The Gift of Following Your Passions
What started as a chance encounter with El Camino CEO and Founder turned into a leap of faith journey for Kim, who quit her job to start her own business and uncovered her true mission while on an El Camino trip to Morocco.
By Katherine Harrison, El Camino Travel contributor.
When sommelier, wine educator, and owner of Together with Wine, Kim Kachmar, set out on her first El Camino trip to Morocco in May of 2022, her intention was simply to give herself a nice vacation. “I had always wanted to go on an El Camino trip. I had been following the company for years, so I decided to finally make it happen and give myself this gift—especially because I had recently changed careers and started my own business. I was doing something that felt so right for me, and I knew that needed to be celebrated.” What she didn’t expect was the magic that happens when El Camino brings together people, places, and experiences. Kim left the trip deeply inspired and enlightened on how she wanted to continue to develop her small business’s brand.
Kim’s serendipitous journey with El Camino started long before that, though. In 2018 she had a chance encounter with El Camino’s Founder and CEO, Katalina Mayorga at a recording of the Women Who Travel podcast. After talking with Katalina, not only did Kim’s interest in taking a trip with El Camino grow, but so did her interest in starting her own business.
“When I first met Katalina, I was working as an interior designer and strategist at a big architecture firm. Around that time, I was beginning to realize that job wasn’t what I wanted to do forever.” Looking around at work, Kim knew she didn’t want the jobs of any of the people higher up the ladder than her. While talking to Katalina, something clicked. “I was so inspired and in awe of Katalina because she was going out and doing her own thing. I was really drawn to her and other business owners that I met.”
Not only did Katalina’s entrepreneurial spirit resonate with Kim, but so did the El Camino mission. “I remember Katalina telling me about her business and thinking the trips she plans must be amazing. So, I followed El Camino for a while and sent their account to my friend who has the same travel mindset as me.” By the time Kim left the podcast recording, two seeds had been planted—a seed of wanting to start a business and a seed of wanting to take an El Camino trip.
Fast forward a year to 2019, Kim started a part-time job at Calvert Woodley, a family-owned wine shop in DC. When letting Kim know that she got the job, the owners, in an act of foreshadowing, said “you should just work here full-time.” Thinking back on this now, Kim suggests, “Whenever you have those moments where things serendipitously happen, you have to just follow them.”
When the pandemic started, she lost her previous job at the big architecture firm, and decided to join the wine shop full-time, as the Calvert Woodley owners had originally hoped. Kim thrived in her new role and was inspired to take professional courses to become a sommelier. “I think that losing my job at the architecture firm was supposed to happen,” she reflects. “When they did eventually offer me the job back, I turned it down. I spent all of 2019 diving more into wine, which was something I had always been passionate about.”
With ample wine industry experience and multiple certificates under her belt, Kim decided to take another leap of faith. In late 2021, she quit her job, booked El Camino’s Morocco trip with her friend, moved to San Diego, and started her own business—the seeds that were first planted in conversations with Katalina three years prior had taken root.
“I have two sides of my business, Together with Wine—the media side where I’m helping businesses connect with their customers, and then where my passion deeply lies and why I started the company, is the education side.” Having taken all the professional wine courses, Kim saw that there was a barrier to entry into the wine industry. “The professional courses are really academic and serious. They serve a purpose—they get people ready to work in stores, restaurants, and wineries, but they’re very much designed for professionals.”
Cutting out all the stuffiness, Kim aims to provide everyday wine drinkers with the knowledge they need when standing in an aisle of a wine shop. “One of the things that set my beliefs apart from traditional wine education is that having knowledge about something is useless unless you’re confident enough to use it. A big piece of the wine education I offer, including online courses and mini-courses and exercises, are confidence-building moments.” For example, Kim will challenge clients to go to a wine shop to say exactly what it is that they want out of a wine. “Of course, before that, you will learn how to taste, build your scent vocabulary, discover your own palette, and more.”
For more information about Kim’s unique approach to wine education, check out The Somm Journal article, “Confidence is Key: Tailoring Education to Empower the Industry” as well as the Together with Wine site.
With her business underway, Kim set out to Morocco in May of 2022. “My friend and I are both designers, so we were drawn to the Morocco trip because of its focus on artisans. I’m really inspired by the Moroccan textiles, colors, and how they use symbols,” Kim remembers. “I was also excited to explore a culture that is so completely different from the Western culture that I’m used to.”
Moroccan wine was also on Kim’s radar. “I was excited to potentially discover some Moroccan wine,” Kim recalls. On the first night, the trip kick-started with wine on a rooftop at sunset, and Kim felt like she was exactly where she was meant to be.
As a designer, Kim loved the stunning riad where the group stayed. “Outside the building it was loud, but inside you’re in a little oasis. I loved the architecture, the colors, the tiles—it was eye candy everywhere.” She also loved the once-in-a-lifetime experiences, like riding a camel to dinner.
Another highlight of the trip for Kim was her group of fellow travelers. “El Camino attracts people who are very open and willing to do new experiences and try new things. When I see group trips with a leader with a little flag, I worry that people are traveling that way because they want to feel comfortable the whole time. Yes, we had the comfort of the beautiful hotels but we were also having these really unique experiences like staying in a 16th-century kasbah. El Camino does a great job attracting the kind of community that I’m so excited to be a part of,” Kim reflects.
Of course, the opportunity to learn more about Moroccan wine was a highlight of her trip. “One of the biggest things I realized was that, even though there is so much wine in the world to try, there are not that many opportunities to try wines that are so different and from different places than you would expect. If you live on the East Coast, there are tons of European wines, and if you live on the West Coast, there are mostly Californian wines.”
“When I was sharing about the Moroccan wine and that the land near the Atlas Mountains is cool enough to grow grapes, people were so interested and surprised. When most people think about Morocco, they’re not thinking about wine.”
During her trip, Kim realized that she has an opportunity to help people see that wine truly can be for anyone and grow anywhere. There are so many different grapes to try, and we shouldn’t just stick with what we know—much like traveling.
“When I was in Morocco, I was starting to see a clearer mission for my business. I was surrounded by women who took themselves on this incredible trip. The shared sentiment was ‘this is something I’m doing for myself.’” By the beginning of 2023, Kim solidified her business’s new mission statement. “My mission is to empower everyday wine lovers with the knowledge and confidence to drink for themselves.”
This idea translates to everyday life too. “I have a belief that you can’t wait for other people to do something in your own life. You can’t think, ‘I’ll travel if my friend travels,’” Kim advises. “I’m doing what I do now because I followed my interests in wine. Allowing yourself to explore and giving yourself the gift to explore your interests is so important.”
“Ultimately, the Morocco trip reminded me that travel is so important for expanding our horizons, and exploring wine is similarly about trying something new and learning about the culture,” Kim concludes. “It reminded me to keep getting out, seeing new things, and going to new places. It’s easy to stay where you are, but it is so important to explore. Doing something new and different will help you see the things you really care about.”
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