Wine pairing: 2018 Chapelle D’Alienor (2nd wine of Canon-la-Gaffelière), St. Emillion, Bordeaux (Encore)
With a description starting out with talk of apples and nectar, I almost allowed myself to believe Kami no Shizuku was going to feature a white wine this week. But no, as always it stays in its lane. 100% chance of red, 100% French, 80% Bordeaux. It’s about as predictable and conventional – and frankly boring – as any wine selection could be, which is rather puzzling given that this entire series is about wine. Sure, I happened to be drinking a right-bank Bordeaux just as the Fourth Apostle was (Lafleur is just down the river, in Pomerol) but I find myself getting irritated by this myopia to an irrational degree. Give us some vinicultural diversity FFS.
Apart from that, this was all very much to type for this show. Big coincidence, fairy tale of the week, and crazy pacing. More so than most weeks I really got a sense of just how rushed these events were. The theme for the Fourth Apostle is “first love”, and each of the stepbrothers has a memory connected to it. For Issei it’s a girl named Juliette he met in France (coincidentally I fell in love with a girl by that name on a trip to France, though she spelled it the Shakespearean way as she was English). For Shizuku it’s Sorata Aki, a violinist he met while taking enforced lessons as a teen.
This being The Drops of God, of course Shizuku gets assigned to pick the wine for a cruise ship music-wine event themed around first love. And if that weren’t coincidental enough, Aki is the violist brought in (from France, where she now lives) to headline the music side of events. They remember each other to be sure, but you get the idea that their fleeting encounter meant a lot more to Shizuku than it did to Aki. Her real first love, it seems, is the musician she was engaged to who moved back to Japan to pursue his dream (apparently to be a street musician in a jug band). Still want more? Shizuku’s kouhai at work knows the guy from seeing him perform at the park.
As for Issei, he’s allowed Saionji to keep her job despite that stunt she pulled. He bolts for France in search of Juliette, but all he can find is information – sadly, she’s passed away after what seems like a pretty difficult life. But fortunately for him his memory of her syncs with Yutaka’s description, and leads him to the apostle – a 1994 Chateau Lafleur. Shizuku gets close – but he chooses a ’92. Why did he miss? Because he sentimentalized that his father’s first love should have been his mother, who matches the ’92 in his mind. But Yutaka’s real first love was obviously someone else (something to do with apples).
I actually quite like that as a conceit – Shizuku missing because he went with his own heart rather than trying to understand his father’s. It’s profound in a way this series can sometimes be, which runs counter to its dependence on sentimentality and coincidence. So we’re now tied up 2-2, though I’m more convinced than ever that doesn’t really matter because the real story here is Issei and Shizuku coming to see each other as brothers. And that having been Yutaka’s motivation for this competition all along. Either way, is it too much to ask to get a goddam white wine on the table? It can be baby steps – something from France and Bordeaux, like a d’Yquem.
