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Wine Professions

Traditionally, a cooper is someone who makes wooden staved vessels of a conical form, of greater length than breadth, bound together with hoops and possessing flat ends or heads. Examples of a cooper's work include but are not limited to casks, barrels, buckets, tubs, butterchurns, hogsheads, firkins, tierces, rundlets, puncheons, pipes, tuns, butts, pins, and breakers. The word is derived from Middle Dutch kupe, "basket, tub" and may ultimately stem from cupa, the Latin word for vat [1][2]. Everything a cooper produces is referred to collectively as cooperage. "Cask" is a generic term used to describe any piece of cooperage containing a bouge, bilge, or bulge in the middle of the container. A barrel is technically a measure of the size of a cask, so the term "barrel-maker" cannot be used synonymously with "cooper." The facility in which casks are made is also referred to as a cooperage.

Négociants buy everything from grapes to grape must (pressed grapes that have not yet started to ferment) to wines in various states of completion. In the case of grapes or must, the négociant performs virtually all the winemaking. If it buys already fermented wine in barrels or 'en-vrac' - basically in bulk containers, it may age the wine further, blend in other wines or simply bottle and sell it as is. The result is sold under the name of the négociant, not the name of the original grape or wine producer.

Some négociants have a recognizable house style. For example, Georges Duboeuf was notorious for using yeast that produced a pronounced banana aroma.

Négociants were the dominant force in the wine trade until the last 25 years for various reasons:

• Historically the owners of vineyards and producers of wine had no direct access to buyers.
• It was too expensive for growers to purchase the wine presses and bottling lines necessary to produce a finished wine.
• Owning only a small portion of a particular high-quality single vineyard (lieu-dit) meant that a grower often had insufficient wine from a parcel to vinify on its own. Under French inheritance laws, vineyard holdings were often split until offspring owned no more than a single row of grapes, not enough to fill a barrel. Since prices for a premier cru are typically higher than for wines from a larger area like a village or region, the grower could make more money selling off the production as the premier cru rather than blending it into a less specific appellation.

Many négociants are also vineyard owners in their own right. In Burgundy for instance, négociants are the largest owners of vineyards. Well-known examples in Burgundy are Louis Jadot and Vincent Girardin, in Beaujolais Georges Duboeuf and Guigal and Jaboulet in the Rhône.

In the U.S., the term is rarely used. A company that buys grapes and ferments wine is simply a winery and those companies that purchase and blend bulk wines are often licensed as wholesalers and may own the brand name, but use a winery to perform the blending and bottling services. Wineries may produce wine for their own brands or can make wine for other brand owners (either other wineries or wholesalers). It is often difficult to tell exactly which company or winery made the wine. The very specific language, "Produced and bottled by" on the label does mean the winery bottling the wine fermented the wine, but any winery in the U.S. may add a trade name belonging to someone else to its permit to make and bottle wine for that other company or brand owner. An estate bottled wine is grown, fermented, and bottled by a winery that grew the grapes, fermented the wine, and bottled entirely within the appellation where the grapes were grown. Phrases such as "cellared and bottled by" or "vinted and bottled by" means that the bottling winery did not ferment or produce the wine, but bottled it. It may have also blended the wine with several other wines, as négociants do in Europe.

A sommelier (pronounced /s?m?'lje/ or suh-mal-'yAy), or wine steward, is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, commonly working in fine restaurants, who specializes in all facets of wine service. The role is more specialised and informed than that of a wine waiter.

Their principal work is in the area of wine procurement, storage, and wine cellar rotation. They are also responsible for the development of wine lists and are responsible overall for the delivery of wine service and training for the other restaurant staff. Working along with the culinary team, they pair and suggest wines that will best complement each particular food menu item. It could be argued that the role of a sommelier in fine dining today is strategically on par with that of the executive chef or chef de cuisine. A professional sommelier also works on the floor of the restaurant and is in direct contact with restaurant patrons. The sommelier has an ethical duty to work within the taste preference and budget parameters of the patron.

The International Sommelier Guild is the only Board of Education licensed provider of sommelier training and certification in North America. The ISG delivers courses in more than 20 US states and 6 Canadian provinces. The Court of Master Sommeliers certifies professional sommeliers and only a tiny fraction of the finest professional sommeliers achieve the title of Master Sommelier, a title similar to Master of Wine.

In the USA, certification bodies such as the Wines and Spirit Education Trust and educational bodies such as the train sommeliers but do not issue a sommelier-specific certification.

A winemaker is a person engaged in the occupation of making wine. They are generally employed by wineries or wine companies, where their work includes;

• Cooperating with viticulturists
• Monitoring the maturity of grapes to ensure their quality and to determine the correct time for harvest
• Crushing and pressing grapes
• Monitoring the settling of juice and the fermentation of grape material
• Filtering the wine to remove remaining solids
• Testing the quality of wine by tasting
• Placing filtered wine in casks or tanks for storage and maturation
• Preparing plans for bottling wine once it has matured
• Making sure that quality is maintained when the wine is bottled

Today, these duties require an increasing amount of scientific knowledge, since laboratory tests are gradually supplementing or replacing traditional methods. Hence the vast majority of winemakers have, or are studying for, a Bachelor of Science degree (or similar) majoring in oenology. Winemakers can also be referred to as oenologists as they study oenology - the science of wine.

Winemaking practices change over time, largely as a result of increasing scientific knowledge about the biochemical processes involved. They sometimes change in response to legislation.

Winemaking can also change as a result of evolving tastes and market demands. In recent decades wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr.'s taste and judgments have greatly influenced wine markets. A high score from Parker can dramatically increase the price of a wine whereas a low score can make it difficult to sell the low-scoring wine.

Parker's tastes in wine have encouraged many winemakers to utilize such practices as cool fermentation, adding dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) during fermentation, injecting small amounts of oxygen during fermentation, using more new oak barrel ageing, and reducing the use of fining and filtering.

Although based on natural processes, winemaking evolves in response to law, new knowledge, and market demands.

Viticulture (from the Latin word for vine) refers to the cultivation of grapes, often for use in the production of wine. When the grapes are used for winemaking, it is also known as viniculture. It is one branch of the science of horticulture. Viticulture is the science, production and study of grapes which deals with the series of events that occur in the vineyard. Grapes are grown for fresh fruit, dried fruit or for wine. Duties of the Viticulturalist include: monitoring and controlling pests and diseases, fertilizing, irrigating, canopy management, monitoring fruit development and characteristics, deciding when to harvest and vine pruning during the winter months. Viticulturalists are often intimately involved with winemakers, because vineyard management and the resulting grape characteristics, provide the basis from which winemaking can begin.