Wine: The Ultimate Prop

By now, you must know that I have a bit of an obsession with making props. A prop can go a long way toward aiding immersion, and frankly, anything that gets us out of 2020 and into a story is welcome indeed.

So, when I realized that Curse of Strahd heavily features a troubled winery in Barovia, it occurred to me that I could have an excuse to drink wine create a prop for the game that would be truly immersive. Evidently I was not the first to think of this idea, because the lovely and attractive (I really don't know that, but I'm truly grateful) Carl Huber at dmsguild.com has created wine labels for the three different varieties on offer in Barovia. So earlier in the week I found a bottle of cabernet sauvignon in the garage and peeled off the label with GooGone. 

(The festival posters are from The Vallaki Documents courtesy of Ashton Duncan, also found on dmsguild.com. I aged them as per my safe and effective protocol that I outlined in previous posts. See the maker-bot label on this blog to find those entries.)

Now, before you have me drawn and quartered for treating wine badly, I do live in the fog belt where a day over 65° F is a rarity and we never have freezing weather. I admit the wine has been stored improperly, but it has not been treated as badly as you might surmise for being stored in a garage. The wine is from a party we had several years ago, and while we do love wine, we're not terribly big drinkers. Our small wine fridge has been pretty full with better fare. So the bottle has sat for a couple of years in a box. I'd say we had about a 25% chance of it being drinkable. Well, perhaps less. But it wasn't zero.

Which made it perfect. 

(MINOR SPOILERS FOR CURSE OF STRAHD TO FOLLOW. These are not major plot points, but if you want absolutely no spoilers whatsoever, this would be a good time to stop reading.)

Rictavio ordered a bottle for the table as he prepared to help our stalwart adventurers understand Madame Eva's cryptic card reading. I uncorked the bottle and poured out some glasses. My spouse accepted his with what would generously be described as 'tepid enthusiasm'. We looked at it skeptically. The color was acceptable, no brownish tinge. The aroma was not outstanding, but neither was it offensive. We all gingerly took sips. We had a wordless discussion about whether it was drinkable or not, neatly conveyed with facial expressions. (Not. Not terribly so, spit-it-out bad... but still... Not.) And... Urwin saw us. He stormed over, insulted, and began to have words with the group. A raven swooped down from the rafters to Danika's shoulder where she was standing behind the bar (DC 12 Perception check to notice), it's beak poking into the hair covering her ears for a brief second before it flew up again. Danika pivoted to see what it was exactly that her husband was doing. Tut tutting, she hurried over, placed a hand on Urwin's shoulder and convinced him to stand down. "You know as well as I do that those were the dregs from a barrel past its prime," she admonished. "You can't blame people for having good taste, and this is nowhere near the quality we expect out of The Wizard of Wines Winery," she continued. And that is how my players became acquainted with the delayed shipment and strange silence from the only winery in Barovia. 

Boy do I love a good prop.