Two young wine experts battle for a massive inheritance in the Apple TV+ series “Drops of God,” which suffers from pacing issues early on but grows into a lively and emotionally engrossing story by the end. Part high-stakes competition, part family drama, the action takes place in France and Japan, with a brief sojourn to Italy.
Both Camille (Fleur Geffrier) and Issei (Tomohisa Yamashita) have been named in the will of the French wine aficionado Alexandre Leger (Stanley Weber), who was renowned for his annual guide ranking the world’s best wines. For the last two decades, he was been based in Tokyo.
Camille was his estranged daughter back in France; Issei was his star pupil in Japan. Now the pair must go head-to-head — nose-to-nose, palate-to-palate — in a multi-part test of their wine expertise. The winner will get Leger’s entire estate: A house worth $7 million and a wine collection of 87,000 bottles estimated at $148 million.
Loosely based on the Japanese manga of the same name, the French portions of the TV adaptation are an invention of the show’s creator Quoc Dang Tran, whose previous credits include the wonderfully antic French series “Call My Agent!” Some of that DNA is here as well, with “Drops of God” giving us an insider’s view to an intense subculture that is also absurdly comic on its face.
It’s a wine-o-rama and millions are at stake!
For Issei, who is quiet and refined and self-contained, this is just what he’s been training for under Leger’s tutelage.
For Camille, who is messier and directionless and a bit stunned to have her father back in her life (even if it’s from the great beyond), the contest proves more daunting.
As a child, before her parents divorced, her father would grill her to identify flavors and smells in a method that was rigorous bordering on abusive. He was a loving but abrasively self-centered and insecure man. After Camille’s parents split, she never saw or heard from him again.
Perhaps that’s why she’s allergic to alcohol — blood pours from her nose and she passes out if she even takes a sip. Maybe it’s psychosomatic, maybe it’s something else. Her neurologist can’t say for sure. But her aversion to alcohol is an obvious impediment and this competition devised by her father feels like one last taunt from the grave. When the terms of the will are read, Camille sputters, “You’re joking,” to which the courtly and unflappable lawyer replies, “I do on occasion. But not now. Not today, no.”
So, she devises a workaround. If she can’t taste the wines, she’ll identify them by smell. She decamps to a vineyard in France owned by an old friend of her father’s. There she begins training, like the Rocky Balboa of fine wine, with the help of Thomas (Tom Wozniczka), the handsome son of the winery owner.
Thanks to the drilling she received as a child — plus some natural talent inherited from Leger — she’s a quick study and actually in the running. (Geffrier bears a striking resemblance to Jessica Chastain.)
What about Issei? Good question. Camille’s story takes up the bulk of the season’s first half, so much so that you wonder why Issei (initially rendered as little more than a quiet enigma of a man) has been relegated as an afterthought. The son of wealthy diamond merchants, he’s incurred his mother’s withering disapproval by pursuing a career in wine; he’s expected to take his place in the family business instead and she absolutely does not want him to be involved in this competition for some stranger’s fortune. How gauche! Especially when Leger’s twisted game of Name That Wine has become public knowledge and the Tokyo press is frothing at the mouth to cover it like an Olympic sport.
Things start to click into place thanks to an extended flashback midway through the series centering on Camille’s parents and Issei’s parents, all of whom crossed paths 30 years earlier. Their children, it turns out, have more in common than wine. It’s a shocking reveal. The ghost of Leger and his crappy life choices loom over Camille and Issei like a dark cloud. Neither is thrilled about this public spectacle they’ve been thrust into, but eventually they find common ground.
“Drops of God” is not a title that rolls off the tongue. I keep mistakenly calling it “Drops of Blood,” so I don’t know what that says about me. But “drops of god” is, in fact, a metaphor and a clue Camille and Issei are asked to decipher, and I found myself grudgingly coming around to the title once that became clear.
Director Oded Ruskin captures a world that is high-end but also lived-in, leaving room for small moments of humor. It’s gorgeously cinematic (shot by Rotem Yaron) in ways most TV just isn’t, from the warm, sunny landscapes of French vineyards to the glass-and-concrete of upscale Tokyo to the winding roads of a quaint Italian village.
Tonally the series is elegant if a bit clenched at first, which mirrors Camille and Issei’s personalities. This is a world where snobbery and earnestness abound in equal measure and where sticking one’s schnoz in a glass of wine to better capture the aroma is elevated to a fine art. But in the final few scenes, a sense of release and euphoria washes over everything.
They both win in the end.
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'DROPS OF GOD'
3 stars (out of 4)
Rating: TV-MA
How to watch: On Apple TV+ Friday
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