What it means
A sommelier is a wine professional responsible for wine service in a restaurant: building the list against the menu and the price positioning, managing the cellar, advising guests on selections, running the pairing service across a tasting menu, and increasingly designing the beverage programme that sits alongside - sake, spirits, beer, non-alcoholic offerings. The role originated in 19th-century French restaurant culture, where sommelier denoted a specific floor position distinguished from the chef de cave (cellar master) and the broader brigade de service.
How it is used
The contemporary trade meaning is anchored by three professional bodies. The Court of Master Sommeliers, founded in London in 1977, runs the four-stage exam track (Introductory, Certified, Advanced, Master) that is the standing credential for working sommeliers. The Institute of Masters of Wine, founded in 1953, awards the MW - the most prestigious wine credential globally, though aimed more broadly at the wine trade than restaurant floor work specifically. The Wine and Spirit Education Trust, founded in 1969, provides the entry-level and intermediate qualifications most working sommeliers carry before attempting CMS or MW exams.
The marketing distortion is similar in shape to the concierge case: "house sommelier" is a phrase restaurants apply freely to staff whose training is whatever the owner could afford to provide. The mismatch is structural - what the title promises is a curated wine programme and the floor skill to deliver it, neither of which a wine-attentive waiter can substitute for. The Lexicon's reading: the title carries weight where a certified individual is behind it; absent that, the word is doing work the role is not staffed to do.
What it is not
A sommelier is not a wine waiter, whose job is to serve wine guests have already chosen. Nor is a sommelier the same as a cellar master, who manages the wine inventory and storage without floor service responsibility. The beverage director title, used by some restaurant groups, sits above the sommelier role in scope - covering the wine, spirits, and non-alcoholic programmes across multiple properties - and is a management title rather than a floor title; the sommelier is the floor person who delivers what the beverage director plans.