Review: Exquisite Drops of God brings the world of elite wine down to earth

The heady world of fine wine is often justly skewered as being hopelessly elitist and pretentious, where rare bottles sell for tens of thousands of dollars, their flavors and aromas described in florid, over-the-top language that readily lends itself to satire. (The sommelier in last year's delightful The Menu described a pinot noir as having "notes of longing and regret.")

That's the pop culture caricature, at least. If you yearn for something that brings this rarefied world firmly down to earth and celebrates wine's role in forging human bonds and shaping culture at large, I highly recommend Drops of God, a limited miniseries that debuted on Apple TV+ in April. It is based on the popular and influential manga of the same name. This is a series that sticks with you, its most memorable moments lingering in one's mind the way a good wine lingers on the palate.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

The Japanese manga series debuted in November 2004 in Japan's weekly Morning magazine, running through June 2014. It was followed by a sequel that added the element of food pairings, Marriage: The Drops of God Final Arc. Brother and sister creators Yuko and Shin Kibayashi became enthralled by the elite wine world after sampling a rare vintage and decided to create a manga series centered on the complexity and cultural impact of wine. Naturally, that meant conducting a lot of research, tasting wines from all over the world, spanning a broad range of price points.

Their inspiring ethos was a Japanese winemaker's motto regarding the essential elements of wine: heaven (vintage, or the weather/climate of a given geographical region), earth (terroir), and people, in the form of gifted winemakers. There are more than 15 million copies of the manga in circulation, and it has significantly boosted sales (and prices) of the specific wines mentioned in Japan. In fact, one winemaker stopped selling his 2003 vintage of Chateau le Puy after it was name-checked in the manga to discourage wealthy speculators and keep prices affordable.

Although the Kibayashi siblings have stated that wine is the main character, the manga storyline centers on two young men: Shizuku Kanzaki and Issei Tomine. Shizuku works for a beer manufacturing company. He's estranged from his father, a world-renowned wine critic named Yutaka Kanzaki, who taught his son various aspects of oenology until Shizuku rebelled as a teenager. While his expert knowledge is limited and he has never actually drunk wine (until the start of the series), Shizuku possesses a rare sense of taste and smell, enabling him to discern subtle notes in any given bottle and describe them with a certain poetic flair. Issei is the adopted son of Yutaka, himself a highly respected wine critic, who has been studying wine for much of his life and brings a more cerebral, methodical—indeed almost obsessive—approach to oenology.

The instigating event is a tragedy: Yutaka dies of pancreatic cancer and leaves behind a particularly manipulative and idiosyncratic will. His entire fortune—largely consisting of a prestigious wine collection worth millions—will go to whichever of his two sons can correctly identify 14 different wines and describe them as closely as possible to Yutaka's own descriptions of each bottle in the will. The first 12 bottles are dubbed the "Twelve Apostles," and the 13th is the titular "Drops of God."

When French-Vietnamese screenwriter Quoc Dang Tran (who also worked on the French Netflix series Call My Agent) agreed to adapt the manga for television, he kept that basic premise but also made some significant changes. For starters, the deceased father is now a French wine critic named Alexandre Leger (Stanley Weber), who has long been estranged from his daughter Camille (Fleur Geffrier) when he learns he is dying. (In a nod to the manga, Camille's middle name is Shizuku, since she spent part of her childhood in Japan.) Camille flies to Tokyo upon hearing the news but arrives too late: her father has died. And his will pits her against Alexandre's top oenology student and "spiritual son" Issei Tomine (Tomohisa Yamashita) for his multimillion-dollar legacy.

The competition featured in the series has been simplified to just three rounds, and the individual tests go well beyond merely identifying mystery wines in blind tastings. Camille is at a distinct disadvantage despite her naturally gifted palate. Even though her father taught her the basics when she was 8 years old, a traumatic event from that period has rendered her so sensitive to strong flavors that she can't drink at all without getting a nosebleed and subsists almost entirely on white rice and green beans. She receives help from her father's best friend, vintner Philippe Chassangre (Gustave Kervern) and Philippe's strikingly handsome son Thomas (Tom Wozniczka), a professor of oenology, among other allies.