I always feel slightly strange when my alarm wakes me up out of the middle of a dream. I’m not entirely certain what the dream was but apparently in it I wasn’t willing to take a bribe and someone threatened to cut off my ears. Now I’m checking to see if they are still there and probably will until my first cup of coffee kicks in. Which is currently brewing right now, so lets jump into the prompt so I can forget about potential retaliatory ear removal. Sounds like a plan to me. So on we go.
Again a lot of this would be background for a story and I’d probably start the story with the prosperous wine merchant in trouble. I might pepper the other facts in while he figures out how to get himself out of trouble but not chunk them all up in one setting. But that is the beauty of the writing prompt. It is a way of getting ideas onto a page even if it isn’t the form you will later use them. I seem to have setting on my mind this week. Perhaps it’s because I have so many characters that need a good home.
Tuesday, August 16th: Wine could be exported at a relatively low cost.
Wine could be exported at a relatively low cost. Once the family cornered the market and began exporting in larger and larger quantities, their agreements fixed in place and precluding anyone else from purchasing, they turned their attention to marketing.
Home produced barley beer was the staple in those ports with each house producing its own from the barley and hops grown in the land. It was a staple of the diet and no home was complete without a butte or two in storage.
To convince people to alter their tastes took time, but the Breneman Family thought it worthwhile. They started with the upper echelons of society. Their agents were located in every level of the aristocracy and soon talk of the local barely beer being fit only for the most common of tables began to float through their ranks. No one could say where the thought came from or who started the thought. It was floating through the world like smoke from a hidden fire. Soon all of the best tables featured wine while the barely beer was relegated further down the social scale.
Playwrights were convinced to lend their support through many means and soon ‘one who drinks barely beer’ or ‘one without wine upon his board’ were synonymous with only the lowest of the citizens. Eager to imitate those higher on the scale, those who could afford it turned to wine again. The Brenemans created tiers of their wine, watering down the lower end versions and leaving the more expensive bottles un watered.
With each turn of the calendar, their fortunes grew. But then came the war.
Michael looked at his receipts. The bills of sale were accurate, but the cost had escalated. The Brenneman family still owned the lion’s share of the market and generations of his family worked to keep it that way, but costs were rising. He tossed the pages onto the table. ‘It’s this damn war,” he said to himself.
The war wasn’t doing any one any good. Shipments were sunk or seized and it took extra bribery to get the product safely out of the harbor. “And that is assuming we can get the product.”
General Toran’s troops marched over the region where much of the grapes were grown. On their march they confiscated anything they thought useful and burned all they left behind. People were burned out of their homes, wine making paraphernalia was turned to cinder and worse still the fields themselves, many of the vineyards nearly as old as the Breneman stranglehold on trade were put to the torch. Michael knew something would have to be done if he wasn’t to be the one who let the family fall to ruin.
Ten til Midnight 