The Sommelier Beyond the Title, in a World That No Longer Makes Space for Him

Beyond the Title: Knowledge That Cannot Be Certified

In the global wine market, the question is no longer who is a sommelier, but who truly understands wine. Titles have become portable, certifications printable, and knowledge—at least the appearance of it—easily replicated. Yet wine, by its very nature, resists shortcuts. It exposes imitation. It reveals depth, or the lack of it, over time.

I did not enter the world of wine through tasting grids or standardized aromas. My foundation was built long before I ever spoke seriously about terroir. It began in 2000, within a military structure where discipline, precision, hierarchy, and responsibility were non-negotiable. Hospitality, there, was not performance—it was duty. Service was not about visibility; it was about mastery under pressure.

My training was rigorous and transversal: cuisine, service, nutrition, bar, ceremonial service, logistics, food planning, and human interaction. Hundreds of hours were spent understanding not only what is served, but why, how, when, and to whom. Wine existed there not as an object of intellectual admiration, but as part of a living system: food, timing, people, atmosphere, psychology.

This is where my perspective diverges from much of today’s dominant wine education models. Programs like WSET offer structure, vocabulary, and a shared language—and they have their place. But they often isolate wine from the environments that give it meaning. They rarely address service under real pressure, culinary integration, cultural context, or the psychology of the guest. They teach recognition; they do not necessarily teach interpretation.

Wine, however, is not a fixed truth. It is a conversation.

Years spent in high-level service environments—where heads of state, diplomats, military leaders, and international delegations sat at the same table—taught me something essential: knowledge that cannot adapt, fails. You learn quickly that labels do not impress; coherence does. That harmony is not theoretical. That pairing is not an academic exercise, but an emotional one—built on contrast, similarity, tension, and release.

Later, life led me somewhere deeper. Into vineyards. Into production. Into the slow, uncomfortable realization that what is written on a label is often only a fragment of the truth. That the ink of producers and winemakers never truly dries. That each vintage rewrites the previous one. That copy-paste narratives collapse the moment you walk the vineyard, taste from the barrel, or witness a difficult harvest.

Since 2012, and especially after opening commercial activity in 2020, my understanding of wine has expanded beyond the glass. Agronomy, vinification decisions, market pressure, logistics, pricing, international distribution—these are not footnotes. They are the forces shaping what the world drinks. And they are largely absent from the romanticized image of the modern sommelier.

Today, I observe a paradox across global markets, particularly in Europe: teams in restaurants are smaller, knowledge is thinner, and responsibility is greater—yet compensation and recognition stagnate. Those who know more, who carry broader understanding beyond wine alone, often receive the same as those who merely repeat descriptors. Meanwhile, restaurant viability weakens, margins tighten, and certifications become currency rather than competence.

So I ask a question that makes people uncomfortable:Who certifies real knowledge?

Not the ability to recite aromas. Not the memorization of regions. Real knowledge lives in synthesis—in the ability to connect wine with food, culture, economics, agriculture, service, and human behavior. It lives in understanding why certain narratives are promoted, why certain wines are discounted by 70%, and why others quietly disappear along with the vineyards that produced them.

Global wine consumption is declining. Old vines are being uprooted. Yet poor-quality wine continues to flood the market, supported by volume-driven business models that reward quantity over meaning. Once, bulk wine was collected from villages in tank trucks. Today, it comes from vast, mechanized vineyards designed for efficiency, not expression. The liter is cheaper than the grapes themselves in many historic regions.

And still, vineyards are being torn out.

This is not coincidence. It is consequence.

If every wine were vinified, interpreted, and valued with the same respect given to serious, traditional, low-intervention wines—there would not be enough vineyard land to sustain demand. Instead, we destroy complexity to feed discounts. We simplify culture to accelerate turnover.

So perhaps the future of wine does not belong to sommeliers as a title, nor to certifications as proof. Perhaps it belongs to those who accept that the book of wine gains pages every day—and choose to keep reading, walking, tasting, questioning.

Because wine does not reward certainty.It rewards humility, memory, and depth.

And that kind of knowledge has never fit neatly on a certificate.

In Portugal, this reality takes a more severe and uncomfortable form. Beyond the well-known crisis of the restaurant industry, there is a quieter one—less discussed, yet deeply structural: the disappearance of the sommelier as a profession.

Sommeliers are no longer being replaced. In many restaurants, the role has been diluted, absorbed, or simply erased. One person does the wine list, serves tables, manages suppliers, handles the floor, and closes the cash register. Wine knowledge becomes optional, secondary, sometimes decorative. The position that once required dedication, study, and responsibility is now seen as a luxury rather than a necessity.

This creates a paradox: never has there been so much information about wine, and never has there been so little space for those who truly dedicate their lives to understanding it. Many sommeliers leave the profession not because they lack passion or competence, but because the structure no longer allows them to exist with dignity.

The market asks for more sales, faster turnover, higher margins—yet offers less time, fewer resources, and little recognition. Certifications remain, titles remain, but the role itself erodes. What is disappearing is not the word sommelier, but its function.

When restaurants struggle to survive, wine becomes inventory, not culture. Lists shrink. Risk disappears. Dialogue with producers fades. The sommelier, once a bridge between vineyard, kitchen, and guest, is reduced to a cost line—or removed entirely.

And yet, this disappearance has consequences. Without sommeliers, wine loses context. Without context, it becomes interchangeable. Without interpretation, it becomes just another product competing on price. This accelerates exactly what we now witness: the dominance of discounts, the pressure for volume, and the slow destruction of serious, traditional viticulture.

If the sommelier truly disappears, it will not be because wine no longer matters—but because the system chose efficiency over meaning.

Text: www.miguelvianavinhos.com 26.02.2026