Drops of God is a limited 8-episode series on Apple TV that delves into the world of wine. It’s a French production with dialog in French, Japanese, and English — based on a popular Japanese manga comic. This mix of influences makes for a compelling story of family and belonging and finding one’s place in the world. This is a no major spoilers review.

At the start, Camille, a young French woman is called to go see her estranged father as he is dying. When she arrives, he has already passed away, leaving behind a great estate with a wine collection of 87,000 bottles worth nearly 150 million. Her father, Alexandre’, is not just going to give the estate to her; he has arranged a competition to see who is worthy his great collection. The other contestant is his protege, Issei, a young Japanese man from a high-society family who is heir to a fortune in diamonds.

The competition involves a series of tests to see who is the best at identifying obscure wines associated with clues the aficionado Alexandre’ put together before his death. The characters go from French vineyards to posh Tokyo high-rises and to old Italian villages in search of clues. Along the way we delve into the lives of Camille and Issei, exploring traumas from the past as they uncover secrets in their family histories.

At times, it feels like the subject of wine is taken a little too seriously. Maybe a certain amount of snobbery needs to go with the territory or knowledge of wine-tasting is necessary. It’s forgivable here because the acting and writing are rife with symbolism, and the cinematography is so good. The story is ultimately more about finding a sense of belonging that isn’t defined by inheritance than about the wine. There’s a real sense of growth and change with the characters as they discover their origins and create a future.

The idea of a show being a hidden gem might be a little overused, except Apple TV+ really does seem to hide this show. There is little promotion of it within the app or online. One might get the idea that they are hiding a failed show, but it’s a complete story in a limited series. Maybe they don’t think Americans can follow the captions and they promote it for French and Japanese audiences, but with captions on it’s easy to follow the multilingual dialog.

The full series is available now. Watch one episode a night (and two on Sunday) to spend a week peeking into the world of wine, and find out the answer to the question, What are the Drops of God?