Wine - Which We All Love

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

In medieval Europe wine was consumed by the church and the noble and merchant classes, ale being the drink of the general populace. Wine was necessary for the celebration of the Catholic Mass, and so assuring a supply was crucial. The Benedictine monks became one of the largest producers of wine in France and Germany, followed closely by the Cistercians. Other orders, such as the Carthusians, the Templars, and the Carmelites, are also notable both historically and in modern times as wine producers. The Benedictines owned vineyards in Champagne, (Dom Perignon was a Benedictine monk), Burgundy, and Bordeaux in France and in the Rheingau and Franconia in Germany; indeed, they were the first to plant Riesling grapes in Germany. Though they did not originate viticulture in these areas, they made it into an industry, producing enough wine to ship it all over Europe for secular use. In Portugal, a country with one of the oldest wine traditions, the first appellation system in the world was created.

 

A housewife of the merchant class or a servant in a noble household would have served wine at every meal, and had a selection of reds and whites alike. Home recipes for meads from this period are still in existence, along with recipes for spicing and masking flavors in wines, including the simple act of adding a small amount of honey to the wine. As wines were kept in barrels, they were not extensively aged, and therefore were drunk quite young. To offset the effects of heavy consumption of alcohol, wine was frequently watered down at a ratio of four or five parts water to one of wine.

WP.

 

To make a place in TDM involving a vineyard stretching over a wide expanse, a house, barn, few shacks here and there, a fence, the next vineyard, shacks and so on I suppose would be impossible because no part of the terrain is ever occluded enough. Plus the shrubs would have too many polygons from the branches (unless they're sprites as in T2). Any thoughts? comments, general discussion?

[Crispy]

You might be able to get away with it with ruthless optimising, but to be honest I don't see the point in creating huge vineyard expanses, unless it's just eye candy "in the distance"; they don't strike me as being particularly interesting gameplay spaces. Just big fields with perfectly straight leafy fences running down them.

 

Having smaller, walled vineyards to give the impression of a huge vineyard (plus clever use of skyboxes to give the impression of large, inaccessible - and faked - fields out in the distance), with the main gameplay spaces being barns and houses and a church and stuff - now that might be interesting. And it solves your performance issue.

[OrbWeaver]

How disappointing, I was hoping this thread was going to be a discussion of WINE, the Windows compatibility layer for Linux.

[sparhawk]

I thought the same.

[saxmeister]

I thought so as well, but I'm glad it turned out to be wine of the drinking variety!

 

I'm glad to hear there are so many fans of wine in TDM! Should we organize a virtual wine party?

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

I'll get the cracked wheat crackers and the cheese.

[DopeFishhh]

In the current day we have huge vineyards covering hectares. But thats because we have the technology to do so. Back then the largest would have been an acre or so. Walling in the vineyard wouldn't have been such a bad idea, trying to keep pests/people out. and would give an interesting setting for the mission, obviously this person has a bit of capitol behind him to build a wall around his vineyard, it would be a good method of getting into the property.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

Method of getting in: a big set of wirecutters. *snip snip*