Les Gouttes de Dieu - Plot

Plot

Kanzaki Shizuku (神咲 雫) is a junior employee in a Japanese beverages company mainly focusing on selling beers. As the story opens, he receives news that his father, from whom he is estranged, has died. His father was the world renowned wine critic Kanzaki Yutaka (神咲 豐多香), who owned a vast and famous wine collection. Summoned to the family home, a splendid European style mansion, to hear the reading of his father's will, Shizuku learns that, in order to take ownership of his legacy, he must correctly identify, and describe in the manner of his late father, thirteen wines, the first twelve known as the "Twelve Apostles" and the thirteenth known as the "Drops of God" ("Kami no Shizuku" in the original Japanese edition and "Les Gouttes de Dieu" in the French translation), that his father has described in his will. He also learns that he has a competitor in this, a renowned young wine critic called Toomine Issei (遠峰 一青), who his father has apparently recently adopted as his other son.

Shizuku has never drunk wine, in part a reaction against the ruling passion of his late father, nor had any previous knowledge about wines. However, with strong senses of taste and smell, and an uncanny ability to describe his experiences from those senses, Shizuku submerges himself in the world of wine and tries to solve the mysteries of the 13 wines and defeat Issei. In this, he is also helped by knowledge gained from his time as a child with his father, and supported by his friends (including trainee sommelier Shinohara Miyabi (紫野原みやび)) and colleagues in the newly formed wine department of his company, which he now joins.