DROPS of GOD Series Takes Wine Tasting Seriously for Delicious Fun

The new sleek series screening on Apple, DROPS of GOD, is a wine connoisseur's delight, literally.  The drops refer to wine and God alludes to the acute ability to identify wines through taste and smell.  This lush looking series set in France and Japan jumps between French, Japanese and English with a lot of jet setting between countries which lends a lofty, seductive appeal.  We first meet our French, femme fatale, Camille, played with smoldering intensity by Fleur Geffrier, as a young, strawberry-blonde girl walking companionably with her dad in a vineyard.  Camille eagerly agrees to be blindfolded, ready to begin their game of identifying morsels fed by her father.  This proves an easy and enjoyable task until stumped. Her father becomes impatient and demanding she think harder. We're transported into Camille's subconscious immersed into a dense forest.  Here she uncovers moss and correctly identifies the sample.  The timeline jumps ahead a decade and Camille appears as an attractive, self-assured woman.  She's approached at a bar by an admirer offering a drink. Camille declines, explaining she never drinks alcohol.  She excuses herself to take a call from her dad whom we learn she hasn't seen since for eleven years.  Her father asks forgiveness and implores her to visit him in Japan where he's on his deathbed. The reasons for the riff are unkown but she'll consider coming.  She's welcomed back at the bar with a kiss; a ruse to coerce alcohol into her mouth.  Furious, she lashes out and collapses in a fit of rage bleeding profusely from her nose.  "Stranger Things" happen.  Camille decides to visit and is whisked to Japan by limo and private plane.  The allure and paradox of the last decade is infused with another intriguing character, a soon to be rival for her father's inheritance and legacy, Issei (played with icy charm by Tomohisa Yamashita).  Camille's arrives posthumously and learns of her father's final will and testament. The entire, mega-million wine collection and estate will be inherited by either Issei, whose benefitted from her father's recent mentoring or Camille.  The caveat being the two must compete for it in a wine tasting contest.  The stage is set for two formidable adversaries to bring their expertise to battle.  We've savored sips of both's enigmatic backgrounds and crave for more.  There's plenty to appeal to one's senses.  The masterful cinematography features rich shots of glamorous cosmopolitan cities, modern architecture and rustic countrysides.  We're learning alongside Camille of her father's adopted Buddhist faith.  From these initial wafts of intrigue with the promise of a full bodied melodrama, there are hints of an intoxicating new series that should prove  addicting.