The Wine Series sur BBC Four

Matthieu Sam 31 Jan 2009 - 10:35

Site Internet du magazine Decanter

BBC wine series stars Château Margaux, Berry Bros and South Africa
January 30, 2009

Maggie Rosen

A three-part wine series featuring Château Margaux, Berry Bros and South Africa is to air in February and March on BBC Four.

The programmes are narrated by Matthew Macfadyen, who plays MI-5 agent Tom Quinn on the BBC series Spooks and starred as Mr Darcy in the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice. Each instalment focuses on a different aspect of the industry.

'I was attracted by the approach, which was based on characters and stories rather than an attempt to capture something that is quite ephemeral,' said Richard Klein, who commissioned the series and is now BBC Four's controller,

'After all, it's just a drink. But each scenario illustrates just how much this drink means to so many people around the world.'

The series contrasts the wine world's oldest merchants and most revered winery, with some of its newest and most iconoclastic participants.

The first episode, entitled 'The Firm', highlights wine according to Berry Bros, while the second, 'The Faith' focuses on the 2008 growing season at Chateau Margaux - and follows the domaine's director Paul Pontailler to China, where he is mobbed by fans.

The final episode, 'The Future', features retired professor Oupa Rangaka of M'Hudi Wines (Stellenbosch), the first black-owned vineyard in South Africa – and Mark Solms, neuroscientist-turned-winemaker of Franschoek's Solms-Delta, who uses the ancient method of dessication on the vine.

'While winemaking in some cases can be very mechanical, wine is a very human industry. There's tremendous drama in peoples' stories, in the weather, in economic forces,' said director Nick Angel.

'The series is not about wine tasting or appreciation, not a question of multiple adjectives and orgasmic reactions.'

Wine, produced by Oxford Film and Television, starts 16 February on BBC Four.

Matthieu Lun 9 Fév 2009 - 17:16

Page d'information sur le site de BBC Four.

Documentary series about the wine industry takes a look behind the scenes at Berry Brothers and Rudd, the oldest and poshest wine merchant in the world.

After 310 years of business there is still a Mr Berry at the helm as bombs, wars, kings and queens have come and gone, but this charmed existence may be under threat as the credit crunch bites deep. The film unwittingly becomes a chronicle of the changing world order, where the super-rich look alarmingly as though they are about to turn into the ancient regime.

Quaint anachronism it might seem from the outside, but this is the firm that turned fine wine into the sine qua non of the super-rich. Everyone here, from Berry's larger-than-life Bordeaux and Burgundy buyers to the eccentric and ambitious chateau owners and producers they do business with, services what seemed to be the ever-increasing demand for the finest wines available to humanity, until the rot creeps in and threatens three centuries of history.

Matthieu Sam 14 Fév 2009 - 15:41

Monday's Top TV d'après David Chater du Times.

Wine

BBC Four, 9pm

If the next two episodes are as much fun to watch as this, Wine looks set to be a fabulous series. It is narrated by Matthew Macfadyen and made by Oxford Film and Television, the same company responsible for The National Trust and Simon Schama’s The American Future: A History. As the title suggests, it is about wine. But wine is also about people, and the people who appear in this film are as ripe, mature, complex and fruity as anything sold at auction for £3,000 a bottle.

This opening episode focuses on Berry Bros & Rudd, the wine merchant opposite St James’s Palace that has been around since 1698, in which we meet the chairman, the buyers, the big château owners and the small wine producers. Apart from being fantastically entertaining, it also teaches you a lot about wine.

Matthieu Lun 16 Fév 2009 - 13:41

Par Richard Woodard (Decanter, 16 février 2009).

Review: Wine (The Firm)
February 16, 2009
Richard Woodard

Decanter reviews Wine: The Firm (BBC4, 16 February, 9pm), the first programme in a series focussing on the world of wine.

Wine: The Firm is a reminder that good documentary making is a deceptively simply exercise: film interesting people doing interesting things, and package the whole thing in an insightful and entertaining manner.

Centered on the activities of Berry Bros & Rudd, the programme takes a few elemental strands � fine wine and high finance, the contrast between Bordeaux and Burgundy, Berrys' own mix of tradition and innovation � and weaves them into an intelligent, highly watchable whole.

Above all, and unlike a lot of other modern documentaries, it has the wit to understand that holding a mirror up to this world and the people who populate it is enough � the audience can be left to draw their own conclusions.

For Wine is fortunate in its cast of characters. Not least Berrys' Bordeaux buyer, Simon Staples, likened to TV gangster Tony Soprano, but who comes across as a chubby, clubby version of Wall Street trader Gordon Gekko.

The Bordeaux/Burgundy contrast is personified on the one hand by the smooth, chilly diplomacy of Chateau Cos d'Estournel's Jean-Guillaume Prats, and on the other by the nerdy, schoolboy-ish charm of David Clark in Morey-St Denis.

In the end, nobody comes out of it too badly, despite Prats' Canute-like murmurings on the 2007 en primeur campaign ('It's not a quality problem, simply the overall perception of the vintage') and Simon Berry's rather lame comment on the perils of investing in wine ('Even if it isn't worth as much as it was the year before, you can at least drink it').

But, despite the odd jarring moment, Wine is an enjoyable hour's viewing which pulls off the increasingly rare feat of informing and entertaining its audience without ever talking down to them. Let's hope it gets an airing on a terrestrial channel soon.

The next programme, Wine: The Faith, will be aired on BBC1 on February 23 (9pm).

# See BBC wine series stars Château Margaux, Berry Bros and South Africa
# Decanter reviews Wine: The Faith

Matthieu Sam 21 Fév 2009 - 9:31

L'émission entière présente un certain intérêt et mérite d'être regardée per se. Si le vin n'est pas trop votre tasse de thé, voici pour vous :

Matthew, c'est "Romanée-Conti", du Domaine de la Romanée-Conti...

Luce Dim 8 Nov 2009 - 10:36

Dans The Guardian du 23 février 2009, l'annonce de l'émission :

Wine
9pm, BBC4

To France, then, where a row of arched eyebrows greets the second episode of this gently acidic little documentary. The venue? Chateau Margaux, where massively posh vintners fasten curlicues of hyperbole to their ludicrously overpriced wares ("zees soil 'as genius een eet ... "). While accordions smirk over the consequences of a life spent bent over grapes (liver spots, le appalling backache etc), Matthew Macfadyen buffs up his vowels for a voiceover that squeezes every last drop of wryness from the drama. Fruity.