Wine pairing: Marques de Riscal Rioja Reserva, Spain, 2021
If I may Moulin-à-Vent for a moment, Kami no Shizuku’s singular focus on red wines – and almost all French at that, despite our Italian vacation last week – is a bit irksome. Is it like this in the manga, or is the anime staff cutting all the Chablis and Sauternes chapters? Fun fact – worldwide white wine outsells red in terms of volume, and it’s not that close. If you go strictly by value red wins, because so many more reds are expensive. Still, white wines are the wines of the people. There are plenty to appeal even if you’re a wine snob. So what gives here?
If that’s one big trend here, another would be long-lost romance. This series is very much about the romance of wine, so that definitely tracks. This time around it’s Akie, an old college flame of Fujieda-san who stops by the bar to see him for the first time in 27 years. She’s divorced and bereft, and he’s single. Fujieda pours her (on the house of course) a glass of Château Puygueraud, actually a fairly humble Right Bank Bordeaux. But it has a story – the vineyards sit on reclaimed land that was patiently prepared for decades before vines were planted. The symbolism is not subtle here, but it’s not intended to be.
It’s much grander and more famous Chhateau de Bordeaux that dominate this episode. And indeed, you could almost think the world of wine consisted of Bordeaux and Burgundy alone based on these first six eps. Speaking of old flames, Miyabi-chan’s middle school hatsukoi Takasugi is now a hotshot in the retail division, and wants the wine division to procure the wines for their new high-end grocery stores. But it’s to be only wines from the five grand Chateau de Bordeaux – the premier cru classés from the official classification of 1855. All Takasugi wants the wine division to do is handle the procurement.
Well, that’s not their job (and what I wouldn’t do to have their job). And what’s more Takasugi’s declaration that because they’re the most expensive and hard to get they’re definitionally the best is offensive to their sensibilities as wine boffins. So Miyabi proposes a taste test, which he agrees to but only on the condition that he can poach her to his department if the great Chateau Margaux (the choice for the tasting) wins. The chief agrees, but only if the wine division gets to curate the wine list for the stores if they win.
For help, Miyabi turns to a couple more junior high classmates – twins who now run a wine retail business along with their dad. Honma-san tags along, offended enough by Takasugi’s philistinism to rage on behalf of other French wines. First a tasting of the five great houses – even at wholesale, holy crap – which leaves Shizuku suitagbly impressed. Here’s the thing, those wines actually are the best of the best – maybe not peerless in any given year, but highly-prized for a reason. Still, as the twins’ pops shows Shizuku, there are off years even there. And that gives the team their opening.
The trick, it seems, is to find the right Margaux to compete against. Not a wine from a bad vintage, already fading and tired, but a middling one – from a year good enough to still be outstanding but vulnerable to a challenge from an upstart. For help Shizuku turns to Issei (I figured it was either him or Robert Doi). And Issei is willing to have some fun with this, pouring Shizuku samples of the ’70 and ’78 Margaux (seriously, does this guy ever have a bad day?). If he can solve his riddle, Issei says, he’ll help Shizuku find the right Margaux and the right wine to slay the dragon.
