I'm not understanding how to control the components of the wine

[Betelgeuse]

I have yet to hit ideal body or acidity etc. on barbera and chardonnay, I can sometimes but it feels completely random. I start with different levels of stuff and make the wines pretty much the same every round and am hitting star components what feels like completely randomly. I haven't gotten the body right on barbera once yet, and I can't find any information in the game or googling that tells me how I'm supposed to control this..? Or is it really just random.

[yveshohler]

for Example you don't need to harvest as soon as you recive the harvest card, you can waith and increase the sugar in grapes. Click on the field to see the stats

[Betelgeuse]

Originally posted by yveshohler:

for Example you don't need to harvest as soon as you recive the harvest card, you can waith and increase the sugar in grapes. Click on the field to see the stats

I realize now that helps with acidity/sweetness, but i still can't get the body high enough for barbera. I'm not sure if this is through equipment or not, I noticed there's a machine attached to aging that i thought might help but the description isn't there. Or I can't get tanin high enough on chardonnay to fulfill a special order, but again, I'm not sure why.

Feels like there's quite a bit more that could be covered in the tutorial or be put under descriptions- like how to increase or decrease the components because none of that is really explained in the game so far except through trial and error (I think?), and early on everything is so limited it's just leaving me questioning why things aren't going anywhere. I had no idea letting the harvest card sit there would help with acidity because I'm not looking at the field every turn, didn't realize I really had to or that there was any reason to.

I even went and did a new game just to trigger the tutorial again to look for hints that I may have overlooked to see how to increase body etc. So currently I'm just stuck putting out wines that I can't use to fulfill all 3 special orders I have doing the same thing over and over and over until I just unlock more stuff. Also the random? reductions are killing my profits, seems like almost every bottling there's a reduction, heat wave, hail storm etc. that's just tanking my quality. It's pretty frustrating

[ShadowMage]

I agree, it would be helpful to have better explanations in many places!

For the issue you're having with body, you'll have to wait until you unlock the 3rd type of barrel (For Barbera, at least). Different barrel types will provide different amounts of body with the shortest time period for aging, though from my observations it still only bumps up by one extra point for each additional turn of aging.

[NotForMe]

The game behaves as a rouge-lite? just a little bit, there is technology you need to unlock in order to reach the perfect bottle of wine.

Then It's all about taking notes, or observing the notes in game to get hints on how to reach the different desired effects.

Sometimes you might want to pull the grapes early, sometimes you might wanna pull them on the last day possible, what are your special orders looking for!? experiment until you learn all the little tricks you need, unlock the extra equipment, maintain the health of your grape fields, to get all stars... then CRY because its only good enough for an 81 T.T

Then go back in, so you can unlock more tech, and reach that 100/100. I'm not even close yet.

[waltduo]

Here is what has worked for me with Barbera and Chardonnay:

Barbera (Harvest grapes when ready)
Body-8, Sweetness-2, Tannin-2, Acidity-10
(Press at around 9% or higher and pump 1-2x)

Chardonnay (Do Not harvest early)
Body-6, Sweetness-3, Tannin-2, Acidity-6
(Press at around 49%)

Hope this helps!

[Moroulia]

Hi there!

--On discovering ideal wine rankings--

If you enjoy doing things the harder way, one way you can find out what the ideal components of each wine is that after the first time you make each one, there will be a journal entry about it. So if you go back to your Chardonnay tab, for example, you'll see the bars with the squiggly gray-to-green colors. The boxes that are filled out are the boxes you have received a ranking for at some point. The more green it is, the closer it is to the "star" rating. So if you notice that the box on the left is slightly more green than the box on the right, then it is hinting that the "perfect" rating is lower than the ones you have achieved.


--On controlling wine components--

Many of the components of the wine within the game are really closely reflected to the process of making wine IRL.

Body: (Pressing, barrel aging, bottle aging) Pressing can increase body but it's easy to over-press; take a look at the other tab in the pressing process when you have that menu open to see how its affecting your grape quality. For Char, most of your body is at the mercy of this process until bottle aging. Char seems to dislike barrel aging but I need to fact-check this one. For Barb, you can gain a lot of body through both barrel aging and bottle aging.

Sweetness: (Harvest timing, primary fermentation process) IRL, Grapes tend to increase in sugar over time and reduce in acid content. This is dependent on temperature and climate, so hotter summers will have a different effect than a colder one on grape's sugar and acid content. Fermenting grapes for longer reduces sweetness. Sugar = sweetness; Sugar = food for yeast = longer fermentation process consumes more sugar, reducing sweetness.


Tannins: (Pressing, aging) For red wine making, the grape skins (where the tannins live) are in contact with the liquid for longer than in white wine making, which is why red wines will generally rank higher in tannin content. You can gain some tannin control with the pressing process and also with aging.

Acidity (Grape harvest, malolactic fermentation to reduce acidity) If you need high acidity, most of your acidity is at the mercy of harvest. For Barb harvest, it seems to be a balance between taking a hit on acid to get a more ripe, higher quality grape. I usually take the L on an acidity box or two.

Typicity This one confuses me a bit but I think it's about how closely you processed the grapes similarly to how they would be IRL, and also getting close to the star rankings.


--Harvest--
So far most of my experience in-game is with Barb and Char. I tend to harvest Barb based on the color of the grapes. When examining grapes, look for consistently evenly sized grapes (helpful for white grapes that don't change color as obviously). I like to wait until Barb is evenly dark in color before I harvest.

--Avoiding faults--
Barb--do at least a slight punch-down, always, to avoid Mercaptan. IRL Mercaptan happens sometimes because of the chemical concept of reduction, or, not enough exposure to oxygen during processing. Mercaptan is known for having sulfur in it. Personally having difficulty figuring out the difference between "reduction" and "mercaptan" faults in-game.

Char--I keep getting the reduction fault on this one, can't figure it out yet. Googling the wine making process says "limited exposure to air during winemaking". Maybe I am fermenting too long?