The capital’s wine restaurant Wine Love has reopened its doors to visitors at 100 Velyka Vasylkivska Street. After a long pause, the restaurant was reopened, preserving the concept of a wine neo-restaurant with modern European cuisine, a selected wine list and an atmosphere that loses the sense of time.
Since the beginning of the full-scale war, the restaurant’s kitchen has been working as a volunteer center and preparing about 1000 meals a day for the Ukrainian military. Currently, the Wine Love team has equipped a separate kitchen at another location. This allowed not only to preserve the food for the defenders, but also to resume the full-fledged work of the restaurant for guests.
The period of volunteer work had a transformative effect on the team’s vision of what the establishment should look like in the new realities. As a result, the owners decided to abandon excessive redundancy and focus on the main thing – the gastronomic richness of flavors. The renovated restaurant is based on a seasonal menu, dishes made from local products, niche wine, which is often presented in Ukraine in limited quantities. It also has an atmospheric vintage interior.
“War is a period of transformation, both national and personal. Every day we become more sensitive to our desires and aspirations. We start to appreciate the simple joys of life. My team and I also felt that we wanted Wine Love to be perceived differently by our guests – not just as a place for special events. We will offer more simple, “understandable” food and interesting drinks. We will also do our best to ensure that our guests enjoy enogastronomic pleasure, feel the value of the moment from sincere communication with each other, and lose the sense of time. We want Wine Love to be the first place that comes to mind when you want to taste wine with gastronomic accompaniment,” comment on the opening the co-founders of the neo-restaurant Volodymyr Zadiraka and Serhiy Shkarban.
The menu was created by chef Kateryna Tkachuk. It includes dishes made mainly from Ukrainian products that combine European recipes, modern techniques and the author’s vision. According to Kateryna, she deliberately refused to use complicated technological processes and ingredients that artificially enhance the taste of the dishes. She preferred the simplicity of taste, expressiveness and clarity of the products.
As a result, the restaurant offers improved bestsellers such as chicken pate, artichoke paste, and cheese mousse. The selection of bytes and antipasti has also increased. Among the main dishes, the Wine Love team offers fish, meat and vegetable dishes, as well as desserts.
The wine list combines traditions and experiments. It is based on natural and low-intervention wines, which are often presented in Ukraine in limited quantities. According to the co-owners, the wine list includes only those items that impressed the entire team during the tasting.
In addition to wine, visitors will also be offered cocktails from the restaurant’s chef-bartender Nazar Kachala. The cocktail menu consists of two sections. The first one includes classic drinks in a modern interpretation. Such as French 75, Old Fashioned and Penicilin. The second section is filled with exclusively author’s cocktails with the addition of original ingredients. Thus, guests will be surprised with drinks with the addition of ginger beer of our own production, celery bitters and various spices.
The interior has also been updated. The large-scale flower arrangement on the ceiling was replaced with mystical tree branches and stylized poppies with origami elements. The décor is planned to be updated every season. At the moment, the location is decorated with pine needles and New Year’s decorations.
In addition, the Wine Love team will delight guests with the atmosphere of a crowded bar in the old center of a European city. Tight seating, antiques, a 19th-century spiral staircase, and a secret warehouse room for small companies that need more intimacy. The restaurant will also continue to host wine tastings and chef’s dinners. In particular, to influence the formation of the modern wine and gastronomic culture of Ukraine.
Serhiy Shkarban, Wine Love, Володимир Задірака, Катерина Ткачук
Ukrtransgaz plans to invest UAH 998.277 million in the development of natural gas storage facilities in 2024 in accordance with the gas storage development plan for 2024-2033 approved by the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission (NEURC) at a meeting on Tuesday.
“We are moving towards 100% fulfillment of investment programs in general,” said Roman Malyutin, Ukrtransgaz CEO, at the meeting.
According to him, the approved plan provides for the reconstruction and construction of fixed assets of technological processes in the gas storage system, the development of critical infrastructure security facilities, including cybersecurity, and information technology.
According to the document, the company intends to invest UAH 472.355 million this year in the operation of gas storage facilities, UAH 415.988 million in the development of underground gas storage facilities, UAH 66.442 million in the modernization and purchase of vehicles, special machines and mechanisms, UAH 27.413 million in the purchase of diagnostic and inspection equipment and other devices, and UAH 16.079 million in industrial and administrative buildings.
In total, Ukrtransgaz’s gas storage development plan for 2024-2033 envisages an investment of UAH 14 billion 534.148 million.
In 2023, Astarta Agro Holding, the largest sugar producer in Ukraine, paid UAH 2.31 billion in taxes and fees to the budgets of all levels, up 42% compared to 2022, the company’s press service reported on Facebook.
According to the report, over UAH 1.31 billion of this amount went to local budgets of territorial communities in Poltava, Khmelnytsky, Vinnytsia, Ternopil, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv regions of Ukraine.
“In terms of the entire team of the agro-industrial holding in 2023, Astarta paid UAH 343 thousand of taxes per employee. In total, during the full-scale war alone, our company transferred over UAH 3.84 billion to the budgets of all levels. This is our contribution to strengthening the country’s defense capability, increasing the economic resilience of local communities, enhancing social responsibility and transparency of Ukrainian business,” said Viktor Ivanchuk, founder and CEO of the agricultural holding.
In addition, Astarta, together with its Ukrainian and international partners, also continues to implement social initiatives as part of the Common Help Ukraine humanitarian project. As of today, the financial value of charitable contributions and humanitarian aid provided by the project already exceeds UAH 1.062 billion.
“Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding company operating in eight regions of Ukraine. It comprises six sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of 220 thousand hectares and dairy farms with 22 thousand cattle, an oil extraction plant in Globyno (Poltava region), seven elevators and a biogas complex.
In the third quarter of 2023, the agricultural holding earned EUR1.24 million in net profit, down 27.7 times compared to the same period in 2022. Astarta’s revenue decreased by 14.4% to EUR104.75 million, gross profit by 2.7 times to EUR26.96 million, operating profit by 7.6 times to EUR6.79 million, and EBITDA by 42.7% to EUR97.25 million.
Due to significantly better performance in the first half of this year compared to the first half of last year, in the first nine months of 2023, net profit decreased by 9.8% to EUR 55.97 million, while revenue increased by 14.8% to EUR 392.00 million. The company’s gross profit increased by 3.0% to EUR 151.91 million, while operating profit decreased by 15.9% to EUR 79.91 million and EBITDA by 10.8% to EUR 116.63 million.
In 2023, ARX Insurance Company (ARX Kyiv) made insurance payments in the amount of UAH 1.384 billion, which is 33.07% more than a year earlier.
According to the company’s Facebook page, in December 2023, the company paid UAH 131.025 million to its clients, including UAH 67.632 million in voluntary motor hull insurance, UAH 14.456 million in compulsory motor third-party liability insurance, UAH 36.196 million in voluntary health insurance, and UAH 2.963 million in Green Card insurance.
As reported, ARX Insurance Company has been operating in the insurance market for 26 years. It is part of the international insurance holding Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (Canada).
OLX Ukraine shared analytics from the platform on which goods and services were most in demand among Ukrainians in 2023.
The top 10* products that were most in demand among Ukrainians in 2023 and the number of responses to them:
mobile phones (more than 14 million responses to ads from users)
children’s clothing and footwear (9.8 million responses to ads),
household goods in the category “Garden and vegetable garden” (4.6 million responses to ads)
power tools (3.5 million responses to ads),
books and magazines (3.3 million responses to ads),
food and beverages (3.1 million responses to ads),
collectibles in the Antiques category (1.9 million responses to ads),
farm animals (1.9 million responses to ads),
sneakers (1.6 million responses to ads),
dishes and kitchen utensils (over 1 million responses to ads).
In the Business for Services category, the most popular ads on the platform in 2023 were: auto and motorcycle services (3.3 million responses to ads), construction and repair (4 million responses to ads), manicure and massage services from the Health and Beauty category (2.4 million responses), transportation and special equipment services (1.7 million responses), and equipment repair and maintenance services (1.3 million responses).
*The selection contains a list of products that received the most reviews on OLX in January-December 2023.
According to the opendatabot portal, in October 2023, entrepreneur Andriy Matyukha signed an agreement to purchase the VODA UA trademark. According to the agreement, all rights to the VODA UA trademark were transferred from the previous owner, Dmytro Nikiforov, to Andriy Matyukha.
In his commentary, the entrepreneur expressed his intention to develop business in Ukraine, create new jobs and support Ukrainian brands. Mr. Matyukha emphasized his readiness to invest in the country’s economy now, despite the current challenges.
VODA UA and VODA UA Carpathian Spring Highland are brands of table and medicinal waters obtained from various mountain water intakes and springs in the cleanest regions of the Carpathians. VODA UA waters are characterized by an optimal pH level of 7.4-7.6 and the absence of any physical or chemical influence, which makes them perfect by nature.
The amount of the deal remains undisclosed.
In April 2023, owner and founder Dmytro Nikiforov announced in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine that he would invest $600,000 in the production of a drink made from kombucha tea mushrooms.
Voda UA is a group of companies engaged in the extraction of Carpathian highland waters under the trademarks Voda UA, Goryanka, and Carpathian Spring Highland.
Andriy Matyukha is the founder of FAVBET betting company.
