🍷 Caviste

A caviste is a wine shop seller who chooses the bottles, buys from producers and advises customers. The word is French, from cave, a cellar. A caviste can be an employee, an independent owner or a franchisee.

France's certification for the job, "Sommelier-conseil, caviste" (RNCP35863, level 4), splits the work in three. First comes selection: build a range that fits the shop's customers and price points, taste the wines and pick suppliers. Then selling: present the wines, suggest food pairings, arrange the sales floor and run tastings. Last is the numbers: track revenue, purchase costs and stock so there are neither gaps on the shelf nor dead stock in the back room. Candidates come in with a level 4 diploma, a hospitality CAP plus experience, or two years in restaurants or the wine trade.

A Paris caviste named Sylvain describes it plainly. It is mostly advice and trust. Customers are often regulars, and he remembers what he has suggested to them before. Stock is the trickiest part, because it changes fast with sales and has to be checked every day.

One thing to keep straight: in the French job directory an "agent de chai", also called "ouvrier caviste", is a different person, a cellar hand who takes part in making wine, storing it and bottling it under the cellar master. A shop caviste sells; a cellar hand produces.

In the shop, then, the caviste stands between the producer and you. The point is not turning wine into prices but helping you find a bottle for your dish, your taste and your occasion. For the place they work, see Wine shop.