Sparking: The Story of Champagne
One of the features headlining the British Film Festival at Palace Cinemas this year, Sparkling: The Story of Champagne is a surprisingly amateurish documentary effort that nevertheless holds some interest for lovers of bubbles.
Taking a look at the history and impact of champagne, Sparkling: The Story Of Champagne interviews a range of leading figures in the world of sparkling wine. We start with a look at the bastions of the champagne houses of old - Dom Perignon, Veuve, Bollinger, Piper Heidseck - and see how those houses came to be, as well as what impacts they had throughout history. The documentary then briefly tackles legal disputes around the name Champagne, before tracking over to England and spending an inordinate amount of time focusing on the English Sparkling Wine industry, and how it is paving the way for new sparkling wines, and has the potential to do so even more as global warming improves the climate in the British Isles for wine growing.
The first thing to tackle with this documentary is the production quality, which is surprisingly low rent for a film that is seemingly of such import to the Palace Cinemas lineup that they have provided it for review as an indicator of the quality of the Festival this year. Visible microphones, a largely unsubstantiated claim that this is ‘hosted’ by Stephen Fry, who is interviewed via Zoom (when in reality the real host of this documentary awkwardly spouts various platitudes at famous champagne related figures only to have them rebuffed or misunderstood 95% of the time), deeply different audio recording levels, oddly poor B-Roll and a host of other issues plague this production, and make the entire piece seem very amateurish indeed. Not necessarily a bad thing, but when this is being held up as indicative of a festival lineup, concerning.
Nevertheless, in the early parts of this documentary there is a lot to enjoy, as our documentary team makes the rounds through the titular part of France and speaks to all of the big houses. The access this documentary gets is remarkable, and it is at one of its two strongest points when it is tackling some of the historic implications of champagne; how Napoleon used to pick up a few bottles before he went out for a big crusade, when bottles would be presented to Marie Antoinette, or how Churchill had a relationship with a certain champagne house.
Then it goes off the rails entirely. We’re treated to a strange series of interviews from seemingly random American punters in a bar in New York. Then the documentary team takes aim at British Sparkling, and across a huge number of interviewees, we suddenly have an in depth look at the state of the British Sparkling Wine industry. Despite a brief highlight, when they tackle the fact that global warming could move the epicentre of champagne production to Britain rather than France (an interesting point that is barely fleshed out), this is largely a dud - a series of interviews with reputable individuals saying that the wine is pretty garbage, interspersed with a series of drunk Brits and British winemakers at an event raving about how good their sparkling is. It may well be, but the documentary team's selection of speakers and adjustment of audio levels does little to convince you that you are hearing an ‘expert’ opinion.
In the end, there is a little bit of interest to this documentary. But if you love champagne, maybe just check out the first half.
