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New York Times Looks at Kami no Shizuku Wine Manga
posted on by Egan Loo
The New York Times' Dining and Wine section features an article on Kami no Shizuku (The Drops of God), a manga which highlights different wines of the world. The main character of the manga, Shizuku Kanzaki, faces a challenge from his late wine critic father. To gain access to his inheritance, he must identify the 12 extremely unusual wines named in his father's will.
The article interviews Kami no Shizuku's creators, the brother-and-sister team of Shin and Yuko Kibayashi who write under the pseudonym "Tadashi Agi." They are wine lovers themselves with a 3,000-bottle collection, but have no formal training. Instead, they strive to describe fine wine in words that would make sense to average readers. Some of the attributes they have attached to particular wines have included "the voice of Queens' lead vocalist," "reminiscent of a marsh north of Tokyo," and "a woman…with black hair."
The Times piece also notes that the manga has had a significant effect on wine sales in Japan as well as in South Korea, where vintages mentioned in the manga's pages have sold out almost immediately. This trend was noted last year by the wine industry's decanter.com website, and reported by Great Britain's Telegraph newspaper in September.
