The Evening Standard: what the wines in Succession reveal about the Roys

A scene from HBO’s Succession

If you have enough power and wealth to get pretty much whatever wine you want, what do you buy?

From $80,000 wine to “Malbec morons”, cheap Prosecco to biodynamic Spätburgunder, wine punctuates every meeting, incites every infidelity, and underpins every interaction of HBO’s Succession. The Roys barely eat on camera — the calamari cockring notwithstanding — but wine is splashed absolutely everywhere. Throughout, it’s used to portray both the opulent and ugly sides of the Roys’ wealth.

To the family, consuming fine wine is an ordinary, day-to-day thing; so usual that they don’t notice it, like having a fully-stocked fridge of La Croix or a fleet of Cadillac Escalades. Where for the average drinker, the celebratory opening of a special bottle is designated for life’s important moments, the Roys drink fine wine so often, any sense of celebration is abstracted into something meaningless. Every meeting, deal and misguided presidential candidacy is peppered with bubbles. Everything is a celebration, which means nothing is. Then again, for people like the Roys, no matter how hard life gets for the rest of us, there will always be something to celebrate.

Read the full article written for Evening Standard here.