Wine production

Joseidon1

Poet
Hello there,

here is another worldbuilding post from me, but this time about a special type wine production. In some places in Germany like at the rivers Rhine, Neckar and Mosel, there are vineyards at the mountain slopes. According to a city tour in Besigheim I attended to the people there started to place vineyards at the steep river sides of the Neckar river, because there was no other way of using the area for agriculture. The farmers in the area built small drystone walls to form terraces wide enough for a row of plants, with some spaces for stairs and cable constructions for lifting material up and down. Due to the vineyards being located often at the South side of the hill, the grapes still get sun and warmth even though they are North of the Alps. In addition, the stone walls save some warmth during the day and keep the plants warm during the summer nights.
This style of producing grapes is very dominant in the place I live and I feel like most river sides here are looking like that. I imagine that at least some parts of the Vale should feature this style of wine production, as it is described as very fertile and I feel like they drink enough vine to make importing all of it very expensive and therefore should make it by themselves. Another option would be the mountainous parts of the Westerlands. This would also make excelent use of the big mountain sides besides just having them covered in pastures and forrests, though the translation to minecraft might get difficullt. But in theory, 45° slopes could be transformed into this. If you are interested into more information about this, it might be worth to look up the German "Steillagen" or "Steillagenweinbau". I have added some pictures of the landscape to give you more context.

This German site features some nice images from the vineyards and beautiful medieval architecture of Besigheim https://www.delicioustravel.de/besigheim-ausflugsziele-stuttgart/
 

Azulejo

Bloodmage
Staff member
The critically-acclaimed series "Vineyards growing where they shouldn't be" presents its third season, brought to you by Azulejo:

Just like in the Douro/Duero and in the rivers in Germany, south facing slopes are used to grow vineyards in wetter and cooler regions in Northern Spain. In Asturias there are some in Cangas del Narcea, the only place were it's both hot and dry enough for them to thrive.
dop-cangas.jpgvinedo.jpgla-do-cangas-de-narcea-el-vino-asturiano-6082-1.jpg

And in Galicia there's the Ribeira Sacra, were vines are cultivated deep into the step gorges of the rivers Sil, Miño/Minho and Cabe.
sil-canyon-ribeira-sacra-ourense-galicia-spain_95419-5194.jpgribeira-sacra-in-galicia-52366.jpg1280px-Belesar_002.jpgmatacas-viewpoint.jpgIMG_3137-1038x576.jpgistockphoto-508338876-1024x1024.jpgRibeira-Sacra-paisaje-i497683082.jpg

Also, appart from more sunlight hours, heat preservation and usage of terrain otherwise left as is, growing vineyards in slopes is useful to control the amount of water that the plant recieves. On rainy climates most of it will run off, and the stone walls keep the ground as moist as needed.
 

Renly_Baratheon_

Envoy
Pronouns
he/him
Of course I'll have to defend the Vale's Swiss identity policy with some Swiss inspiration. Tbh, I definitely don't know much about wine production but as far as I can tell the bigger scale wine production is in the southern cantons (surprise surprise) of Wallis (Valais in French) and Tessin (Ticino in Italian) and a few other French speaking regions like in vaud on the coast of lake geneva. The ones in Wallis look pretty cool because they have these fun seemingly irregular platforms.
Wallis II.pngWallis.jpgWallis III.jpgTessin.jpgWaadt.jpg

In the German-speaking part there are less wine hills but there are some, for instance near the Schloss Heidegg in the canton Luzern, which is close to where I live and which btw would also be a cool inspo for a castle or holdfast there is some wine production and also near the Kartause Ittingen in Thurgau there is a nice hill for wine production (again the Kartause would be cool inspo for a project anyway).

Schloss Heidegg.jpgKartause Ittingen.jpg