Half the authors are basically civil servants, their salary is paid by the French state. The other half are Americans. Whilst I am not sure what their motivation was, it seems unlikely that big champagne would funnel money to Brown University, of all places (they do it more publicly elsewhere). The main resource used in this study is CPU time, they give a grant number and the institution. So again, no private funding.

A lot of people are keen to work on something like that on their own. I know someone who worked on the thermodynamics of chocolate mixtures for no precise reason whatsoever, and without external funding. These things are typically short one-offs.

There are labs that have larger programs on carbonated liquids, including a well-known (in the field) lab in Reims. Those get some funding from industry in the usual form of money for post-docs or PhDs, funding for experiments, and the occasional in-kind contribution of samples. Nothing out of the ordinary.