‘Drops of God’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap – That’s A Lot Of Wine

Every time I watch Drops of God, I’m surprised again by how engaging it is. And it’s about wine! I don’t even drink wine; I don’t understand or appreciate anything about it, yet I’m endlessly fascinated by everything that happens in this show. Like the Season 2 premiere, there’s a lot of wine talk in Episode 2, “The Quest”, lengthy spiels about aromas and top notes and forbidden grapes from far-off lands. But because the show is structured like a mystery, intimate knowledge of the subject isn’t really required, at least not beyond understanding how each clue gets the main characters from point A to point B.

Early on in “The Quest”, the responsibility for discovering the provenance of Alexandre’s ambrosia falls to Camille, since Issei is still laid up in hospital, out of intensive care but suffering from what we later learn is a severe pneumopathy. In other words, his lungs aren’t in good condition, so he needs to avoid excitement and strenuous physical activity.

In his absence, Camille halts the garbage men to retrieve the empty bottle of wine from the trash and begins to investigate the beeswax that had been used to seal it. Luckily, Philippe’s friend Raphael is a beekeeper and well-versed in all things buzzy and botanical. Initial efforts to identify the precise bee that was used to make the wax by determining its melting point don’t yield anything, but there is an alternative — sending the wax away for a microbiological analysis. Luckily, Philippe also knows someone in a lab.

Issei isn’t as excited by this development as Camille is. He thinks the better course of action would have been to send the wine itself to the lab to determine the grape variety, but that, of course, is impossible, since Camille tipped it down the sink in anger. Issei isn’t thrilled about this either, nor about his father departing France with a quickness now that he’s out of the ICU. When Issei calls him to ask why, he explains that he simply can’t go through this again, referring to a vacation in Okinawa years prior during which Issei almost drowned (and that he didn’t even know about).

Despite Issei’s generally dour demeanour, Camille doubles down on her investigation into the grapes, trying to explain a very peculiar minerality that she can’t quite put her finger on. She ropes Thomas into accompanying her to the Vassal Research Center, where the standard classification methods of ampelography — the science of identifying, describing, and classifying grapevines — aren’t much help. Luckily, many grape varieties are vinified; in other words, turned into wine, in order to preserve them, so Camille asks to taste them.

This is no small task. One of the most visually compelling scenes in Drops of God Season 2, Episode 2 sees Camille and eventually Issei, who discharges himself from the hospital and hitches a ride in Natasha’s camper van all the way to the research center, sampling over 100 bottles of wine, many of them vinified from “forbidden” grape varieties. When they finally land on the right one, there’s a lovely panning shot of Camille imagining the various grapevines tangling around her, a needlessly good image for such a dull activity.

It’s also compelling because of the character work. Issei clearly isn’t well enough to be out and about, and Natasha finds his behaviour utterly confounding (she calls Dai and asks him if tasting over 100 wines when he should be in the hospital makes him crazy, and he says that just shows he’s getting back to normal). Things are also still very frosty between Issei and Camille. But they have a lead — Herbemont.

Herbemont isn’t just a forbidden grape; it’s apparently one that can drive you mad. This turns out to be a myth, though. The grape was indeed banned, but that was because it was resistant to all diseases and didn’t need treating, hence it fell foul of the chemical industry. Such is capitalism. But it’s a lead. And this, coupled with the results of the wax analysis, allows Raphael to isolate a very specific spot where the wine may have been bottled — Acropolis Hill in Athens.

And off we go. A lab in Athens leads Camille and Issei to a man named Alexi Pipia. Camille goes looking for him in a lovely old church, while Issei catches his breath outside, but by chance, Issei is greeted by the man himself. Originally from Georgia, Alexi is a deeply pious man who keeps fewer and fewer bees and makes less and less honey. The wax he sends back to a monastery in his village of Kartli, since wax is used to make candles, and candles are the primary objects of prayer, thus giving the wax itself a holy contour. Oh, and more importantly, the monastery also makes wine.

Camille finally catches up to Issei, since he had disappeared to enlist Dai to find him a trustworthy contact in Georgia. She’s shocked to learn that he managed to meet Alexi in person, and even more shocked when a taxi turns up to take him to the airport. When she asks if he was planning to leave without her, he denies it, but it’s clear from Camille’s expression that she believes he was. And that compelling note of ambiguity between the leads is what Drops of God Season 2, Episode 2 leaves us with.

We’ll see how they get on in Georgia.