Medieval Paris licensed criers who walked the streets each morning with a jug and cup, pouring passers-by samples of whichever tavern's barrel had just been broached and shouting its price — a trade codified in Étienne Boileau's Livre des métiers around 1268. Printed announcements, bottled wine and fixed shopfronts slowly erased the job; the sommelier inherited its tasting cup and its salesmanship.
Wine crier (crieur de vin) 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
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.
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 →