Kami no Shizuku presents a vexing little problem. I unsurprisingly find myself longing to nurse a glass of wine as I watch it. But the nature of the anime schedule – and my own – dictates that I watch it on Saturday morning. I’m not a morning drinker (the occasional Champagne brunch notwithstanding) and being in Japan, I drink a lot less wine than I used to. Today I poured myself a little tulip of port (it lasts much longer than table wine once opened), and that seemed to scratch the itch well enough.

The other problem with this show is a more substantive one. It puts me in mind of something like Ikoku Nikki, where I struggle between appreciating the anime for what it is and lamenting what it could have been (in that case with the time and inclination to adapt the entire manga). The Drops of God isn’t that good (as anime, at least), don’t get me wrong. It’s clearly made on the cheap and the pacing is perceptibly dizzying. But as someone who loves wine and anime, it’s a fulfilling experience in its own right. And even though I haven’t read the manga or seen any of the many live-action takes (don’t ask me how), I feel as if the pedigree of the writing is still shining through.

Maybe you have to love wine to get past all the production stuff, I don’t know. Fortunately, I do. I especially love Pinot Noir generally, and the Pinot of Burgundy. What I’m getting from these first two episodes is that the Shizuku vs. Issei dichotomy comes down to poetry vs. prose. How does one appreciate wine, love it? Is the description of wine a science or an art? In truth of course it’s both, but it’s not hard to see which makes better fiction. This stuff is not meant to be taken literally. We don’t see beautiful women in impressionist strawberry fields when we nose a Richebourg, even an Henri Jayer (at least I don’t – not that I’ve ever had a Jayer). It’s metaphorical – a story being told.

That’s the other element of this, see. Wine tells a story – that’s the point. The terroir, the winemaker, the weather of the vintage. Through Shizuku we explore the idea of what wine makes us feel more than what it tastes or smells like. It’s a romantic interpretation, and indeed this episode with Anne and Souichirou was overtly romantic. But it’s also true that of all the senses, smell is the one most closely tied to memory. A bottle of wine is a TARDIS, a time capsule to your personal past. And I think that was the point of that final tasting in the mansion with the ’82 Mouton-Rothschild.

We got a nice little detective story here too, with Shizuku and Miyabi trying to track down the spirit of that ’99 Cros-Pantanoux (a legendary postage stamp of a vineyard that Henri Jayer rediscovered). Through Fujieda-san the trail leads to Robert Doi, an eccentric old coot with a quonset hut in Ginza and a large role to play in the story. And to Emmanuel Rouget, Jayer’s nephew (and current steward of Jayer’s wine empire). A bottle of his Cros-Pantanoux is “99%” there – not enough to fool Anne, but close enough. Did the elderly Jayer really return to supervise the winemaking while his nephew was ill, as the rumors say? Unless Rouget decides to share, we’ll probably never know for sure.

The romance of wine. The poetry of wine. Love. That’s what Kami no Shizuku is all about in the end, I’m guessing. Shizuku is fine giving Issei the keys to his father’s house, but declares flat-out that he’ll never give him his father’s wine. No doubt Issei’s description of that Bordeaux was technically superior to his, but Shizuku’s was truthier. It’s a romantic notion, that a novice like him could nose out (pun intended) a serious expert like Issei using the power of love. But that’s the conceit of this series – that wine is about the emotion its taste and aroma make you feel more than the taste and aroma itself. As a wine lover, I’m all-in on the notion.