Wine taster

Also known as a tasse à vin, a tâte-vin, or a tastevin, a wine taster was used by a wine merchant to assess the quality, clarity, and color of wine. The reflective properties, resistance to corrosion, and the fact that it would not taint the wine in any way, made silver the ideal material for a winetaster. Shallow in form, these bowls frequently have a convex bottom and are provided with a single ring handle and or thumbpiece. The polished surface, either left smooth or embellished with gadrooning and other decorations, would catch the light and reflect it throughout the wine so that it could be checked for impurities. Holding just a small amount of wine, silver wine tasters are often personalized with initials, names, and dates or coats-of-arms.



The bowl’s interior is engraved with a scene of the bishop St. Julien blessing a kneeling figure, presumably a reference to the likely owner of the wine taster whose name, JULLIEN GOAU DE ST. JULIEN LAVALE, is inscribed on the on the outside rim. A fishing scene together with the phrase which can be translated as “Come pass over the water with your bait: you will catch your fish” are engraved on the underside of the bowl. The stylized serpent shaped handle refers to Dionysus the god of wine.



Daughter of one of the founders of the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, Catherine D. Wentworth (1865–1948) was an art student and painter who lived in France for thirty years. She became one of the most important American collectors of eighteenth-century French silver and on her death in 1948 bequeathed part of her significant collection of silver, gold boxes, French furniture and textiles to the Metropolitan Museum. The collection is particularly strong in domestic silver, much of it provincial, including this wine taster created in Orléans.