The always likable figure of Irish producer and film-maker Frank Mannion has, in the past, given us acordial guide to champagne, aslightly more chaotic essay on Britishness, and itscounterpart on Irishness. Now, in his cheerfully celebratory and slightly corporate-promo way, he has made a film about Irish viticulture and drink in general, which means not simply wineries, breweries and distilleries actually in Ireland, but also abroad: this is about drinks producers with an Irish background, such as Hennessy brandy, which has an obvious Irish ancestry.
It’s what this film calls “an Irish drink in a French terroir” – or, in fact, a terroir anywhere in the world, meaning places in Europe, the US and occasionally Australia and New Zealand. The film even jauntily insists that Ireland invented whiskey before Scotland. Prince Albert II of Monaco is interviewed about his love of Irish viticulture and the importance of his mother, Grace Kelly, one of the Kellys of County Mayo. The chief interviewee, however, is the amiableOz Clarke, himself of Irish heritage, who beamingly descants on how great Irish wine is.
This is a film that is genially untroubled and unproblematic in its approach; the issue of, say, the homogenisation and industrialisation of wine production that, a generation ago, worriedfilm-maker Jonathan Nossiter in his 2004 film Mondovino, is absent. Mannion and his interviewees are content to simply find a range of nuances and differences, although the garrulous tone of Mannion’s film is not so far from Rossiter’s. The most startling moments of the film come when he visits the Baileys farm in County Wicklow, whose proprietor talks about the cows who produce the raw material for Baileys Irish Cream: his 230 “ladies”. This will be an acquired taste, perhaps.
A Sip of Irish is in UK and Irish cinemas from 20 June.