Connoisseurship is a practice of discernment
The word connoisseur derives from the French word connaître, earlier connoistre, meaning “to be familiar with” or “to know about.” A connoisseur is someone who uses their knowledge about a subject to guide decision making, especially but not exclusively in matters of taste.
Connoisseurship in art history
In the late 19th century, the term came to refer to a class of art historians and theorists focused on attribution, the technique of identifying the artist who made a piece of work. Art connoisseurship required extensive study of specific artists as well as their social and political contexts, plus a familiarity with the artifacts of material culture which find their way into portraits, altar pieces, history paintings, and other genres.
The art connoisseur used analytical, critical, and intuitive methods to render pronouncements about an artwork’s provenance. They also authored catalogues raisonnés of artists’ complete oeuvres, in part to share their knowledge and in part to justify their analyses. Their work was crucial to the secondary art market, especially to auction houses and museums whose reputations, and income, required trustworthy authentications.
Art connoisseurship demanded extensive expertise, persuasive reasoning, and earned trust in order to render reliable pronouncements about artifacts of visual culture.
Making the leap to gastronomy and wine
Art connoisseurship persists, but in the mid-twentieth century the term connoisseur leapt into new domains, particularly into gastronomy and wine. It came to refer to a passionate amateur whose knowledge granted them authority to make declarative statements about wine quality. Such pronouncements were not principally about provenance, as had been the case with the art connoisseurs, but were more about typicity, collectability, and value.
A general public skeptical about claims of authority in matters of taste eyed such pronouncements with suspicion, and wine connoisseurship became associated with snobbism, elitism, and condescension. The terms connoisseur and connoisseurship have, as a consequence, mostly disappeared from modern texts about wine, replaced with mentions of the “wine enthusiast” or “wine lover.”
Resurrecting wine connoisseurship
It is newly necessary to resuscitate wine connoisseurship, stripping the negative associations to restore original connotations of human expertise, faithful opinion, and reliability.
In this new construction, a wine connoisseur is a person who has educated themselves about the domain in general and certain sectors in particular. They may or may not possess formal credentials, but they are considered authorities whose judgments are viewed with respect rather than skepticism.
In this reading, wine connoisseurship is the practice of discernment, and the wine connoisseur is a practitioner who arises from the general populace to apply their expertise toward our collective understanding of taste.
In an era where taste is increasingly influenced, even litigated, by artificial intelligence and machine simulation, we need wine connoisseurs, people with physical palates and the skills to use them, to share insights forged by human experience.
Further reading
Image ©2026 Meg Maker
We need true connoisseurs of wine (thinking of people like Don Cornwell, as well as a woman whose name is sadly escaping me right this moment) to identify the fakery in fine wine.
Any time you use a French word derived from Latin you are going to face trouble, mon ami.