Comics / Manga

Les Gouttes de Dieu - Tome 1 (The Drops of God - Volume 1)

By Hervé St-Louis
February 29, 2012 - 11:57

Les Gouttes de Dieu is a popular maga series about wine tasting that was begun in 2005 by creators Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto. The series is at the core of a new genre of manga based on the discovery of wines, great and not so great. Through an intrigue based on beer representative Shizuku Kanzaki, readers are introduced to the complex world of wine tasting, instead of sitting for hours in a classroom, to achieve the same level of education about wines.

When Shizuku Kanzaki's father dies, through his will, he pits his son against a newly adopted one who is a wine expert. Each must solve a series of riddles about the great wines of the world  in order to inherit the magnificent estate and wine collection of Shizuku's father. But Shizuku is not a wine expert and has to rely on the sense of taste and smell that his father helped him develop as a child. In this story, Shizuku has to answer a riddle about a wine he tasted after his father's will was read, but first he must help his new friend, apprentice-sommelier Shinohara, find a replacement for a rare wine after she broke a unique bottle. Will Shuzuku's adopted brother Issei Tomine figure out the riddle of the great wine first?

This book reads like a classic movie from the 1980s called Money or even a television series like Dynasty. Instead of dealing with the world of finance or oil and gas, the topic is wine. Many characters appear in the story, each playing a role in the story. Don't let the soap opera parts annoy you though. There is a strong intrigue here, and the creators are taking their sweet time to introduce various plots readers will encounter in latter volumes.

This popular series has not been translated into English yet. If you can read French, that's the best you can do for now. I understand that there are scanalations of this book, but I don't encourage anyone to get them. This is a magnificent series. A lot of work was put into this book. There is a lot of information about wines and technical terms related to wine tasting. Do you really want to trust some pirate somewhere with little understanding of this field to give you a proper translation? I wish an English language publisher would pick up the rights to this series quickly. It's kind of a shame after all this time. Glénat, the French publisher, has at least 12 volumes available already.

The story can be fun, but, of course, the best part is how the creators interpret the experience of wine tasting visually and without any other senses to support their descriptions. Of course, the artwork is solid with accurate rendition of wine bottles and gorgeous characters in every pages. Sometimes, the artist will use comical cartoons to illustrate emotions, but these are easy to understand.

I really recommend Les Gouttes de Dieu. The series can easily be ordered through Amazon Canada, even for Americans.

Rating: 9 / 10

Last Updated: January 1, 2026 - 11:07