Time to build some vineyards. You can put them anywhere, but you'll need to go there 10-20 times per batch of grapes, so close to camp is a good idea. Some people go nuts and build 20 vineyards in the same spot. This is a terrible strategy for wine tasting, because they're probably only going to get a couple flavors. Successful wine tasting requires lots of different flavors.
To maximize the return for all those nails you made, you should build your vineyards some distance apart so that your chance of getting different flavors is enhanced, but not so far apart that tending becomes an epic task. For starters, try placing your vineyards 20 coordinates apart. Ignore any reference to 64x64 coordinate grids for wine flavors, this theory has been proven incorrect. Try to put up at least 10 vineyards, this should give you some interesting flavors.
Vine Cuttings
You'll need at least one vine cutting to get started. Universities of Worship which have viticulture opened will trade you a vine cutting in exchange for a tilipia. Vine cuttings are reproduced amazingly fast though, so if you know a winemaker they can probably provide you with 600 different varieties. The basic strains offer a variety of qualities, some will produce lots of grapes, some will produce high acid or tannin or sugar. For the purposes of tasting, you only need high grape count, high quality, and high sugar. Egypt is lucky to have a crossbred vine which does a good job producing all three of these, called Eigam Copper. Eigam Copper can be obtained through most winemakers and many chairot stops will have vine cuts in a chest nearby for easy distribution. All you need is one, you'll soon have more than you want. It'd also be a good idea to pick up an Eigam Iron if you can, an occasional vineyard won't do too well with Eigam Copper, Eigam Iron isn't as outstanding, but it produces ok everywhere.
Tending the Vines
Take your vine cut and place it on a vineyard. You'll see a list of stats for the vines, most will be 0 to start. You will see the current state of the vine at the top of the window and a range of options for tending the vine below. Each tending method will change the stats for the vine. You can find links for tending options for most vines at the bottom of this page and an abbreviated list of recommended tends for Eigam Copper and Iron here.
The range of possible tends can be a bit overwhelming, but just keep in mind that you only care about grape count, quality, and sugar and you can usually see what the best tend will be. Be careful! If Vigor or Grapes reach zero, the vine dies and all your grapes are lost. Check how much vigor a given tend will cost and compare to the vine's current vigor. Once you've done a tend, you need to wait 60 minutes until you can tend again. Spend the time making more nails and more Empty Wine Bottles. There is no penalty for not tending, you can go away for the weekend and your vines won't change a bit.
Two hours after you plant the vine, you get the option to take a vine cutting. Do so. You'll need more vine cuts every time you want to start a new batch of grapes. You can take a vine cutting every two hours.
Harvesting the Grapes
Ok, so now you've got a fat wad of grapes sitting tantalizingly on the vine. One more tend will kill them all, so it's time to harvest! Make sure you have an empty waiting wine barrel ready, because harvested grapes will spoil quickly. Don't panic, it's like a day or something, not 20 seconds.
Making the Wine
Head over to the wine barrel with your pocket full of grapes. Toss them in. The barrel will report how many grapes are inside. It takes 21 grapes to make a bottle of wine. If you put in 1-20 grapes, you won't get a bottle of wine. If you put 21-41 grapes in, you'll get 1 bottle. It's highly recommended to make no less than 4 bottles in each batch, you'll need to taste the wines at several vintages to find out what flavors that vineyard produces. Best bet is to make the batches as big as you can.
Once the grapes are in, you need to crush them. After that, the option to siphon a taste comes up. This tells you what the wine's current stats are. These qualities will change over time, as residual sugar is converted into alcohol.
For the purposes of tasting, all you care about is alcohol and residual sugar. Grapes which show N sugar on the vine will display N/2% residual sugar in the barrel and will be able to reach N% alcohol. Which makes it easy to judge, to get 13% alcohol, for example, you'd need 13 sugar on your grapes. Another concern is residual sugar itself, a wine requires 10% residual sugar to be considered "sweet", so you'll need grapes with at least 20 sugar to make this.
Most of the wines you need for your wine notebooks can be made without aging the wine in the barrel. Simply put your grapes in, crush them, and bottle immediately. This is often referred to as insta-bottling or making grapejuice (since there's no alcohol).
Aging the wine in the Bottle
Several of the items in your wine notebook will require wine that was bottled 3, 5, or 9 vintages ago. The vintage of the wine is marked on the label of the bottle in your inventory. Each in-game month begins a new vintage. If you're not sure what vintage it is currently, go to one of your barrels that's currently fermenting and siphon a taste. Remember how I mentioned that you're going to want as many bottles as possible? Keep your grubby little hands off your wine until it's old enough!
Flavors
Without a doubt, a number of your wines will be thin at first tasting. The pop up shows that your wines could benefit from aging. Never fear, just wait until the next vintage starts and taste it again! Never thought you'd care about that in game clock, eh? If you don't have it up, type "/clockloc". Remember how I said to make as many bottles per batch as you can? This is part of the reason why, so you can taste at each new vintage. Just a tip, some wine ages don't give many new flavors. If you're eager to find out what flavor you have but don't want to waste too many bottles, I'd sample them at 0, 1, 2, and 9 vintages old. I've found from my own attempts that 3/4 of wines are thin at 0 vintages old, 1/3 are still thin at 1 vintage old, and 1/6 are still thin at 2 vintage old. If you can force yourself to wait, it might be a good idea to do your first taste at 1 vintage old.
Flavor comes from the location of your vineyard. At this point, the current theory holds that flavor is in blobs, possibly circular, that are distributed irregularly. The typical size of such blobs is not certain, but we can get a vague idea from Calixes' study - check out the picture of data from the 16x16 grid of vineyards. To get more flavors, place more vineyards, placed 20 coordinates apart.
Other Random Tips and Notes
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