A Guide to the Production of Fine Wines
Firstly I'd like to say that this is the method I, Teper, use. There may be better methods and/or methods that work just as well. So feel free to experiment and tweek things wherever you want.
For normal drinking wine for wine tasting points I recommend you grow 3 vines (Appreciation, Balance, Distraction) and mix them in the barrel. The vinyards you use for this don't need to be in the same place unless you want to get the flavour from an individual area. The stats that a wine made from several different grapes is a simple average of the stats. e.g. Quality = ((no. of grapes of type A x Quality)+ (no. of grapes of type B x Quality))/Total no. of grapes
My method is designed to make 12 bottles of a wine at 1 time, in 1 barrel. It is pointless to make 2 or 3 bottles at a time as many of the flavours can not be recognized untill the wine is 3 or 4 or more vintages old. As I suspect you will want to drink your wine as soon as you bottle it (0 vintages old) and at least 1 more bottle every time the vintage changes you may never find out the flavour of the wine if you make less than 12 bottles per fermentation.
Some Facts
Bottled wine improves (or doesnt) when the vintage changes at the beginning of each game month (about 11 real life days). It does not improve from day to day so if you have a thin wine today dont bother trying it again until the vintage change.Flavours are in 64 coord squares, starting at 0,0 (like gems from mines are in 40 coord sqs)
Each area appears to have a specific flavour regardless of the vine type planted in it.
The Vines
Different vines seem to be good at getting different stats :-Appreciation - Quality, determines the finished quality of the wine (There may also be another factor here - alcohol possibly) and improves the chances of tasting the full flavours of the wine and all the flavours in the wine (along with the quality of the glass you use). Quality in the fermentation should be over 30 and 40 - 50 is better.
Balance - Sugar (and skin and colour on certain vinyards). Determines how much alcohol the wine can produce during the fermentation stage. 1 Sugar = 0.5 Residual Sugar = 1% alcohol. So 7 sugar in the must is thoretically enough to get to 7% alcohol, but the higher the sugar the faster it turns to alcohol, so unless you want to wait for T7 for your wine to finish fermenting I suggest sugar in the brew should be 15 or more. It takes about 12 real life days for 15 sugar to become 9% alcohol.
Contemplation - Skin, multiplied by colour determines how much and how fast tannin is produced. This doesn't effect your wine tasting skill at the beginner level so dont bother growing it unless you want to produce tannin.
Distraction - Grapes (and colour on certain vinyards), and only grapes!! Good for increasing the quantity of wine that you produce. Simply reduce the number of these grapes that you use in the fermentation if you want to increase the quality/sugar stats.
The new vines that have recently been released dont seem to give any better stats than mixing the ones above.
Growing one vinyard of each vine (Appreciation, Balance and Distraction) and using the tend methods I suggest below you will easily get enough grapes of sufficient quality and sugar to make 12 bottles of wine.
Target Stats
I aim for the following averaged stats of the mixed grapes:-
Acid - who cares? (Ive not noticed any effect at all from acid, maybe usefull for distilled wine)
Colour - only useful if you want to make tannin - Does not effect the colour of the wine you produce
Quality - 40-50 Effects whether you detect the flavours in the wine and also effects the finished quality of the wine (see "Finished Wine Quality"). (There must also be a another factor at work here as I have made wine with very low quality grapes and got good quality wine and visa versa)
Skin - only useful for tannin
Sugar - 20-40 This is very dependent on how much alcohol you want to have in the finished wine and how sweet you want it to be. 1 sugar produces 0.5 residual sugar which produces 1% alcohol, but the more sugar you have in the mix the faster it will gain alcohol. The remaining residual sugar left when you bottle determines the sweetness of the wine. Less than 2 res sugar = Dry. Over 10 = Sweet (for book 2 purposes). Over 20 = Dessert Wine.
After the wine reaches 12% alcohol it stops increasing in alcohol in relation to the residual sugar. It takes from 1 to 2 days to gain 0.1% alcohol over 12%. My wines are taking arround 25 (rl) days in the barrel to reach 13%. So think ahead and leave a few fermenting right away.
So all you are really interested in is Quality and Sugar.
Warning!!Teppy uses alot of number rounding in ATITD. If you bottle your wine at 13.0% it may in fact be 12.95% rounded to 13.0% and may not count as a 13% wine for drinking purposes. The same may also be true of 12.0% wine. I have no proof that this may happen but my advice is be safe and bottle at 12.1% or 13.1%.
Sugested Tending Methods
My sugested Tend Methods for each vine type with the vigor loss
The tend methods chosen are to boost the stats that the vine type is good at. (as above)
| Appreciation | Balance | Contemplation | Distraction | |
| Fat | Pinch off Weakest Stems -11 | Trim the lower leaves -1 | Trim the lower leaves -1 | Tie the vines to the Trellis -2 |
| Musty | Spread out the Vines -1 | Spread out the Vines -1 | Spread out the Vines -1 | Shade the Leaves -7 |
| Rustle | Aerate the Soil -9 | Shade the Leaves -6 | Shade the Leaves -6 | Trim the lower leaves -1 |
| Sagging | Tie the vines to the Trellis -10 | Aerate the Soil -14 | Tie the vines to the Trellis -10 | Spread out the Vines -8 |
| Shimmer | Tie the vines to the Trellis -6 | Pinch off Weakest Stems -5 | Mist the Grapes -7 | Aerate the Soil -13 |
| Shrivel | Pinch off Weakest Stems -2 | Pinch off Weakest Stems -2 | Aerate the Soil -2 | Pinch off Weakest Stems -2 |
| Wilting | Shade the Leaves -5 | Shade the Leaves -5 | Shade the Leaves -5 | Shade the Leaves -5 |
Using these tends I am getting average stats in this area with maximums quite a bit higher :-
Appreciation - Quality 160-200, 50-60 grapes
Balance - Sugar 60-80, 50-60 grapes
Contemplation - Skin 80-100 skin, 20-30 colour, 50-60 grapes
Distraction - Grapes 160-190
An individual vinyard gives the same tend conditions in the same order every time you plant a new vine, therefore, it is relativley easy to predict the final stats you can get from a vine type and thus determine the best vine for the vinyard. So if you don't get satisfactory stats on your grapes when you come to harvest them swap them around when you replant. I note down the sequence of tends for every vinyard and then use Excel to calculate the "end" stats of each vine type on each vinyard so I can place the vines on their best vinyards. A trial and error method, however, will get you there in the end.
Flavours
The size of each area flavour area is 64 coord by 64 coords, starting at 0,0, so dont put all your vineyards outside your compound because you will only get 1 flavour. (not quite true - see below)
So where you place your vineyards is extremely important!
I place my vinyards on the intersection of multiples of 64 coord grid lines +/-1 coord (ie at 640, -640 I put 3 vinyards at 639,-639 and 3 at 639, -641 and 3 at 641, -639 and 3 at 641, -641. This covers 4 flavour areas and makes for alot less running to tend them.)
My Flavour Grid map http://perl.atitd.wiki/wiki/tale3/attach/G/Guides/Viticulture/Flavors$FlavourGrid
Each lettered black dot has a group of vinyards like the picture. Not all flavours on the map are found yet. Im certain that several of the grapefruit areas will change as I sample the wine as it ages.
.
As your palette improves you will start detecting further flavours in the wine, even in wines that have been made from grapes all grown in one flavour area. My first thought for the reason for this was that the barrel retains flavour so I asked Teppy for steel line barrels to remove this possibilty. He replied "Barrels are not supposed to retain flavour. If they do its a bug because thats not what I intended".
My current theory is that the secondary flavours come from the surrounding regions, probably showing stronger flavour the closer the vinyard is to the nearby region.
Finished Wine Quality
Thin Wine
There are 2 reasons, I believe, for a wine to be thin:-
1. The quality stat of your grape mix is too low - although I am beginning to believe this is not true!
2. The flavour of the region you grew you grapes in is not recognized at that vintage. Take a few minutes to look at Known Flavors. The numbers in brackets next to the flavours are the lowest vintage of a wine where that flavour was recognized. If your grapes are grown in a "Woodiness (2) Burned Smells (2) Burnt Toast (2)" region your wine will be thin untill its 2 vintages old and then show the flavours (see "Theory" below)
When you drink any wine the message tab you recieve tells you the quality of the wine. From worste to best these messages are :-
- A Pleasant wine
- Hint of Character
- Very passable, this very passable
- Gracefull wine, powerfull and rich
- Stunning proportions
- Astonishing wine of power and grace
- Spectacular example of the vintners art
- Luxury wine, compelling and profound
- Thick velvety wine of stupendous power
- Historic wine of staggering proportions
- Even better wine??? (theoretical atm)
- A wine of such monumental proportions you are moved to tears.
When your wine gets 1 vintage older it has a chance of improving. A wine may jump one or more steps up the ladder. About 95% of my wine seems to improve each vintage (probalby also has some dependancy on the quality of the grape mix in the wine).
- For high quality wine in the Beginner book the wine needs to be "Gracefull" or better. (Needs confirming, written from memory)(I have a Very passable wine that counts for good qual - MecFiGerth)(I also have a Very passable wine that counts for good qual - Haqikah)
- For very good quality wine in the Enthusiast book the wine needs to be "Astonishing" or better. (Needs confirming, writen from memory)
I have one wine that has reduced in quality as it aged, it went from luxury to spectacular. This indicates that a wine can reduce in quality with age as well as improve (or I have noted it down incorrectly).
Theory:
(I say theory to cover my petit butt)
When you palette is sufficiently high (say 3 or 4 increases) a wine made from all 1 region grapes may show overflowing flavour of a nearby region if the real flavour of the region is not recognized at that vintage. Im still waiting for proof on this but don't salvage all your grapefruit vinyards until you've tried the wine over several vintages.
The Proof - I hope
I now have a single flavour region wine that was thin at vintage 0. It became overflowing with caramelization at 1 vintage old. Then at 2 vintages old it was overflowing with Burned Smells, intense aroma of Caramelization. Two of the neighboring regions currently show as Butterscotch (caramel). Hopefully at 3 vintages old it will show overflowing coffe, as coffe is not recognised at 2 vintages old.
I think this proves the theory!!
Mixing
Most of what I've said above covers making wine with grapes from a single region. It is of course best to mix grapes of several regions and flavours but I do recomend you discover the flavour of each of your sets of vineyards as soon as you can. It doesn't help much to mix grapefruit grapes with grapefruit grapes (unless you want grapefruit wine).
Now stop reading and go and tend to some grapes !!!!
Feel free to chat me in game if you need further help.
Best of luck
Teper
(always available for a glass of wine)
