Vintner's Guild

In the Eleven Cities that surround the Sea of Jars, the Vintner's Guild is one of the major member organisations of the Commercial Guilds. The organisation holds a near-monopoly on the manufacture of wine in the cities and seeks to promote its products at the expense of other liquors.    

History

  The operatives of the Vintner's Guild make a great deal of their conceit that they are the oldest of the organisations brought under the purview of the Commercial Guilds, arguing that it speaks to the organic and time-tested nature of their techniques. Since time immemorial, grapes have indeed been cultivated as a valuable cash crop in areas of the Alluvial plain which will support them. In practice this means the west of the region, particularly along the western banks of the Chondolos River, where farmers have a long tradition of raising several finely-variegated grape strains and cellaring the resulting wine in pits. Such pits are often sealed with turfs after the wines are laid down and not reopened for moons or years. It is thought that air may influence the flavour of the drink (for better or worse depends on the variety and vintage of grape) and the amount of it which gets to the raw juice should be carefully controlled.   Thauatologists have offered alternative theories as to the significance of this practice. Most of the grapes grown on the western banks of the Chondolos produce red wines which bear at least a passing resemblance to blood, especially when blotted up on bleached or undyed fabric. Both Qroyatan Medys and Jephryos Kalamb have proposed that the practice of burying wine in this way is a folk-memory of a practice of blood sacrifice by the Boles of Dahan in the pre-Wesmodian era. The theory is that the Boles of the region ensured the fertility of the lands surrounding their villages by spilling blood from sacrifices (Medys suggests animal; Kalamb has ventured to suggest human) into ploughed furrows and covering it as one would a sown seed. After the Wesmodian Reformation, in theory, the lost influence of the Boles lifted this economic and emotional burden from the communities of the region while leaving a general superstition that the interment of vividly-coloured fluids was advantageous - giving rise to the practice of burying red wines in order to ensure their quality. The notion makes broad sense but to date has not been closely argued or backed up with specific research, and none of the handful of neo-Dahanian cults which have sprung up in the last decade have passed comment on the matter.   The Vintner's Guild themselves have dismissed the notion. They argue that the burying of vintages is an artistic practice rather than a religious one, claiming in a variety of proclamations and publications - mostly written for circulation among the aristocracy of Chogyos - that they possess an elaborate combination of mathematical and creative methodologies by which raw juice can be fermented to produce a variety of tastes and textures of wine. These techniques are said to have been developed via intergenerational processes of trial and error by the hereditary proprietors of vineyards in the Chondolos region. The Guild initially took form, they argue, in the early days of the Chogyan Hegemony as these craftsmen began comparing notes and actively experimenting to further the quality and variety of products destined for broader and more discerning customers. These groups profited from the patronage of aristocratic families in the Hegemony and their research and creative experimentation continues to this day, five centuries later.   Sceptics have observed that there is little direct evidence for this tradition, and paint a somewhat less flattering image of a substantially post-Wesmodian institution. Following the Reformation, they argue, the Commercial Guilds sought to curry favour among the Chogyan aristocracy by providing them with luxury goods that possessed an air of intellectual creativity. Operatives of the Guilds therefore promoted the making of wine - already a drink more popular in Chogyos than many other cities - as a creative enterprise. This proved successful enough for the Guilds to set up a semi-permanent quango to oversee the project, which in theory evolved into the modern Vintner's Guild, an organisation which mostly aestheticises the much older practices of wine-making for the edification of a target audience.   This notion is popular among commentators in eastern cities outside the traditional sphere of influence of the Chogyan Hegemony, and may amount to little more than cultural sniping by people with an intergenerational grudge against the Chogyan aristocracy. Whatever the case, the Vintner's Guild is a major force within the Commercial Guilds.  

Operations

  The Vintner's Guild owns only a few vineyards outright. Rather their operations, headquartered in the Chogyos Customhouse, consist of liaising closely with vintners working in rural communities on the Alluvial plain, mostly along the Chondolos River, particularly its west bank. Guild officers of Iron (or, if the mission is sufficiently valuable or the external party particularly esteemed, Copper) rank visit these vintners periodically to audit their procedures, sample their wares and make estimates on how much the wines might sell for. When a purchase is made, the Vintners Guild operates a small fleet of barges on the Chondolos crewed by Lead-ranked employees (many of them indentured) to transport the wines to warehouses in Chogyos. The crews of these barges make up the large majority of the Guild's membership, which is actually fairly small.    Once the wine reaches Chogyos Copper-ranked members of the Guild then oversee its further distribution, either selling it on to customhouses in other cities or - just as often - vending it to the Chogyan community. The Vintners see themselves as something of a cultured elite within the broader organisation of the Commercial Guilds, and their livery - vermillion rather than the saffron yellow of the other guilds - makes them instantly recognisable. Senior members of the Vintners assess wines via an arcane system of merits and benchmarks and guide customers on their purchases, occasionally travelling to cities other than Chogyos to advise foreign buyers. Recent years have seen numerous such embassies to Oluz and Halumay.   The Vintners do not interfere with the operations or trade of rural winemakers who choose to sell their wares independently of the Guild. The esteem attached to the Guild, however, and the authority their assessments of wine bring to the practice, are held in high enough esteem that they essentially monopolise access to the most valuable customers in Chogyos society. Sceptical commentators from other communities dismiss this as snobbery, but the fact remains it can be difficult for the proprietors of vineyards to actually make a living without the organisation. Some manage to do so by selling their wines to independent merchants who sell it on to taverns in Loros. Whether this is the cause or the effect of Loras's reputation as a den of disreputable winesinks vending cheap rotgut tends to depend largely on a commentator's opinion of the Commercial Guilds in general.