Sommeliers have a longstanding history that reaches back hundreds, if not thousands of years, when kings and popes required an advisor for choosing wines for their cellars and matching wines to the meals served daily and on their feasts.

The best well-known sommelier in the history is Santa Lancerio, the mid-16th century wine chamber supervisor of Pope Paul lll. Not only did Santa Lancerio match beverages with the Pope’s menu, he was also the first one to devise and write down a wine glossary, defining the way we talk about wine, describing flavours, aroma and visual properties of wine up until this day. In essence, it is not the wine maker or the label maker or the salesperson that has shaped our language of wine, but the sommelier himself.

In our modern day just knowing the wine is not enough; the sommelier fulfils multiple significant tasks, the most important of them being the supervision of the restaurant owner’s business direction and development. No other restaurant industry worker has equally big opportunities to develop a restaurant like the sommelier does – he can increase turnover, increase profits, as well as improve the general satisfaction of the restaurant guests and provide them with an unforgettable dining experience. Generally speaking, the creation of the wine list is the most basic task; the sommelier creates the wine list in collaboration with the chef, striving to emphasize the characteristics of the food that the chef has so masterfully created in his kitchen. In addition to creating the wine list, the sommelier teaches, trains and manages the restaurant service personnel. Last but not least, he does the most important task in the restaurant – he sells the wine to the guests in a way that ensures that the guests are thoroughly satisfied not only with the quality and the price of the wine, but with the prestige of the wine and its compatibility with kitchen’s masterpieces as well.

Although historically sommeliers were youths that were not apt for kitchen work, nowadays the situation has turned around; the majority of sommeliers are highly educated, knowledgeable, stylish and capable of charming not only the guests, but also the wine that they know so well.