineyard of 32 hectares was planted from scratch, right on the Black Sea coast.

In 2014, having developed a thirst for wine knowledge, Leonid committed to taking wine qualifications. He went to France to study at the World Sommelier Academy of Bordeaux (WorldSom). He successfully passed all six final exams, qualified as a Magister Sommelier (so far, the only one from Russia) and became Commandeurs d’Honneur of the Commanderie du Bontemps de Médoc, des Graves, de Sauternes et de Barsac.

After that, he continued his wine journey with the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET). In 2015, he successfully completed WSET Level 2 and Level 3 at the Bordeaux Wine Campus.

Leonid didn’t rest on his laurels, enrolling for the WSET Diploma International Programme (Rust, Vienna, Florence) at the Austrian Wine Academy (Weinakademie Osterreich) in Rust, Austria in May 2016. Studying hard, he managed to complete the program strikingly fast. It took him one year, three months to cover all seven Units, pass all exams at the first attempt and to receive prestigious DipWSET and Weinakademiker qualifications.

According to the director of the Austrian Wine Academy Dr. Josef Schuller MW, nobody has ever completed the WSET Diploma/Weinakademiker programme in a foreign language in such a short space of time.

The subject of his thesis at the Austrian Wine Academy was “Brettanomyces in Wine, a Fault or Not?”, which he defended with distinction.

In 2018, Leonid founded and organised the first independent competition of Russian wines – the Russian Wines Competition.

In September 2018, Leonid was accepted into the Master of Wine study programme at the Institute of Masters of Wine (United Kingdom). In June 2019, he passed his first exam at the first attempt (Stage 1 Assessment), which no Russian had previously succeeded in doing, and progressed to the second stage of the programme (Stage 2).

Leonid has also judged in international wine competitions. He has been a panel member in 5StarWines (Italy), the Russian Wines Competition (Russia) and VinAgora (Hungary).

In May 2019, Leonid was a judge at the world’s largest and most influential wine competition - the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) (United Kingdom).

In November 2019, Leonid won the prestigious, new international WSET/IWSC “Future 50”award. The Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) and International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC) have joined forces to celebrate their 50th anniversaries by launching “The Future 50”, an initiative to recognise the next generation of top wine, spirit and sake professionals. Leonid was chosen from more than 600 global nominations, the only one from Russia.

He is currently Executive Director of Cote Rocheuse JSC and is steadfastly developing the company whilst continuing his wine education.