I’d given up on The Drops of God manga series by Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto long before it concluded. I was glad to see Kodansha released it all digitally, but there was a lot of it, and it was substantially similar in structure, the amount of it I read.
I came back to the sequel series, Drops of God: Mariage, because it has a twist I’m more interested in: pairing wine with food, the “marriage” of the two. I’m not that big a drinker, but I greatly enjoy good food, particularly gourmet dishes. (Although I didn’t realize when I started that it ran 26 volumes. We’ll see if I have more patience this time.)
I’m talking here about Drops of God: Mariage volume 11, specifically, because it has even more of an interesting twist. Shizuku — our protagonist, and one of the two men in competition trying to find the world’s greatest wine — is working with a chef whose restaurant isn’t doing well. He’s a good cook, but he knows nothing about wine, so Shizuku helps him figure out a wine list and food offerings.
I found the information on the economics of restaurant management particularly interesting. How they create pairings, considering the cost of the wine and food, and the difference between lunch offers and dinners. Plus, since it’s an Italian restaurant, they emphasize wines from that region in this volume.
Of course, we get the exaggerated visions created by the way the wine tastes, but they’re given just a few panels each, and there are more of them, as we’ve got a number of wines recommended in this volume. All the characters are passionate about their jobs and their learning and serving customers — overall, it makes for the kind of restaurant I’d love to discover.
English (US) · 