By Susan Granger
“Drops of God” is the most intriguing series you’ve never heard of!
Winner of Best Drama at the International Emmy Awards and recipient of a 100% positive Rotten Tomatoes score, “Drops of God” is Apple TV’s French/American-Japanese version of a manga series by brother-and-sister Shin & Yuko Kibayashi, using the pseudonym Tadashi Agi and adapted by French/Vietnamese Quoe Dang Tran.
Season one begins in Tokyo with the death of Alexandre Leger (Stanley Weber), an influential French wine critic and creator of the influential Leger Wine Guide. He leaves behind an 87,000-bottle wine cellar worth nearly $150 million; it’s considered the finest collection in the world.
According to his will, two contestants must match wits to decide who can claim the inheritance. There’s his estranged daughter, red-headed Camille Leger (Fleur Geffrier), whose sensitive smell/tasting palate he trained from early childhood, and his erudite protégé/’spiritual son’, Issei Tomine (Tomohisa Yamashita), born into a Japanese dynasty of diamond merchants.
Both face monumental dilemmas. Resentful that her philandering father left her mother when she was nine, Camille has developed a physical revulsion for all wine and spirits, and stoic Issei must defy ancestral expectations since his aristocratic family loathes his all-consuming passion for oenology.
Nevertheless, Camille and Issei agree to three tests devised by Alexandre. The first involves a wine-tasting. The contenders must sip a vintage red wine and come back in a month to identify its origin.
Determined to overcome her alcohol aversion, Camille returns to the Chassangre winemaking estate in Provence where she spent summers with her father. Meanwhile, reserved Issei learns more about his aloof mother’s inexplicable resentment.
By the time they take the second test – identifying a wine from a painting – there’s deception and betrayal as well-guarded secrets that are gradually revealed – indicating that Camille and Issei may have far more in common than either of them ever suspected.
Much like “Succession,” the high-stakes plot revolves around the offspring a larger-than-life father figure whose memory evokes admiration tinged with bitterness, and a sense of abandonment,
The various wines depicted on-screen are a mixture of real and fictional, so you don’t have to have any expertise as a sommelier to savor every moment. And season two is already underway.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Drops of God” decants as an engrossing, entertaining 9, streaming on Apple.
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Susan Granger
Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in Journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has appeared on radio and television as an anchorwoman and movie critic for many years. Read all her reviews at susangranger.com.
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