Had a rough night and woke up in a teacup – who among us hasn’t done that?
Wine Pairing: Reh Kendermann “Crafted Collection” Riesling Landwein, Nahe, Germany
One notable thing about Kami no Shizuku is that it hasn’t really spelled out the rules for this “Twelve Apostles” contest in advance. Whether that’s because of the anime’s bonkers pacing or it’s the same in the manga I have no idea. The upshot is I’ve been taken by surprise on more than one occasion. Like, apparently if Robert Doi were to go by the written instructions, Issei and Shizuku would be eliminated for both missing any of the apostles? Like, wow – that’s harsh. But given that would be no fun for anybody, between their begging and the executor’s nudging, Robert agrees to given them a three-day omake.
Both were in the Côtes du Rhône, clearly the right region. Shizuku chose a Gigondas, but knew before the reveal that he’d got it wrong. Issei chose a 1981 Châteauneuf-du-Pape and also whiffed. Their reasons for missing might be polar (rookie mistake vs. arrogance and jaded palate) but wrong is wrong. I almost had the idea that the two might team up to find the right answer and keep the contest going, but nope. Issei heads off to try and rediscover his youthful innocence while Shizuku jumps right back into the mortar and pestle of marathon tasting.
If we know anything about The Drops of God, it’s that coincidences are a given and every apostle has a fairy tale attached to it. When Shizuku stops by Takasugi-san’s frou-frou market to taste some more wine, he happens to smell a sculpture (yeah) made of wine corks. And amongst the hundreds of corks he smells the the nostalgic wine he’s sure is the apostle. Turns out the sculpture was created by an artist named Fuse-san, but when the two of them go to visit him his granddaughter reports that he suffered a stroke and has been virtually bedridden ever since.
This being Kami no Shizuku, of course there’s a direct connection. Fuse-san had one more wine he wanted to drink before he died, but was never able to communicate which one it was. So the granddaughter is searching for the same wine Shizuku is, and Fuse-san spent time at a winery in the Rhône with his son Kazuki, who tragically passed away at sixteen. The wine Fuse wants one last glass off is the one he promised to share with Kazuki when he grew up, and never could. Thus beings the usual treasure hunt, eventually leading to Fuse’s studio and then to the sketches he hid inside the wood carvings he gave his granddaughter for every birthday. Sketches he made with wine instead of paint or charcoal – including the Third Apostle.
As for Issei what I find kind of interesting there is his relationship with Yutaka. This is another element that isn’t spelled out clearly. Did his mother marry Yutaka, after Shizuku’s mother passed away? If so how is it that the two of them didn’t spend time together as boys? I’d been assuming that Yutaka “adopted” Issei as an adult (it happens here) as a sort of proxy since his own son wasn’t interested in wine. But now it seems their connection was much deeper than that.
Finding this memory leads Issei to the Third Apostle too, which I guess means we have no disqualifications and the winner of the round is whichever one of them describes it most poetically (as Robert sees it). Knowing it’s a Rhône and made from 100 year-old vines does narrow it down some, but there are still a lot of possibilities within Châteauneuf-du-Pape that it could be. And the third thing we know for sure about The Drops of God is if a wine is important to the plot, it’s not going to be a white.
