In 2009, Decanter
magazine
published its famous
The Power List
of the most influential people in the world of wine and at number 50, below Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson, Miguel Torres or Álvaro Palacios—to name a few names—it put to two hitherto unknown characters: Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto.
“The brothers,” the magazine then wrote, “are behind the famous Japanese wine manga under the pseudonym Tadashi Agi.
His series is possibly the most influential wine publication of the last 20 years.”
That manga
Decanter
was talking about is
The Drops of God
, published by Kodansha, together with Amazon's digital comics platform, ComiXology.
In 2005, the first issue was published.
The success was as unexpected as what would happen years later: a collection of 44 books, translations into five different languages, more than 300 million readers (only between Japan, South Korea and Taiwan),
The New York Times
included it in its list of his
best sellers
of 2002, a wine club, a tasting game and a television series.
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According to Bloomberg in October 2019, the idea for the manga arose when the brothers visited the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti winery (French Burgundy) for the first time, there they tried a Romanee Conti, the Echezeaux 1985—about 6,000 euros per bottle—and Thus was born his concern to write a story where wine was the main protagonist, the
leitmotiv
in which the feelings and lives of its protagonists moved.
The series, directed by Oded Ruskin (
The Baker and the Beauty
or
Absentia
), is available on Apple TV+ as an adaptation of the comic by screenwriter Quoc Dang Tran (
Unknown Parallels
or
Intrusion
).
The plot of the series is the same as that of the manga: the death of one of the most important gurus in the world of wine, Alexandre Léger (in the series), a millionaire inheritance (148 million dollars) and two heirs, Camille Léger (daughter of the guru) and Issei Tomine (the most gifted student in his oenology classes).
She, French;
the Japanese.
The last days before his death, Alexandre recorded his last wish: his inheritance in wines and his properties will be for one of his two candidates as long as they successfully pass a series of tests: one of blind tasting, another of evocation, another of pairing, another of
coupage
, another of harmonies...
Fleur Geffrier and Tomohisa Yamashita, the rivals of 'The Drops of God'.
The story takes place between the beautiful vineyard fields of French Burgundy, Paris, Tokyo and the wine-growing area of Trento, in Italy.
The script is excellently plotted, with overtones of mystery, rivalry, desire, concern, overcoming and a good dose of resentment, forgiveness and love.
All this, marinated by 14 of the best wines in the world (the vast majority French or Italian, but, to mention a few Spanish, at some point a 1999 Vega Sicilia Único is uncorked and in the comic a Ferrer Bobet Selecció is even mentioned. Special 2008—from Priorat—).
The result, eight chapters that should be consumed with the same calmness with which a wine worth more than 500 euros is uncorked, that is, letting it oxygenate, express its essence, inviting it to be enjoyed in slow sips, wrapped in silences and evocations.
This is what the series leads us to: to understand that wine is much more than wine, it is a living being, a concept thought out, raised and pampered to be drunk in that liturgy of excellence.
Put this way, possibly, uncorking these wines would induce us to fear facing them, to not wanting to rub shoulders with the intellectuality that a bottle contains;
However, the story moves between the boundaries of excellence, luxury and everyday life, causing the viewer to want to accompany the protagonists in their search, trying to guess the nuances that are contained in the glass, investigating, only with the sense of smell, what lies behind the wine: its terroir, the year in which it was raised, the grapes with which it was made...
“I don't know how to express it,” says Camille Léger at a certain point in the series.
This wine has it all.
At first, you smell the ink, the spices, the leather, the wood, but then you catch a glimpse of what it will be like in 20 years.
It's as if, in a second, your life is summed up.
This wine was made with love and honesty.
"It's family."
Fleur Geffrier, in the seventh episode of 'The Drops of God'.
This is not the first time that wine and its surroundings have served as inspiration for screenwriters and filmmakers.
To cite a couple of references, let's remember
The Sommelier
(2020) by Prentice Penny: that boy who wanted to be a sommelier in the face of family rejection, who expects him to dedicate himself to the family business (just like in
The Drops of God
)
.
Or, how can we forget
Sideways
(2004) by Alexander Payne?
That wonder sparked the desire to travel to the lands of Napa Valley in search of wine adventures and sparked interest and consumption of Pinot Noir.
In the case of
The Drops of God
, the wines mentioned in the manga were selling out in the wineries at breakneck speed, one of the cases was the French red wine Château Mont Pérat (Bordeaux) of which 50 cases were sold in just two days.
What will happen to the series?
Everything indicates that it will continue to create new followers in the world of wine.
The colorimetry of the production (shades similar to wine), the choice of shots: the close-ups and the overhead shots showing us a seductive and different look;
the narrative rhythm of the images, drawing the passage of time with that same elegance with which the entire story develops.
Everything seems designed in order to understand the spiritual side of wine.
Along with that dramatic braid that surrounds the characters, in eight chapters a manual is offered on how to taste, educate that
muscle
that is the sense of smell or the palate, in short, how to understand that wine is not alcohol but life: “I don't know explains in words, the wine is smelled, tasted, experienced.
Forget the brain for a while and let the senses speak.
It is, above all, a question of sensitivity and opening your mind,” says the character Alexandre Léger in his oenology class at the university of Tokyo.
In short, it could be said that
The Drops of God
breaks the fourth wall and introduces the viewer, turning them into another character, who searches, together with the protagonists, for the answers to each of the tests.
The first season ends by making us understand the reason for the name,
The Drops of God
, which a priori seems not at all accurate.
Will there be a second part?
Who knows?
Everything seems well closed and with little possibility of continuity, but, if we trust the complexity of the wine, perhaps the scriptwriters will discover a new plot in it.
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