Chương 108: Chapter 105 - Wine First

The brewery did not smell like beer. Not today. It still held grain, still held heat, still carried the familiar underlying note of yeast doing what yeast did best, but all of it had been pushed aside by something heavier, sweeter, and far less subtle. Crushed grapes had that way of announcing themselves. Alric stood just outside where the fruit press was. The place had changed shape without moving a wall.

Everything was damp where it had no reason to be, tacky where it should have been dry, and in motion in ways that did not resemble brewing so much as processing. The sound had shifted as well. The boilers still worked, the casks still moved, but beneath it all, constant and unignorable, was the press. It creaked. It thudded. It continued. He watched rather than intervene. That had become habit to not incur staff anxiety, it was not a comfortable one.

Workers moved in a steady rotation, bringing in grapes, crushing, pressing, clearing, then returning again without pause long enough to be considered rest. There was no waiting stage. No careful sequencing. The fruit arrived, and therefore it had to be dealt with. Thankfully the wagons were arriving carrying specific grape types. Juice ran directly from the press into waiting barrels, bypassing anything that might have slowed it down in favour of anything that kept it moving. Refinement could come later.

If it did not, that would also be fine. Near the press, Mara stood with one foot braced against the edge of a tub, directing the work with a rhythm that suggested she had already decided how this would go and had simply allowed everyone else to catch up. Skins and seeds were being pulled from the pressed mass and redistributed, layered back into barrels to build the cap where it was needed, adjusted where it was not. Workers followed her instruction without hesitation, not because she was loud.

Alric watched the motion for a moment longer than necessary, then nodded once to himself. Mara was better at this than she gave herself credit for. He stepped aside as another barrel was rolled past him, the wood already stained darker where juice had spilled and been wiped away with the sort of effort that counted as trying. The barrel did not pause. Neither did the worker guiding it. The path opened and closed around it without instruction. Alric followed it to the cellar.

The cellar was cooler, damper but it felt controlled. Barrels were set down, sealed, and left to begin their work. Alric moved between them, one hand resting briefly on a rim here, another adjusting a bung there. He had begun adding yeast as the barrels came down. He checked each barrel received it as it arrived, each barrel had been marked for the grape type. Before now, the staff had simply seeded one beer with another, Alric would top up the casks. For the reds, he had settled on the strain he knew as 1118.

It was difficult to argue with something that simply refused to fail. It was called the beast for a reason, it was even well known for fixing stalled fermentations. Fast, tolerant, and willing to push further than most things had any right to, it had carried the cider well enough even when the apples had not deserved the effort. These grapes, at least, did. He paused beside one of the larger barrels, considering it briefly. The quality of the grapes had seemed good although he was hardly an expert.

Eighteen percent was not unreasonable. Ambitious, perhaps, but ambition had a way of becoming expectation once it worked once. For the whites, he had chosen differently. QA23. He had heard enough about it to be convinced. Aromatics, they said. Tropical notes. All the words that suggested something delicate and intentional rather than something that simply worked. He had not yet decided whether he trusted it. There was a very real possibility he was making something that could power an engine rather than wine.

Behind him, footsteps approached without urgency. Seren did not announce herself. She simply arrived, paused long enough to take in the same view he had, and then chose her moment to speak.

"This is not slowing," she said tapping a barrel.

"No," Alric replied, still looking at the barrels.

"How many shifts are going?"

"We have a morning, afternoon and night shift. Let us pray the press doesn't break." She said with a sigh. She glanced once along the line, her gaze moving across the barrels.

"We are going to run out of room." She added"We will," he agreed. There was a pause.

"I need a new house," Alric said. Stolen novel; please report. Seren did not look at him immediately.

"Stromni told me." She said turning to face him "It's why I'm here."

"Uh… I'm sorry?" He added with a small wince.

"You know, for someone who doesn't want to be considered a lord, you sure can act like one sometimes." She said with a teasing smile.

"So are we going to look at more houses?"

"Uh.. Kind of. I'm going to ask you to do it. I'd say we find another inn to repurpose. We will need to move the furniture across and if inns are still cheap…" He shrugged.

"A house will not solve this," she said, gesturing lightly toward the cellar, the barrels. The press chose a good time to squeak in protest from outside. He considered that, then shrugged slightly.

"We may have to shift stuff all over. It's a bit much for the carters, for now I can move some in the item box. To the current house, new one, fermentation building. We will just have to find room. Vale doesn't think we can get another warehouse." Seren did not do dramatic. But there was a shift there, a small exhale that caught itself before it became a sigh. It carried more meaning than the words that followed.

"What do you want to do to the current inn then?" she asked tilting her head. He glanced at her.

"Stromni and I are going to build a big still there. It needs to be close to the river."

"Hmm…" she nodded slowly.

"That is how it begins. Keeping stills is a proper lord's hobby, I'm impressed Mister Alric." He did not have a response to that which would improve his position, so he chose not to attempt one. Above them, the press continued. Mara appeared at the top of the cellar steps, then descended without breaking stride, her attention already moving between the barrels as she approached.

"You asked for me?" she said before either of them could ask. Alric nodded once.

"Yes, just wanted to say, don't squeeze the press too hard. If it breaks we have a huge issue." She stopped beside one of the newer barrels and leaned against it.

"Even if it means less wine?"

"How hard will it be to fix? Rather we lose a bit. Don't squeeze too hard. You're doing well on making the wine caps just so you know." Alric said hoping to be encouraging.

"The press doesn't stop," she added.

"It just… keeps going. We're running extra shifts just so you know. If we don't, they start making mistakes." Alric glanced upward, as though the sound might confirm the statement more effectively than Mara's tone already had.

"And barrels?" she asked.

"Vale is sourcing," Alric replied. Mara's expression did not change, but there was a slight narrowing of her eyes that suggested she had already suspected the answer and had not been reassured by it.

"We're going to need more than he thinks."

"We are," Alric agreed. She nodded once, satisfied that the problem had at least been acknowledged, if not resolved, and moved on to the next barrel without further comment. Alric watched her go, then let his gaze settle again on the cellar as a whole. Beer had scaled differently. It had required precision, timing, coordination. Each stage dependent on the last, each mistake carrying forward in a way that demanded correction or consequence. Wine did not behave like that.

It accepted inconsistency in a way that bordered on indifference. It tolerated variation, absorbed it, and in doing so allowed the process to expand without asking permission. It scaled faster. Far faster. If he had a second press they would have run out of space already. The grapes would keep coming. He stood there for a moment longer, letting that settle. Wine didn't feel like a product. It was accumulation. Three days later, Seren left.

She simply informed him she would be finding something suitable and that she would return with house options rather than discussions. Brannick accompanied her, Alric suspected she intended to do a little shopping and she would need someone to carry things. He did not argue. The barrels had begun to spread. Not in neat rows or structured stacks, but wherever space allowed them to exist without immediately obstructing something more important.

Corners filled first, then the edges of the main floor, then the spaces between structures that had not previously been considered available. The fermentation building was nearing capacity. The cask building had begun to absorb overflow in a manner that suggested it would not be sufficient for long. Vale had stopped asking whether they needed more barrels. He simply found them. Not however without complaints to anyone who would listen, but no one did.

Alric stood in the narrow space that had once been considered a passageway and watched as another barrel was guided past him with careful precision, set down in a gap that had not existed a moment before. He stepped aside for the next. And the next. Stromni arrived without announcement. He did not pause to take in the full scene.

He glanced once, enough to register the scale, then moved directly toward Alric with the sort of focus that suggested he had come for a purpose and would not be distracted by the evidence that everything else was becoming someone else's problem.

"How's the copper?" Alric asked before Stromni could speak.

"Gone," Stromni said simply.

"Ordered everything the artisans had. Everything the merchant could get. Not enough for all plates but I can get started." Alric nodded slowly.

"They're not happy," Stromni added, almost as an afterthought.

"They weren't last time either."

"Aye. This is worse, cause I didn't listen that time either." That, too, settled without requiring further elaboration. Stromni's attention shifted then, not to the barrels themselves, but to the ledger resting open on a nearby table. He stepped over, flipped through a few pages with a thumb that left faint charcoal marks on the paper, and stopped. His brow lifted slightly.

"These numbers are climbing, how many barrels ya expecting?" he asked.

"We aren't sure yet. I'm moving some to the new building for a while." He tapped the page once.

"This isn't staying wine." Alric did not respond immediately. Stromni glanced up at him, then back at the ledger.

"Doesn't matter if you intend it or not," he added.

"This pushes ya to brandy." Alric looked past him, toward the barrels stacked in places that had not been designed to hold them, toward the workers adjusting paths that had not been planned, toward the press that had not stopped in three days.

"D47," he said, almost to himself. Stromni glanced at him.

"What?"

"Nothing," Alric replied.

"Something I need for brandy." D47 was a yeast strain he knew for being very flavor forward while making good brandy. He'd need to start marking barrels that would go to become brandy when they had a working still. Stromni looked at him for a moment longer, then nodded once, the way a man did when a direction he didn't understand had been chosen and the consequences would be dealt with when they arrived. Around them, the brewery continued. The press creaked. The barrels filled.

And the pressure, now named, did not lessen for it.

"You wanted to talk history, the inn tomorrow while we still have it?" Alric asked, to which Stromni nodded.

"We drink beer though, not wine."