Paris chartered sworn wine broker-tasters — courtiers-gourmets-piqueurs — in 1322 to taste every barrel arriving at the city's ports, certify its soundness and broker its sale, with a legal monopoly on the trade. The Revolution's abolition of guild monopolies in 1791 ended the office's power, though a ceremonial confraternity of the name survives in Paris to this day as one of France's oldest corporations.
Courtier-gourmet-piqueur de vins no longer exists as a living trade. Here is what erased it, and which profession took on the work.
476 – 1700
The household office
Medieval Europe split wine service into offices: the échanson poured for kings — France's Grand Échanson was a great officer of the crown — while the sommelier ran provisions in noble households and monasteries kept the era's best cellars. The most famous cellarer, Dom Pierre Pérignon at the Abbey of Hautvillers from 1668 to 1715, spent five decades perfecting the blending of grapes from many villages into one wine, a doctrine of assemblage that still governs Champagne.
What else was happening then
1782
The restaurant is invented, and hires a cellar
Antoine Beauvilliers opened La Grande Taverne de Londres in Paris, widely counted as the first grand restaurant, with a cellar to match its kitchen. After 1789, cooks and cellar-men of dispersed noble households poured into the new restaurant trade — turning the court sommelier into a public one anyone could hire by the bottle.
Where that work lives now
From cupbearers who tasted a king's wine to blind-tasting floor professionals: how the sommelier turned pouring into one of hospitality's most exacting crafts.
🍷 Sommelier →