For nearly four millennia, courts from Egypt to Versailles kept an officer whose duty was to pour the ruler's wine and taste it first against poison. In France the Grand Échanson ranked among the great officers of the crown, a post held by high nobility. The office died with the courts themselves — the French Revolution abolished it in 1789 — leaving only its ghost in the modern ritual of the sommelier tasting before the guest.
Royal cupbearer (échanson) no longer exists as a living trade. Here is what erased it, and which profession took on the work.
c. 3000 BCE – 476 CE
Cupbearers of the ancient world
From Egypt's labeled royal vintages to the Persian court where Nehemiah served Artaxerxes I, the ancient wine servant was defined by proximity to power: he tasted first, so his ruler could drink safely. Greece formalized connoisseurship at the symposium, where a symposiarch governed dilution and pace, while Roman households delegated their cellars to the cellarius — often an enslaved specialist whose expertise was prized even when his person was property.
What else was happening then
c. 1323 BCE
Vintage labels in Tutankhamun's tomb
The pharaoh's tomb held about two dozen wine jars inscribed with the harvest year, the vineyard estate and the chief vintner's name — effectively the world's oldest wine labels. Administration that precise implies palates that could rank one jar above another, and careers that depended on the ranking.
c. 500 BCE
The Greek symposium sets the rules
At the Greek drinking party, wine was never served neat: it was blended with water in a krater, and an elected symposiarch fixed the dilution and the pace for the whole company. Choosing the wine, judging its strength and controlling the room — the sommelier's job description, twenty-five centuries early.
c. 1268
Paris regulates the wine criers
Étienne Boileau's Livre des métiers, the great codification of Paris guild trades, includes the crieurs de vin — criers who walked the streets with a cup and a jug, pouring samples and shouting the price of a tavern's new barrel. Tasting, salesmanship and regulation were already fused into one licensed trade.
14th century
The word "sommelier" arrives
In French royal and noble households, the sommelier — from sommier, the pack animal, via the officer who drove the baggage train — answered for transporting and safeguarding provisions. Over the following centuries the title narrowed to the servant responsible for the lord's cellar, table linen and wine.
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.
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