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So you would like to buy wines from around the Heartlands, eh?! What do you know about wine? Drink it? ahhh . . . Listen to an old Gnome. I have been in the business for more years than your grandfather remembers. The wines in Aurora's catalogue are not the only ones across the realms, they are not even the best. For most cases they are far from it. You must remember that Aurora is a merchant, and a very good one, but she is no wine maker.
The secret of buying fine wines is to know where to find them and where to sell them. Wine comes from grapes, that you know, but grapes for wine are not ordinary grapes. Wine grapes are not the grapes you eat. Grapes for wine are usually smaller and sweeter than the grapes you eat. A grape should be sweet, sweet enough to make alcohol from its sugar. It should also be sour, sour enough so the taste of the fruit is present and not only the alcohol. So you ask, how can you make a grape both sweet and sour. Well, the secret is in the soil and in the temperature.
Soil:
A vineyard needs fertile soil, but not too deep or too soggy. The woodlands of Cormyr are perfect for this. If you walk across Cormyr, you will find many farmers keeping their own small vineyard and using a village winery to make some of the best wines in the Realms. However, south toward Marsember the land turns marshy and salty and the grapes grown here are useless for wine. The soil around Featherdale, and more important in Sembia, are very good for vineyards, it is ex-woodland and not too deep. Vineyards in Sembia tend to be huge, hundreds of yards wide. Rich merchants hire entire villages to vintage the vineyards every summer. The grapes are brought to huge wineries in the ities and wine is made. The wine made this way is of course worse than his brother across the mountains. If one end of a huge vineyard is ready to be made into wine, nothing can be said about the other end, and remember the whole vineyard must be vintage at once. However, Sembian wines are common across the realms, not because of their quality but for their price and availability.
Good places for vineyards can also be found around Berdusk (the western realms), and on some high flat lands in the Old empires. The lands in the forests of Aglarond are also good places to build a vineyard, as long as you can fend off the monsters at least.
Temperature:
Grapes must have a very cold winter, or at least some very cold winter nights (high land in the desert). However, they should be protected from frost, so most of the land north of the Waterdeep - Zhentil Keep line is out of the question. (Neverwinter grapes are protected from frost by magical means for most of the year, and are allowed to freeze only at vintage time). Grapes must also have a hot summer, the hotter the summer the sweeter the grapes (and less sour, so beware).
Cormyr is perfect. It is for these reasons wines from Cormyr are the best nonmagical wines in the Realms (well almost . . . elven wine is better). Sembia has a warmer climate in winter, but still falls into the good place's category. The western realms temperature is also very good for wine. This is the main reason grapes from the Shining south are for food and not wine, the temperature is hotter and the grapes become very sweet. The temperature in the land of Aglarond makes normal grapes very sour, however a strange variety of grape has found its niche in this country. The grapes are shriveled and very resistant to cold, they are smaller and are sweet although not much sugar is present in each grape. Strange grapes, but good wine.
Enter my store in Arylon, and you will learn more about wines.
Vintage:
What I can't say for wizards, I can say about their magic . . . it can help. When whole villages gather to vintage grapes, some rich merchants have it all made. Merchants in Sembia hire wizards to harvest the grapes within a day, many hire charlatans to summon elementals for the job. Grapes harvested this way never get to a winery. You must take care so few leaves are taken with the grapes. You should care that the tree does not die in the process, and that you take most of the grapes. However, some wizards develop magical spells that are able to take only the grapes out of the vineyards, the cleanest job around, and the wine is better.
Be advised, work on a vineyard does not begin and end in the summer, you must tend it the whole year. You should remove some of the flowers on the vine before they turn into grapes, a vine can only support so many grapes. The more grapes you leave on the vine the worse the wine becomes. So keep this in mind, would you make cheap wine for the masses like Sembian's merchant princes or fine table wine to grace the nobles of Suzail.
White Wine:
White wine is for everyone. It is made from green (white) grapes and is quick to ferment but does not get better with the passage of time. Bear in mind, you have to separate the juice from the grapes and the leaves very quickly. The juice must ferment over time. Allow it to rest for about a year in an oaken barrel, and Voila, you have White wine. There is no use aging this wine it just doesn't age.
Red Wine, Barrels:
Now, in Red lies the mystery of wine. Red wine is made when you crush red (black) grapes and leave the crushed grapes in the juice. The color is found in the peel and, in my humble opinion, most of the taste as well. You ferment it over a set amount of time and then pour it into an oaken barrel. An Oak is an Oak is an Oak, and in every realm there will be oak if there is wine to be made. Cormyr's forests supply most of the oak for this industry. You will learn over time that wine acquires much of its taste from the barrel it is in.
Now, Sembia has tried to use pine for the wine industry, what they developed is very strange. The pine resin passes to the liquid and makes a very strange wine. It has a higher content of alcohol and a very bitter aftertaste, regrettably some of the Island peoples have developed a taste for it, and it can still be found in Sembia.
Red Wine, Bottles:
Wine in a cellar should not breathe. Wine in contact with air turns quickly (a day or two) into vinegar. This is why bottles are capped with cork, it expands in contact with liquids and does not let the air pass into the wine. Red wine does get better as it ages. As time passes, the small particles in the wine mixture dissolve fully into the wine giving it a deeper color and fuller body. A couple of years in a cellar do nicely for most wines, however don't forget to turn the bottles so the particles don't sink and gather in the button of the bottle.
Drinking wine:
Get yourself a friend, for it is wrong to drink alone. Open a bottle of wine (White for fish and cheese/ Red for meat) and allow it to breathe after its long captivity. Sniff its rich and peer at its deep red and black colors. Savor its taste and understand all you have done creating it. And only then you should think about the business, for it was never a business, it always was an Art.
Submitted by Koby Nahamias <s2729545@techst02.technion.ac.il>
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