‘Drops of God’ sets out to find the best wine in the world in season two

“We enjoy the coincidence,” Yamashita says. “We had dinner with the original (illustrator), (Shu) Okimoto, together. So we share the experience together.”

His co-star, Geffrier, is surprised to hear about this connection when I bring it up to Yamashita during our Zoom interview. But she is delighted by this new layer to their relationship—one that has only strengthened in the three years since they shot the first season together. “We've been keeping in touch even when I'm back in Japan,” Yamashita says. “Every time when I go back to Paris, she's taking care of me. We've been building our relationship and it gets better and better, so I hope our real relationship reflects on the screen.”

Their characters spent most of the first season apart, only sharing the screen a handful of times. With the upcoming season two (premiering on Apple TV on Jan. 21), that will all change. Camille and Issei, now discovered to be half-siblings, go on a quest together to find the best wine in the world. 

“When I read the script for the second season, I was (excited that the) two characters will spend time together,” Geffrier says. “And I think it's really beautiful to witness, to see two people…that are siblings with two very different cultures. How can they connect? How can they understand each other? What takes them apart? What reunites them?”

It turns out the thing that will reunite them is another challenge from their deceased father, who leaves them with one last task: to discover the origins of a mysterious wine that even he couldn’t find. It’s a plot that deviates from the manga that the show is inspired by, mostly because the creative team realized that neither the first season or the manga ever actually revealed what the titular “drops of god” are.

“What are the drops of god? What is the best wine in the world? It actually never answers the question,” executive producer Klaus Zimmermann says.

This quest leads the duo deep into the nation of Georgia’s wine country, where they become embroiled in a years-long family feud between the owners of a vineyard and a rich, ruthless businessman brother eager to steal their land. It’s a dark, epic turn for a show whose first season mostly consisted of Camille studying to be an expert in oenology (the science of wine). But it was a turn that Zimmerman wanted the show to take, to highlight an overlooked region in winemaking. “Once we decided that the premise of the show is to find the best wine in the world and we don't know where it comes from, we needed to find a place where nobody would look,” he says. “And Georgia is a very important wine country, but it's not very well known. Georgia is also the country that says that the original wine was there 8,000 years ago.”

Commonly known as the “birthplace of wine,” Georgia has a unique method of winemaking that involves earthenware vessels called qvevri, which are buried underground for fermentation. “The way they make wine as well is amazing and it's very, very truly natural,” series sommelier Seb Pradal says. But even with the location and the history, Pradal had the challenging job of imagining a wine that matched the description of “the best wine in the world.”

“Of course such a wine does not exist,” he says. Trying to narrow it down to one particular real-life wine was impossible, so Pradal had to create a description in the script that would allow Geffrier and Yamashita to have the proper reaction to drinking the “drops of god.” “It was very important in the script that the actors could understand that by tasting a sip of this wine, it changes their perspective to life itself,” Pradal says. “It's like drinking a sip of wine is revealing your true self in such a way.”

Finally getting a sip of that wine is a cathartic moment for both Camille and Issei, who are going through some dark personal journeys in season two. Losing out on the inheritance, Issei has thrown himself into life-endangering activities like free diving, a hobby that lands him in the hospital at least once. “He’s intense,” Yamashita says. “When I'm playing Issei, it's actually a nightmare, very hard. His situation is crazy.”

Meanwhile, Camille is feeling the pressure of running her father’s businesses and living up to his name, which she starts to avoid with this new quest for the elusive wine. “They changed a lot since the first season,” Geffrier says. “You see in Camille. As an actress, I loved to explore more about the dark sides of Camille.”

But going on Camille and Issei’s journey together has strengthened Geffrier’s and Yamashita’s own relationships with their characters—and with wine. “We've learned so many things through the travels all over the world,” Yamashita says. “We traveled together to at least five countries. Those experiences stimulate our mind to build our character as well.”

“I really love the wine world, and I think it's so rich and so old too,” Geffrier adds, “I was very, very happy to be able to (show) Camille is more confident and now she trusts herself with wine and stuff. It was very beautiful to experience her path as she grew up in those three years and she feels she's in the right place…she thinks.”