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Hit TV show Industry puts wine in the spotlight

22 October 2024 By James Evison

HBO and BBC drama Industry places wine and its role in high society and investment banking directly into the spotlight. db investigates.

It’s already been a ratings and critical hit across both sides of the Atlantic, but Industry, which focuses on a group of young graduates at the fictional Pierpoint & Co investment bank, also has a lot to say about alcohol and the drinks trade.

Warning: this article contains plot spoilers about series three of Industry.

Now into its dramatic and intense third season, the show has accelerated its commentary on the divisions between wealth and class. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a crucial element in a drama is the types of drinks that are consumed, and where and critically how they are drunk, throughout the show.

Beer is consumed after work in pubs and bars, shots on the dancefloor are drunk even later at night, and wine takes centre stage in the often challenging dinner meetings that the graduates have with their clients who are looking to invest their portfolios with the firm.

The latest season, which has a wide ensemble cast, has seen the arrival of a new character called Sir Henry Muck, played by Game of Thrones‘ Kit Harington. Muck is an Oxford graduate with vast inherited wealth, but he is cosplaying at being a Californian-style tech entrepreneur, fronting a green energy company called Lumi, which is about to launch an IPO with Pierpoint & Co.

Yasmin’s gift

One of the key characters in the cast is the publishing heiress Yasmin Kara-Hanani, played by Back to Black’s Marisa Abela. She quickly becomes embroiled in a romance with Muck, who appears very keen to pursue her, despite her working for Pierpoint.

At the end of the second episode, after the romance progresses in — shall we say, an unusual fashion — Henry Muck swiftly leaves the restaurant where he has been dining with Yasmin. But he leaves a bottle for her, which is presented by the sommelier.

The somm is keen to stress the incredible vintage of the bottle, which looks like a Bordeaux, although it isn’t named. He somewhat surprisingly states in a reverential tone that he “didn’t know” they had such a prestigious wine was in the cellar.

Yasmin, eager to shock, asks the somm to open the bottle. The somm, outraged at her desire to actually drink the wine, highlights that this isn’t a bottle to be drunk in such casual terms, and clearly is unwilling to open it.

Considering all the stories that have been published on the drinks business about £100k sangrias made from Petrus, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and sports stars splashing the cash from fine dining restaurant’s cellars, this feels a very unlikely outcome.

But Yasmin has other ideas anyway. With the shocked somms looking on from the restaurant window, she opens the bottle at a bus stop, and takes a big chug from the wine, which it is assumed cost many thousands of pounds.

Ruinart’s celebration

There is one specific brand of wine that is mentioned in the series, and plays a crucial role in two episodes: Champagne Ruinart.

In the first instance, Ruinart is used in a celebration after a tough grilling in front of a parliamentary select committee for character Robert Spearing (played by Harry Lawtey) — acting as the fall guy for Pierpoint & Co in its disastrous IPO of Lumi — and energy secretary Aurore Adekunle (played by Faith Alabi).

Adekunle surprisingly takes full responsibility in front of the committee for the government bailout of the failing firm, and states that she has resigned as a minister, claiming she still believes in accountability in politics.

But in a plot twist, and as Robert is licking his wounds with Henry Muck and other aristocrats, including Otto Mostyn —a kind of Bond villan of the show — at their exclusive St James’ Street club in London, Adekunle walks in and Mostyn announces “our future prime minister”. It appears that she took the fall for Lumi, Muck and investor Mostyn in full awareness that she would be spun by these same figures into being positioned as a future leader by the very same rich gentlemen in the room.

And the best way to celebrate their truimphant politicking and manoeuvring in the dark arts of politics? A glass of Ruinart, of course.

Aurore Adekunle goes further, and is specific on what glass of Ruinart she wants to celebrate their Shakespearean scheme: a glass of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs. Perhaps the showrunner or screenwriters of Industry really do know their wine, as the Ruinart Blanc de Blancs is something special, as previously highlighted by db‘s Arabella Mileham and Champagne correspondent Giles Fallowfield.

Frédéric Panaïotis, Maison Ruinart Cellar Master, said of the wine: “This blend brings together a balance of freshness and roundness, with each selected terroir chosen for the uniqueness of its chardonnays contributing to the complexity of the blend.”

It includes some 25 to 30 different chardonnay crus, predominantly from the Côte des Blancs, the Montagne de Reims, the Sézannais and La Vallée de la Vesle.

Brideshead 2.0

Inevitably, at the conclusion of the season, there is a drawn-out country house episode, redolent of the original smash TV drama about British class Brideshead Revisited, and more recently the Emerald Fennell film Saltburn, which as reported in the drinks business also had a lot to say about British drinking culture.

In this final sweep shot at the Muck’s incredible ancestral seat, filmed at the 17th century mansion Dyrham Park in South Gloucestershire, we witness Henry’s Proustian moment and his comfort food: a love of Ruinart and Twiglets.

It’s a wonderful moment in the overall narrative scheme of the show. The moment is revealing for Henry Muck, who is now shed of his Silicon Valley persona, and announcing his emotional vulnerability in front of Yasmin, who he will go on later in the episode to propose marriage.

Prosecco for the apocalypse

The final worthy moment for alcohol is as Pierpoint & Co implodes as a result of a series of terrible investments in environmental, social, and governance (ESG).

Ironically, there is a big anniversary party with all of the graduates and staff dressed up in black tie, while the top management enter a crisis meeting to find a way of saving the company.

While their world burns, and it becomes clear that the graduates may not have jobs by the end of the night, the characters of Sweetpea (played by Miriam Petche) and Anraj (played by Irfan Shamji) drink Prosecco on the trading floor.