Best-selling Manga comic about wine: Kami No Shizuki 神の雫

Two brothers on a quest to find the ultimate classic wine.

A wine-critic father challenges his two sons to find 12 legendary wines. The father dies, suddenly; and it becomes a race to succeed, for whomever finds them all first will inherit the father's £9 million cellar...

Kami No Shizuki – The Drops of God – is a 10-volume Manga series so popular in Japan and South Korea sales of the featured wines shoot up 30% after they are mentioned in the series.

"Any individual wine lucky enough to be name-checked can expect to sell an extra 50 cases within 48 hours," reports The Daily Mail.

The wine descriptions are brilliant: 'Just like a classic rock concert!' says one brother after taking a sip of a 2001 Mont-Pérat made by French winemaker Thibault Despagne.

Here is a part of the comic about Rosso Miani from Fruili-Veneto region in Italy. The region is more well-known for their white wines (pinot grigio, ribolla gialla), so this is a very interesting choice, yes, and a very interesting red wine...


Apparently there is a spin-off video game, called Sommelier... let's just hope it's not, erm, too violent.


Link: Kami No Shizuki 神の雫

In Wonderland: Screaming Tea Party, Bar Rumba

"At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!'

- Alice in Wonderland

Wednesday night. I am alone, both big and small at the same time like Alice down the Rabbit hole; I'm at Bar Rumba in Shaftesbury Avenue. "Drink Me?" asks Alice to the bottle. Oh yeah, I think I will, I'm in the mood for a riddle.

But every time I try to leave for the bar, I can't – what if I miss something? - what are they doing? Oh, I know this song, I think... what's going to happen next? Alice might not like a Tea Party, but I do. Especially one like this: a peculiarly-deranged, Screaming Tea Party.

This is not your average fairytale: it is a hyper collection of vicious riffs and scary lullabies. The band is based in London, but it feels like a trip inside the Manga story, Abandon the Old in Tokyo. The bassist/singer is in a sexy sarong, yet the guitarist is shredding his gaffa-taped axe and wears a black kerchief over his face. Then there's the very lovely kawaii-des-ne? girl on the drums that sorta makes your heart melt.

Every expectation is berzerked: kamikaze-like jumping from amps, old punk favourites readdressed like they OWN it, yet out of nowhere, a touch of the cymbal so soft it's painful; like a sweet lotion after an aural thrashing. The set itself became a fascinating riddle: Death Egg, a futuristic lullaby contrasts with the London punk redux of Between air and air. Like all good songs they are familiar, yet new and uncanny; I found myself saying, in my best nineteenth century voice, "That is very curious!"

I didn't leave the set for a drink... which is a very good sign at a gig, even if it is rather strange for a tea party. But it makes perfect sense at a Screaming Tea Party. What will they do next? Curious and curiouser – and, unlike Alice, I definitely want to go again. And get a bit stupid.

Link: Screaming Tea Party's myspace

The fifth taste: umami

There's more to taste than sweet, sour, bitter and salty. There is also umami: the fifth taste. What I'm always searching for in a wine, in everything.

"Both the word and the concept are Japanese, and in Japan are of some antiquity. Umami is hard to translate, to judge by the number of English words that have been suggested as equivalents, such as savoury, essence, pungent, deliciousness, and meaty. It’s sometimes associated with a feeling of perfect quality in a taste, or of some special emotional circumstance in which a taste is experienced. It is also said to involve all the senses, not just that of taste. There’s more than a suggestion of a spiritual or mystical quality about the word."

Link: The fifth taste

For the Sake of it 為

私は為を好む。

I am in Tokyo this week. I have no idea what this Sake is called or even what the alcohol level is: but guessing from this photo of me in front of my computer, it is pretty high.

If you know the English name for it, if there is an English name, please send me an email or message.

Rice wine: it's very good. I liike, I liike.

Turning Japanese and a bit mad:
Anna Karina in Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965)

See you back in London in a week.
一週間のロンドンで会おう。

Love,
愛 jmd
x x x

happy delusions

Here's me on Japanese television...

Just reading my notes from a wine tasting. Cause "I know what I like":




Yesterday, before a blind tasting of 40 wines, I'm sure I heard we were tasting Chardonnay. And I swear they were the best 40 Chardonnnay I had ever tasted, even if there was a small voice in my head saying, "this is weird". Then, after writing them all up and scoring each one, I found out they weren't Chardonnay at all. It was all Riesling.

(Riesling is not oaked, light and lime-citrus crisp: the opposite to Chardonnay which is usually oaky, heavier and buttery smooth.)

But I know what I like...

I like television and I like pink and I'm quite...
surprisingly clever

Which made me think, does it really matter what I tasted if I enjoyed it? Maybe it's better to stay happily delusional...

I am the Tsuji Nozomi of wine. "This (wine) is like a room full of stuffed animals and when you go in it's all pink and like the floor is covered in heart-shaped fluffy rugs."