From wine cellars to wine competitions: The crisis and reinvention of French sommeliers (from the postwar period to the 1980s)

Confronted in the postwar period with a crisis in the luxury goods market as well as changes to the economic model of wine production, French sommeliers were forced to reinvent themselves. By presenting themselves as the standard bearers of French excellence, characterized by the veneration of wines with a so-called appellation and legitimized by the supremacy of competitive tastings, sommeliers reconstructed their professional identities. They did so in the context of a permanent tension between the necessity to transmit the know-how of the profession and the urge to satisfy the demand for the theatralization and mediatization of the promotion of wines.