This is an extensive guide on Terroir and how everything works.
Information on grape variants is not included because finding out the specifics of each grape is what makes this game fun. Nontheless this guide should help you know exactly what to do and how to do it. If you have any questions or if I've missed something or made a mistake, feel free to leave a comment.

Happy wining/winning.

Listen here son/lass, Before you even start thinking about growing grapes or making wine, we need to talk about the vineyard, what we can find there and what we can do with it.

• Chateau
  
• Loam/Clay/Sandy Soil
  
• Open Lot (Grassland)
  
• Forests
  
• Lakes

Your Chateau Level determines how much wine barrels and bottles you can store, as well as which research you can unlock in the Workers Building, as well as which crushing and barreling techniques you can unlock. We'll talk more about that later. For now, all you need to know is that 50 prestige is a lot of prestige. It will take a while before you can(and should) upgrade it.

The first upgrade costs 100,000 dollars and 50 prestige.
The second upgrade costs 250,000 dollars and 100 prestige.

Soil is where you plant your grapes.
Each type of soil has two grapes associated with it.

• Loam has Cabernet Sauvignon (Red) and Chardonnay (White) grapes.
  
• Sandy has Sauvignon Blanc (White) and Syrah (Red) grapes.
  
• Clay has Merlot (Red) and Pinot Noir (Red) grapes.

These are the things you can build at your farm. We won't need to until we've expanded the fields a bit, but keep their costs and functions in mind. Particularly the Workers Building.

• Workers Building (Research new ways to deal with crops.)
  costs: 15,000 to build, 500/month to maintain.
  
  
• Tavern (Sell wine for +40% price. 3*+ wine also generates monthly prestige.)
  costs: 250,000 to build, 1000/month to maintain.
  
  
• Ruins (Increases effectiveness of adjacent Taverns)
  costs: 500.000 to build, ?/month to maintain.

A forest is a very good thing to have next to your soil, as it gives a 10% yield boost to adjacent vines. The effect stacks. A vine that is next to 2 forests gets a 20% yield boost. Keep in mind however, that it's not advised to put 2 forests next to eachother.

A lake is very useful to have next to your soil, as it gives vines adjacent to it immunity to Phylloxera for the first 50 years of it's life and reduced chance to get it after those 50 years. Phylloxera is the only thing that can kill a vine. That's all you need to know about it for now.

For an ever-increasing cost, you can re-roll any unpurchased tile.
The initial costs are 1.000, 5.000, 10.000, 25.000, 100.000, ...
If you really want to OCD your farm's tiles to be exactly the way you like it, you can save/reroll/load/reroll until you have a tile the way you want it. The re-roll is determined by the current in-game date. So unpause a little longer/shorter before re-rolling to get different results.

The ideal starting plot consists of your Chatteau, a Forest tile and a soil tile. A lake has less priority, as Phylloxera usually doesn't show up until later, and the early boost to yield really helps when you're just getting started. But ideally, each of your soil tiles is adjacent to both a forest and a lake tile. That's a thing for later though. Just keep it in mind as you plan your expansions.

The layout of the world is also already defined. The maximum distance between any tile and your chateau is 3. This results in a big hexagon shape with your chateau at the center. Keep this in mind as you expand your farm.

Now you know your way around the place, I guess it's time to get started. Don't just stand there, sit down and have a glass. I'll tell you all you need to know about vines.

Each season in Terroir consists of 3 months:

• Winter : Dec - Jan - Feb
  
• Spring : Mar - Apr - May
  
• Summer : Jun - Jul - Aug
  
• Autumn : Sep - Oct - Nov

The game starts off in January, the 2nd Winter month.
Vines are affected by weather starting in February and ending when you harvest in the autumn.

There are 3 types of weather: Clear, Cloudy and Rain. We'll talk about what they do a bit later on.

The earliest you can plant a new vine is in February. The latest you can plant a new vine is in May, the last month of Spring. I suggest planting no later than March, because you need your vines to grow leaves to protect them from the sun.

You can only plant 3 vine types at any one time. I suggest picking one for each soil type. As vines next to lakes have a very long life, it is (until the devs put in willing removal) very hard to lose all the vines of a specific grape and thus usually, once you pick a grape, you are stuck with it.

Also known as Canopy and Weather management. This is the knowledge you need to optimise the starting conditions of your grape (after harvest), as well as maximize yield.

Foliage is the amount of leaves on your vine. Make sure you treat vines of the same grape the same throughout the year. There are 4 levels of foliage:

• No Foliage
  
• Light Foliage
  
• Optimal Foliage
  
• Heavy Foliage

Yield increases fastest at Optimal Foliage, then Heavy Foliage, then Light Foliage and slowest at No Foliage.

Ripeness increases and decreases depending on foliage and weather, it is possible that grape type also has an impact, so don't take these numbers as universal for all grapes.

• No Foliage + Clear = +2 Ripeness.
  
• No Foliage + Cloudy = +1 Ripeness.
  
• No Foliage + Rain = Light Foliage.
  
• Light Foliage + Clear = +1 Ripeness.
  
• Light Foliage + Cloudy = nothing happens.
  
• Light Foliage + Rain = Optimal Foliage.
  
• Optimal Foliage + Clear = nothing happens.
  
• Optimal Foliage + Cloudy = nothing happens.
  
• Optimal Foliage + Rain = Heavy Foliage. -1 Ripeness.
  
• Heavy Foliage + Clear = nothing happens.
  
• Heavy Foliage + Cloudy = Possibly -1 Ripeness.
  
• Heavy Foliage + Rain = -2 Ripeness. (And possibly Fungal Rot?)

I am not sure about the data on Heavy Foliage because I rarely stray there unless I want to get my ripeness down from 8-10 range.

Your vines are fragile things, besides having to manage ripeness and yield with through canopy and weather management, you also have to protect it from dangers that either ruin the quality, decrease the yield, or even kill off your vine.

• Fungal Rot - Weather-related. Decreases Yield by 30% each month. Most commonly when Optimal Foliage + Rain happens. Some grapes rot more easily than others. To remove this status, you need to increase the Ripeness. Which is easier than solving overexposure.
  
• Overexposure - Weather-related. Stops grapes from growing completely. Most commonly when ripeness reaches 8. Some grapes are weaker to overexposure than others. Fixing this requires luck with the weather as well as excellent canopy management. You need to lower the Ripeness to remove this status.
  
• Fruitflies - Insect-related. Decreases yield by x% each month. Possible random factor. Fixed by using Fruitflies pesticide.
  
• Phylloxera - Vine Disease. Each vine has a possibility to get it in any month. Lakes give protection for 50 years of vine's life. 10% chance (monthly/yearly? not specified) of dying. Cured by using Phylloxera pesticide.
  
• Pesticide Poisoning - Result of using pesticide against Fruitflies and Phylloxera on 1 tile in the same year. Can't be removed. This is the main reason you want Lakes touching each of your soil tiles in the mid-late game. You will always be able to spray for fruitflies and your vines wont die from Phylloxera before they're at least 50 years old.

The ideal harvesting ripeness differs per grape. Start out between 4 and 7, but don't forget to check out lower or higher ripeness just to see how it affects the three (relevant) attributes of grapes. More on those stats in the next section.

September has arrived and the harvest symbol pops up over your Chatteau. Time to bring in the money right? Wrong. Being a winer is often about patience, waiting until just the right time, but not dragging your feet either!

First, check if you have optimal foliage and aren't expecting any rain, or if you have light foliage and are expecting rain. Or your ripeness is still in the lows, or worse too high! You can still wait until November to harvest. If you manage your vines well in this stage, you can still squeeze a lot of extra yield out of these few extra months, or even get rid of an overexposure or fungal rot status.

Finally, Fungal Rot, Overexposure and Pesticide Poisoning each give a -1 to the final Star Rating of a wine, regardless of the values of the 3 (relevant) attributes of the grape. Avoid having them if at all possible.

After all that complicated management and hard work, here you are with your first yield.
Hopefully you've managed 0.6 tonnes of grapes, if you're lucky and talented you're at 1.6 tonnes.
Next we have to do some things to turn it into wine.

A grape has 4 different attributes, 3 of which are important to keep an eye on! There are also some status effects, but we'll talk about those later when we have to get our wine tasted. Grape variants such as Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon are also called Varietals.

The following are the attributes of your yielded grapes. These stats vary depending on ripeness at harvest time and which varietal it is. The bold stats are the ones you can influence in the winemaking process, while body is an average of the other 3.

• Acidity
  
• Sweetness
  
• Tannin
  
• Body

Crushing increases Tannin by 2 or by 3 depending on the method used.

Pigeage increases Tannin by 2 and takes 5 seconds per varietal it is applied to.

Traditional Crusher increases Tannin by 3 and takes 3 seconds per varietal it is applied to.
It requires Chatteau Level 2 to be available, and costs 100,000 to unlock.

Mechanical Crusher increases Tannin by 3 and takes 1 second per varietal it is applied to.
It requires Chatteau Level 3 to be available, and costs 250,000 to unlock.

Each 2 weeks of fermenting decreases sweetness by 1.
Your options are:
< 2 weeks : Sweetness stays the same.
2 weeks : Sweetness -1.
1 month : Sweetness -2.
6 weeks : Sweetness -3.
2 months : Sweetness -4.

Pressing increases acidity by 1 per 10% pressed juice.
You can go from 0% pressed & 100% free-run juice, to 100% pressed and 0% free-run juice.

Barreling decreases Acidity by 1 and Tannin by 2 or 3 for each month it is barreled.

Common French Oak: Acidity -1 and Tannin -2 for each month.
Can't decrease Tannin below 4.

Stainless Steel Vat: Acidity -1 and Tannin -3 for each month.
Can decrease Tannin below 4.
Requires Chatteau Level 2 to be available, and costs 100,000 to unlock.

White Oak: Acidity -1 and Tannin -2 for each month.
Stops at ideal Acidity and Tannin. Magic Barrel.
Requires Chatteau Level 3 to be available, and costs 300,000 to unlock.

You have to keep an eye on the barrels in your barrel storage yourself and bottle it when you are happy with the acidity and tannin values. Make sure to check your barrel storage at the beginning of each month. Even if the month switches from Nov to Dec a second after you've barreled your wine, the game counts it as a month in storage. This is very important to keep in mind for harvests you want to leave barreled for <1 month. If you don't pause the game after barreling, it might age a month before you bottle it.

Once you're happy with the A/S/T values of your barreled drink, either because it was good from the moment it was barreled or because a/some month(s) passed by, you can bottle those barrels.

Make sure you select a properly coloured wine bottle (White for white wines and Black for red wines) and consider if you want to screwcap(cost $3/bottle) or cork(cost $5/bottle) the bottles.

• You can't increase Tannin by more than 3 (once you unlock the Tier 2 crushing method).
  
• You can't increase Sweetness. Or decrease it by more than 4.
  
• The ratio between Tannin and Acidity needs to be correctly matched in the Crushing and Pressing stages, so that when Barreling decreases both they end up in the right spots. This is the most complicated part of winemaking.

If you are still testing which values work best for a variant, I suggest not bottling all of your barrels in the same month. This gives the two bottled batches slightly different values for Acidity and Tannin, and the differing scores could give a clue about which batch is closer to the ideal values. Of course, this doesn't tell you anything about the sweetness value as it is determined by variant, ripeness at harvest and fermenting period.

Also keep in mind that A/S/T values can still change inside the bottle. So hold your tastings swiftly after bottling.

Introducing the tasters
As a beginning winemaker, the only people willing to drink your swill are 3 1-star reviewers.
They don't really care that much about the specific stats. As long as it tastes "more or less right", they'll give you a high rating of 4 or 5.

Every wine that recieves a 5-star final score (average of the 3 reviewers' individual scores), unlocks a new reviewer. Starting with 3 2-star reviewers, then 3 3-star reviewers, then 3 4-star reviewers and finally 3 5-star reviewers.

The latter only appreciate a wine if the ideal values for that Variant are met. This also makes the score they give your wine the most reliable information about your selected A/S/T stats.

The higher the star-rating of the reviewers, the more money you get for a wine.
The higher the final star rating of your wine, the faster it sells.

Balancing these two so that you always have a 4-5 star rating of as high a possible set of reviewers gives you the best chance at making a lot of money. If your rating is too low, you barely get prestige (if any!) and your wine will sell very slowly, preventing you from selling your other variants to the distributors. If your rating is 5 and you didn't use 3 5-star reviewers, you might've been able to squeeze more cash per bottle from the by using higher reviewers.
Ideally you get 5 stars at the highest possible group each time, but you'll be wrong every now and then.

Finally there's distribution. After your bottled wine has been tasted and reviewed, you can start selling it. These are the most profitable to sell your wine to:

1. Tavern - Sells at 1.4x reviewed value.
   
2. Manhattan Cellars with Distributor Relations of 5 - Sells at 1.1x reviewed value.
   
3. Ferre & Brothers or Hougang Wine Market with Distributor Relations of 5.
   Manhattan Cellars with Distributor Relations of < 5.
   Sell at 1x reviewed price.
   
4. Kruppe Foods Co. Ltd. - Sells at 0.1x reviewed value (estimate). Good for getting rid of low-star wine. Hope you screwcapped it.

Each Tavern is limited to selling 600 bottles at a time. Being next to ruins increases this upper limit.

You can never sell your entire batch of wine to Manhattan Cellars. I advise selling the rest to Ferre & Brothers. or splitting between Ferre & Hougang if you don't have a lot of wine.

You can sell your entire batch of wine to Hougang Wine Market, if their relationship with you is at 5.

If you have a relationship of 5 with Ferre & Brothers, all field maintenace is free of charge.

It's important to keep them all happy so you get maximum benefits. Manhattan for Cellars, Ferre for freeing up field-costs and Hougang for having a place you can sell your biggest batch if your cellars are filling up.