A new drama series on Apple TV+ based on the Japanese Manga series. It’s about … wine. Released on April 21. Crazy and obsessive, even for Berserkers. Based upon the first two episodes - also excellent. Drops of God BBC review
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Oh this is a great find. I read the manga many years ago and really enjoyed it.
Thank you for posting about this.
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Oh that’s fantastic! I remember reading the series and hoping it’d get adapted.
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Thanks for the heads up! Found the trailer, will be checking this out:
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AppleTV has been on fire recently, really loved Shrinking and Ted Lasso! I can’t wait to check out this show when it comes out.
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Don’t forget Bad Sisters, another classic
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This is great! We watched the first two episodes last night - with two bottles of Champagne!
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Check out Severance if you haven’t, it’s amazing. Also excited for Silo.
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I read through some of the books. I recall how absurdly accurate the books were about wine. My only concern is that if they keep the same wines as are in the books, we are going to have a run on some wines soon. Stock up on your Chablis now!
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Interesting tidbit. While the TV series seems to focus mostly on French wine, the Japanese manga also incorporated California wines, including a 2014 Pisoni Pinot:
The recent issue “Yume and Utsutsu” (which roughly translates into the word “trance”) stars Pisoni Estate Pinot Noir. In one section of the comic, newly translated, the judges have poured a mysterious wine which “looks like Pinot Noir. It is “not Burgundy,” however, but an American Pinot Noir–and “not just ordinary American Pinot Noir,” either. “Bright ruby” in color, with a “beautiful graduation” that indicates its “high quality,” this wine bears a “distinguished background” and “bloodline.”
Ultimately, the judges (along with readers of the manga), reveal this wine as 2014 Pisoni Estate Pinot Noir. A wine whose “terroir has cool weather and the wind required to make great Pinot Noir,” it is, Drops of God suggests, exhilarating to drink: a wine that tastes as full-bodied in the mouth, as the resonant notes of a bass sound in the ear.
I watched the first two episodes and thought they were quite well done.
If you have Amazon Prime, you can also read the English translations of the Manga for free on the Kindle app. I started that today to see if it would be something I’d like. I’m not sure if comics are for me.
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Watched episode three. While it was good, I have three criticisms (note: contains spoilers):
- Is the whole romantic triangle necessary? Reminds me of Emily in Paris.
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Confusing a 99 and a 2000 CB? That was a huge wine mistake IMO. Ok, there were lots of wine mistakes. VSU and CB only share one grape, and it is not the primary grape. These are two of my favorite wines, and I can definitely tell them apart.
- As I recall, one of the foundations of the series is that the daughter used imagery and experiences to describe and relate to wine, and the somm used deductive reasoning. This seems to have been lost in the show.
There were some fun points too. Love the use of language. I like that each of the main characters has flaws and a sympathetic back story.
Overall a good show, but lacks some of the precision and themes of the books.
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I cringed when I saw the trailer but was cautiously optimistic given Apple’s streak of making decent TV lately. Episode one and two were fine (ish) aside from the forced romantic triangle thing, but then… (spoilers ahead)
- They made up an entire domaine and wine (Domaine Gigon Lignage), something the manga would never do. Surely someone would have made a drinkable lignage they could weave into the story?
- Vega Sicilia Unico and Cheval Blanc being made from the same grape? Only if you ignore the other 90% of what’s in bottle. It’s like they hired ChatGPT as a consultant and just took whatever the output was and didn’t fact check it. It was the easiest thing to fact check too.
- The training for teaching Camille how to tell the two apart could have come from a place of “hey your memory is a bit spotty but here’s some key notes that will help you tell the difference, and then here’s some key vintages and what makes them differentiable” instead of just “lol one sees old barrels and the other new, they’re the same wine otherwise, glhf” and not hurt the story telling in any way. 1999 and 2000 were wildly different vintages and they could have actually taught viewers something.
I do like that they found a way to westernize the over-the-top visual style that’s used to emphasize key moments in the manga - the use of colored powder is pretty fun.
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#1 is a great selling point to my wife.
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My wife’s reasonable complaint is that nobody’s palate is this good. I replied that we appreciate some superhero movies in which they throw cars.
I loved the red herring of celery root leading them down the wrong path.
A quick vertical on a much cheaper Bordeaux would have been much more useful in determining vintage than, “you’re on your own.”
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Will there be an episode on cellar organization?
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Why all the fu¢king spoilers, you guyd ar making me dizzy.
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spoilers being blurred out on a forum where many people drink isnt a good idea
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This isn’t the case. Everyone in the comic uses imagery/experiences to describe and relate to wine. In the comic, it’s also not a daughter but a son. Many differences in the makeup of the two rivals between the comic and the show.
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