A Captivating Tour of Elite French Wine Country

Gifted nonfiction filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw have made a specialty of documenting tradition-bound practices rooted in the soil. In The Truffle Hunters, it was the disappearing breed of men and their sniffer dogs roaming the hills of Italy’s Piedmont region in search of aromatic Alba tubers that fetch a high price in the best restaurants. In Gaucho Gaucho, it was the community of Argentinian cowboys stewarding the land and tending to their animals off the grid in the mountainous Salta region.

In Burgundy, the directors train their exquisitely observational vérité gaze over the vineyards, owners and workers whose lives revolve around production and consumption of the famed French red. (White burgundies don’t get a look in.)

Dweck and Kershaw have honed the skill, relatively rare among documentarians, of breathing lyrical dimensions into their lovingly crafted ethnographic studies. They also have a strong sense of character, which they step back and allow to emerge organically from subjects who are contemplated but never interviewed.

The filmmakers introduce their leading players, identified by profession in onscreen text, all of whom seem to exist in a microcosmic place suspended in time. They include wealthy octogenarian wine estate owner Bertrand, whose 160-year-old business has been bequeathed from each generation to the next, just as he now prepares to pass it on to his grandson Melchior, who may be looking for a life beyond the sleepy provinces. 

The magnetic young Enzo has worked on Bertrand’s estate since he was 15 but aspires one day to be proprietor of his own vineyard — perhaps an insurmountable challenge for someone not born into the elite winemaking trade of the region. He also aims to cultivate a romance with Céleste, training under renowned French sommelier Eric but insecure about whether she has the taste, sophistication or discipline required for the job.

Dweck and Kershaw playfully step outside the confines of documentary with home movie-style 8mm sequences meant to capture the ambitions of Enzo and Céleste, including one in which they are dressed in Depression Era Bonnie and Clyde outfits to rob an armored car. This dovetails with Enzo’s desire to emulate classic French movie star style, his favorite being Jean Gabin.

The business extends to the gastronomic service-industry side, where Patrick, veteran maître d’ of three-star Michelin restaurant Maison Lameloise, is like a rapturous orchestra conductor, extravagant in his baroque descriptions of each day’s degustation menu. Approaching retirement, Patrick searches with exacting standards for someone to fill his shoes, investing time in mentoring young apprentice Matteo.  

Then there’s bon vivant wine critic Guillaume, who, when he’s not in therapy licking the wounds of a recent divorce, approaches his work as an adventurer, searching for meaning and transporting memories of his lost youth in every glass.

Dweck and Kershaw, who serve as their own cinematographers, spent two years hunkered down in Bourgogne, capturing the pleasures and frustrations, the satisfactions and struggles of people whose dedication to the celebrated red has a quasi-religious zeal. Poetry and beauty color their appreciation of the wine’s complex balance, its bright fruit notes, vibrant acidity and earthy mineral undertones. The doc gives the impression of being granted access to an exclusive milieu, though it’s less about snobbery than artistry.

Adding an eclectic soundtrack that mixes opera with vintage French pop and jaunty tunes that sound like they were lifted from 1960s French comedies, the filmmakers make generous allowances for humor amid the seriousness of the profession.

Wine connoisseurs at a blind tasting in which stemware is passed through portholes look like peep show patrons. Patrick injects a light touch into his scolding of restaurant staff when a tablecloth isn’t crisply ironed or cutlery and glasses are improperly placed. And Enzo, shirtless and in short shorts stomping around in a vat of grapes, could be the cheeky opening scene of an extremely niche viticulture porn movie.

There are melancholy shadings to the disconnect between Enzo’s life as a worker and the elevated professional domain he sees himself occupying, especially when Bertrand questions whether he has the natural authority to lead a team, or the educational background to speak of cuture and philosophy or rub shoulders with international buyers at wine auctions. It’s an example of wealth and class inequality that the filmmakers reveal without comment. Much more egalitarian are scenes showing Patrick and staff dining family-style in the kitchen.

At a tight 90 minutes, this is a short, sweet peek into a closed world, infused with an abundance of charm and full of eye-massaging images of rural splendor, stately homes, quaint town streets and Malickian shots of snails, a wry nod to a common vineyard pest. Burgundy should send you directly to the closest wine bar to test your palate.