How far would you go to track down the perfect bottle of wine? How far would you go for family? Those are both questions posed by the highly anticipated second season of “Drops of God,” the series based on the best-selling Japanese manga of the same name. Season two begins streaming on Apple TV today with new episodes dropping through March 11.
The wine-centric show garnered lots of buzz during its debut season in 2024, earning an International Emmy for Best Drama Series. If you missed that season, it’s well worth watching. When Alexandre Léger, a famous wine writer dies, he leaves his massive wine cellar to the winner of a contest centered on identifying mystery wines. The two contestants are his estranged daughter, Camille Léger (played by Fleur Geffrier), and his favorite student, Japanese sommelier Issei Tomine (Tomohisa Yamashita).
A New Challenge
I had the chance to watch all eight episodes of season two, and I promise there are no spoilers here. This next chapter takes place three years after the first, and the characters are dealing with the fallout. Issei is bored with wine and stewing in the loneliness caused by his family’s estrangement. Camille is giddy with her fiancé Thomas while enjoying an idyllic Provençal wine life at the Famille Chassangre winery. The winery has been renovated and modernized thanks to the inheritance she won competing against Issei, who she learned was her half brother. (Special guest star alert—the role of Thomas’ family winery is played by the stunning new, eco-friendly Château de Beaucastel facility in Châteauneuf-du-Pape.)
Even as Issei broods stonefaced, everything seems pretty much hunky dory as they sit around the table enjoying wine and dinner and birthday gifts under a Provençal night sky, until the late Alexandre reaches out from the grave one more time. Seems that during his career as a wine writer he had found a perfect wine. But somehow he never figured out where it was from. The family lawyer gives Camille and Issei another puzzling contest—find the wine.
After a sip of the wine, Issei’s interest is piqued as he wants another chance to win something, somehow. Camille, though also wowed by the wine, isn’t so sure she wants to work on another of her deceased father’s puzzles and her mood is bitter. In a fit of anger, she tries to derail the impending odyssey by dumping the rest of the wine down the sink. But Issei is already on the hunt and their sibling rivalry is rekindled.
A Race Through Wine And Family
Season two follows a similar framework to Season one, with the characters scrambling around Europe and Japan. There are stops in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the home of sherry, as well as Marseille, Greece and the Republic of Georgia. And it’s Georgia that features prominently in this season.
The show tries to pack a lot in, touching on the encroachment of urban development on vineyards, biodynamics, climate change, journalistic ethics, wine snobbery, the auction market, the idea of authenticity in wine, the commercialization of wine, conspicuous consumption and more. It winds up only alluding to or giving just a surface treatment to these issues, rather than diving deep.
On the other side of the narrative is a heavy drumbeat of family relationships, particularly the dysfunctional kind. Obsession with work, doing the wrong thing for the right reasons and childhood trauma—lots of childhood trauma—fills in all the remaining space amid the wine content.
In the end, season two feels like the inverse of season one: the first season was a wine drama with a family undercurrent, while season two is a family drama with a wine undercurrent. It really revolves around the multiple family dramas: Camille’s, the Chassangres, the family behind the mystery wine and most of all, Issei’s. It’s his story line that gets the deepest development. It also gets dark (pun intended, you’ll see). Even though the mystery wine is revealed early on, the season still maintains suspense through the end, thanks to all the family tussles.
As for enophiles, the wine content is still more than enough to sip on. The wines that are name checked and product-placed throughout hew close to those from the original manga series the show is based on, which means lots of French wines. Expect to spot a standard litany of collector and sommelier faves such as Marquis d’Angerville and Comtes Lafon.
You’ll need some suspension of disbelief too, because of course there is no one wine that can make every single person that smells and tastes it react the way that the mystery wine in this season does. But what the mystery wine and the rest of the story through season two do successfully portray is that wine—great wine—is discovery. And that discovery is fueled by travel, history, family and human emotions. And the best way to enjoy a glass of wine is with food and conversation among family and friends.
For more on the making of season two, don’t miss Fleur Greffier’s appearance on our latest podcast episode.
Dining and Cooking