Shizuku Kanzaki is a young Japanese salaryman who works as a sales representative for a major beer company, having deliberately turned his back on the world of wine. As a child, he was subjected to a bizarre and grueling training regimen by his estranged father, Yutaka Kanzaki, a world-renowned wine critic. This childhood, filled with forced tastings and memorizing the scents of objects like leather belts and pencils, made him resent wine entirely.

When Yutaka suddenly dies, Shizuku is called to the reading of the will, expecting little. Instead, he learns that to inherit his father’s vast and priceless wine collection, valued at over two billion yen, he must succeed in one final challenge. He has one year to correctly identify the twelve wines Yutaka designated as his Apostles, and finally the legendary supreme wine known as the Drops of God. Shizuku initially wants nothing to do with it, but the situation escalates when a rival appears. His father secretly adopted the famous and brilliant young wine critic Issei Tomine just before his death. Known as the Prince of Wine, Issei is everything Shizuku is not: confident, trained, and deeply knowledgeable about fine vintages. The will decrees that only one of them can inherit the collection.

Forced into a high-stakes competition, Shizuku reluctantly dives into the world he hates. He is aided by Miyabi Shinohara, an apprentice sommelier who becomes his guide and partner, helping him translate his powerful natural senses of smell and taste into the language of wine. The series follows their journey as they travel to vineyards, cellars, and restaurants, solving the poetic and often abstract riddles left by Yutaka. Each riddle describes an Apostle wine not by its name or region, but by a vivid, synesthetic image, such as a specific landscape, a memory of a woman, or a musical chord.

Shizuku and Issei engage in a series of head-to-blind tastings, each trying to identify the correct bottle. While Issei represents a technical, analytical approach to wine, Shizuku learns to rely on his raw, emotional palate and a growing, heartfelt connection to his late father. The competition is not just about money but about understanding the soul and passion that Yutaka poured into his life’s work. Over nine episodes, Shizuku transforms from a beer salesman who never touched wine into a worthy heir, uncovering not only the identity of the legendary Drops of God but also a deeper bond with the father he rejected. A separate multilingual adaptation produced by Hulu Japan and Legendary Television was released in 2022, reimagining the protagonist as a French woman named Camille Léger, with Tomohisa Yamashita portraying Issei Tomine.