Nectar of the Gods: this is how a TV series about wines conquered us

We often write that some of the most interesting serial products on the market come from Apple TV+, and Nectar of the Gods, the new dramedy produced by Legendary Entertainment based on the Japanese manga series by Tadashi Agi, bestseller of the New York Times, is no exception. The merit is simple: having created a series capable of keeping the viewer’s tension high not thanks to chases and breathtaking twists and turns, but rather to a simple wine tasting. Filmed in French, Japanese and English, Nectar of the Gods it is a series that speaks, in fact, of wealth, of inheritance, and, of course, of wine. It all starts in Tokyo, when the wealthy Frenchman Alexandre Léger (Stanley Weber), creator of the famous Léger wine guide and an emblematic figure in oenology, dies at the age of 60. She leaves behind a daughter, Camille (Fleur Geffrier), who lives in Paris and hasn’t seen her father since her parents’ separation when she was nine years old, and who, once she hears the news, flies to Japan to find out her fate : upon reading the will she discovers, in fact, that her father left her an extraordinary collection of wines, the largest in the world according to experts, about 86 thousand bottles for a value of more than 100 million dollars.

All beautiful and fragrant, except for one detail: Camille learns that she is not the only beneficiary of the fortune. His joker father also saw fit to include the brilliant winemaker Issei Tomine (Tomohisa Yamashita), a sort of godson who took under his wing in his last years of life. Léger’s wishes are simple: to force his biological daughter and his spiritual son to compete in a duel consisting of three trials, all related to wine tasting, in order to take home the inheritance. The victor will inherit Léger’s empire, while the loser will go home empty-handed. It’s just a pity that the fight is unequal, given that Camille, despite having been educated since childhood to have a refined palate, he knows nothing about wine and, worst of all, he has never had a drop of it. Camille experiences her relationship with alcohol so badly that a sip is capable of making her either pass out or make her nose bleed like a geyser. Understanding how the girl will be able to find a way to claim her inheritance becomes the premise for quite an extraordinary series which will take the viewer from Japan to France, a land to which Camille will return to familiarize herself with wine and its robustness thanks to the knowledge of a close friend of her father, owner of a vineyard.

Creating tension and adrenaline around a scene in which a character smells a glass of red wine borders on the masterpiece, and makes Nectar of the Gods one of the most interesting series seen recently. From flashbacks that help us understand the protagonist’s painful past to the whirlwind drama that sees two boys compete for the inheritance for different reasons – Camille to prove herself in a world that seems no longer to belong to her, and Issei to forge his way against the opinion of his family -, the series stages a colorful puzzle of languages, colors and environments capable of making us feel like citizens of the world in the broadest sense of the term, with France shot in its warm, sunny tones and Tokyo photographed in the typical greyness of large cities. A contrast that is also confirmed by the opposite nature of the two main characters: on one side Camille, outgoing and prone to outbursts, and on the other Issei, calm and collected. Look at it without prejudice: the less you understand about enology, the more interesting you will find it – at a certain point we discover, for example, that some wines served in high-end restaurants have hints of chalk and pencil -. Naturally think, while you’re at it, even which wine to uncork to accompany you in the vision, you won’t want to gulp mineral water.

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