Aetrimonde

Today, I’m going to continue my series on Aetrimonde’s alcohols, ordinary and unusual, with a discussion of wines:

• Imperial Purple: The Novan Imperium, like the Auran Empire that came before it, has a long history of winemaking, and wine is the alcoholic drink of choice in the Imperium even today. Sadly for the Imperium’s urban underclass, however, wine fermented from actual grapes is expensive and largely a luxury for wealthy fabricians. Most affordable “wine” in the Imperium is distilled grain alcohol diluted with water and given color and flavor using additives. Imperial Purple is the epitome of such drinks, given an artificial violet hue using beet and red cabbage juice.
• Reveler Sacramental: Although almost as cheap as Imperial Purple, Reveler Sacramental is the real deal, made from grapes grown, juiced, and fermented by a monastic order dedicated to Deum Reveling, the Chancel of Vines. In accordance with Deum Reveling’s doctrine of spreading joy and gaiety to all, the monks focus on large harvests and efficient fermentation over flavor. Reveler Sacramental is thus a serviceable but uninspiring wine, best drank as an accompaniment for food or entertainment and not for its own merits. The wine is sold at cost by the monks, although they share it for the asking at their services, which are rather more convivial than most religious rites.
• Gynnande Onyx: The winemaking regions of the Petty Kingdoms are not large or productive, owing to the region’s backwardness and instability. Currently, the most renowned vineyards are located near the town of Gynnande, where the soil and the local varietal of grape combine to produce a juice so darkly purple as to be almost black (hence the name). Gynnande Onyx is a sweet dessert wine, served at the tables of the Kingdoms’ nobility and exported in small quantities at exorbitant prices, which have grown ever higher as the Iron Duke’s armies press closer to Gynnande’s vineyards.
• Cession Sekt: Sparkling wine was invented more or less at the same time in three or four city-states in what is now the Cession (and it is hotly debated which one of them got there first). The Cession already had a strong reputation for its dry white wines, made from grapes grown in terraced vineyards along the steep banks of the region’s winding rivers. The addition of bubbles further popularized Cession wines, to the point that sekt is now a major export from the region, and its vintners fiercely defend the name against foreign producers seeking to capitalize on its recognizability.
• Formic Mead: In what is possibly the strangest origin for any of Aetrimonde’s alcohols, formic mead is brewed not from honey, but from the crystalline sugar produced as a happy by-product from one of ancient Gobol Karn’s bio-weapons that found a niche in the wild. So-called “honey ants” were engineered to sabotage enemy food supplies: an anthive surreptitiously introduced into a fortification (or catapulted over the walls) would see the inch-long insects seek out and consume any source of carbohydrates they could get their pincers on, refining it into solid sugar while multiplying exponentially and biting anything that got close to the hive. Honey ants are a perpetual nuisance in the south of the Unclaimed Reaches, but a mature hive can contain hundreds of pounds of crystalline sugar which, when dissolved in water and fermented, produces a beverage similar to mead with a unique acidic tang.
• Deepwoods Rootwine: The elves of Tir Coetir, living as they do in the depths of a primeval forest, do not have vineyards. They do brew alcohol from fruit and berries, but their most prized drink is rootwine. This drink gets most of its (actually quite minimal) alcohol content from fermenting fruit juice, but the exact choice of fruit matters little: the supposed merit of rootwine comes from the medicinal herbs, spices, and of course roots that are added to the fermenting pot. According to elven folklore, rootwine promotes everything from good health and keen senses to prescience and a deeper connection with the forest spirits. Rootwine isn’t often found outside of Tir Coetir other than in enclaves of wood elves, but specialist bottle shops sometimes carry it for discerning customers.