Atlas/About the author
About the author
Portrait of the author.
Nikita Khudov, DipWSET
Wine expert · AI practitioner · Founder of the W4U wine club
Vinum ex Machina is deliberately a one-person publication: editorial voice, benchmark methodology and technical infrastructure all sit under a single hand, which keeps the perspective coherent as the corpus grows. The work sits at the intersection of wine and applied artificial intelligence, and it is written from both sides of it.
Wine
Credentials
- WSET — Level 4 Diploma in Wines (DipWSET)
- WSET — Level 2 Award in Beer, Level 1 Award in Sake
- Italian Wine Scholar
- Chianti Classico Expert
Competitions
- Semi-finalist, top 30 — Moscow Sommelier Cup
- Participant — Russian Sommelier Competition
Practice & Research
- 500+ wine events hosted
- 3,000+ wines tasted
- Articles and research notes on wine
AI and work
Previous roles
- AI Alliance Russia — Deputy CEO
- Sber — Executive Director, AI Transformation Centre
- Bain & Company — Senior Associate Consultant
Expert contribution
- Agency for Strategic Initiatives — Expert Council member
- Skolkovo — startup mentor
- HSE ICEF Summer School — visiting lecturer
Education
- IE HST — MSc in Business Analytics and Big Data, 2018
- IE Business School — MSc in Management, 2018
- HSE ICEF — BSc in Economics, 2016
- UoL LSE — BSc in Banking & Finance, 2016
Collaborators are welcome, and the atlas needs them. Its two datasets were compiled by one person reading published sources, which is a real limit: the Casebook records what a source will confirm, not what a cellar knows, and OenoBench measures what a benchmark can ask. The work that would improve both comes from people who hold the operational record — estates, cooperatives, laboratories, vendors, importers and research groups.
Specifically: a case the Casebook has missed or has got wrong; operational data behind a deployment, in whatever form it exists; a question set or a review of one for OenoBench; a joint study; a translation check; or a correction to anything published here, which is always the most useful message to receive. Russian and English both work.
nikitahudov@gmail.com — or, for a case, the submission form at the foot of the register, which puts it in the same review queue.