My friend Ristu introduced me to this comic that discussed different wines, it was too advanced for me to follow, but I made a stab at it. Here it helps explain the gaining popularity of wine in asia, from the NY Times:
In Tokyo, wine sellers monitor his weekly pronouncements before adjusting their stocks accordingly. In newer markets like Taiwan and urban China, his recommendations are turning the newly affluent into wine converts. And in Seoul, South Koreans now hold forth on “terroir” and how a bottle “marries” with a particular dish without blinking.
Never mind that Shizuku is a comic-book figure, the hero of a manga series, “The Drops of the Gods,” created and written by a middle-aged Japanese sister-and-brother team. Asian readers who have never heard of Robert M. Parker Jr. scrutinize the comic hero’s every sip, learning about wine in words and images that may seem strange to traditionalists.
The series has evoked images as disparate as the painting “The Angelus” by Jean-François Millet (to explain a wine’s richness) and a marsh north of Tokyo (to describe a difficult yet rewarding vintage).
“These are images that emerged from wines that we actually drank,” said Yuko Kibayashi, 49, who created the series with her brother, Shin, 46. “It’s like a game.”
The Kibayashis, who write under the pseudonym Tadashi Agi, came up with the series while collaborating on another comic more than four years ago. During their work sessions, their spirits ran high as the wine flowed.
“We found ourselves looking for the drama behind the wines we were drinking,” Mr. Kibayashi said. “It started with one wine, ‘This wine is definitely a woman.’ ”
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