Drops of God’s second season premieres this week on AppleTV. The television series’ first season, adapted from the popular manga of the same name, was initially set to be a limited series, but due to the overwhelming praise from critics (it’s still 100% on Rotten Tomatoes) and winning an International Emmy for Best Drama, the series was given a second season to continue newly-discovered siblings — Camille (Fleur Geffrier) and Issei (Tomohisa Yamashita) — on their journey into the mysteries of wine.

​“We went beyond what the original story of the manga was,” says executive producer Klaus Zimmermann during the series’ press junket. “Our starting point was actually the stories about the characters in the original manga that we hadn’t had the chance to tell because those are 44 volumes. We just had eight hours for the first season. So we inspired ourselves by what was in the manga to get the characters moving forward.”

Set three years after Season 1, Camille is living happily, running her own winery with her fiancé, Thomas (Tom Wozniczka), while Issei has been traveling, doing dangerous, risky activities that are borderline life-threatening. It’s shown that the long-lost siblings have bonded and developed a loving relationship, but there is still a bit of tension on Issei’s part. Despite Camille giving Issei half the winnings after winning the final competition, Issei feels confused and lost over the defeat, finding that only dangerous activities give him a thrill.  It’s only when they’re given another challenge from their late father, Alexandre Léger (Stanley Weber), that Issei feels some spark back in his life.

“We wanted another challenge given by the shadow of the father,” says Zimmermann. “What could it be then – [finding the solution to] the mysterious wine that could be the best in the world. That propels our characters beyond who they are when we meet them in season 2. That’s what we felt we wanted.”

​With Season 1 focused on their competition against each other, now that the siblings have found each other, it begs the question, “Will they work together or against each other?”

​Geffrier reveals that it hasn’t been easy for the siblings to truly bond, as they’ve lived separately for 30 years, in different countries, and have experienced different cultures and languages. But their love and passion for wine bring them together, as does their broken relationship with their late father.

​“In the second season, they built this relationship,” she says. “I think they don’t understand each other very well. They’re both stubborn in their life. Camille is very happy where she is. She’s very happy to see her brother and doesn’t want anything bad to happen. She just wants the good things.”

​Yamashita smirks, calling his character, Issei, selfish and childish, but with good reason. Issei knows he has his newfound family, but he still feels this emptiness because of growing up with an emotionless and unsupportive mother and a biological father who wanted nothing to do with him.  

“Deep in his mind, family is born and unbreakable,” he shares. “That makes his attitude very childish, but at the same time, he unfortunately didn’t have true love from his mother. Maybe that makes him weak. That weakness [causes him to have] an attitude. But, deep in his mind, he trusts [Camille].”

Alexandre left a bottle of what he considered the world’s greatest, most mysterious wine, and failed to find its origins. Camille and Issei have taken it upon themselves to solve the mysteries behind it.

“There was an obvious option to propel them again into a competition,” Zimmermann says. “We strongly felt against that because we wanted the audience to experience something different. We really wanted something unusual and different. Now that they know each other, and there was a competition before – there was a winner and a loser, so what is the consequence of this? It’s more interesting moving forward with the story.”

Though Issei and Camille do have each other – and both have very supportive parents (Issei’s loving adoptive father and Camille’s doting mother)- they are still both haunted by their biological father, Alexandre.

“The most important part of a family is the bond between them,” says Geffrier. “How do you define yourself in front of your parents – or not? For me, that was the most important part for Camille. The quest for mystery wine is very important, because it’s all related to their father. Their father’s presence is very strong, even if we don’t see him at all. He’s always there somewhere, and she’s struggling a lot with that.”

​Yamashita agrees, “I think this story is learning about the outlook in life through the wine.”

The series was previously praised for its oenology knowledge, crediting renowned sommelier Sébastien Pradal for his expertise behind the wine details. With this season, he really had to go above and beyond in creating a mystery to solve for the fictional wine experts. Pradal admits it was challenging because it all has to be rooted in reality.

“We first tried to find the place where the wine was born,” Pradal explains. “Then we tried to find a good investigation that the audience would follow without being bored, so we had to find a great variety. That led us to this amazing place — the library where the forgotten variety [would be found] — in the south of France. It was very important. We’ve taken some true pieces of history of grape varieties and mixed them all together to build the investigation.”

Even the wax on the bottle was incorporated into the story’s mystery, stemming from a certain beeswax. Pradal and his team had so much fun coming up with these ideas. He says, “It was a good way to do this.”

Though wine is a central part of the story, it’s the relationship between Camille and Issei that is the heart of the series. It’s beautiful to see two people from different cultures and backgrounds come together to form a family bound by blood and respect.

Zimmermann says that was the biggest interest they had in creating the story: having the two cultures — Japanese and French — confront each other while also sharing an admiration for each other. He says, “How can you play with this difference of culture where you’re curious, but at the same time, it’s not yours? That was really something that we were interested in exploring and even had them [played] a bit too extreme.”

Yamashita quickly learned the differences between Japanese and French culture while shooting the first season, especially the French way of greeting friends. Now, he’s used to it and embraced it.

​“I was very confused at the beginning of shooting season 1,” he laughs. “I was shy to hug and kiss every day. Towards the end, I realized language and culture are just exterior. Through filming, I’ve learned that there are more important things: the shared passion for making quality content.”

“And, we build out relationshop,” Geffrier adds. “It’s funny. From season 1 through the end of season 2, we developed our relationship alongside the characters. They didn’t know each other before and had to learn to be siblings. We had to learn to be partners on set, and it worked very well.”

Geffrier recalls Yamashita giving her a hug goodbye, telling her he was going to miss her. She says it was like when Issei hugged Camille for the first time. She reveals, “I knew at that point that he became a friend, and it was a good season. We built this relationship even moreso, despite the differences we have. I think it’s really beautiful.”

​Yamashita says he felt so much love from the cast and crew on set, even though they didn’t speak the same languages. He remembers the makeup artist, who didn’t speak any Japanese or English on set, but he felt this maternal love from her. He says, “I didn’t get what she wanted to say, but I totally understood what she tried to tell me because she treated me like a real son. So she gave me a lot of love. That love changed my thought process after.”​

Drops of God Season 2 premieres on January 20 on AppleTV.