In October, the sunlight bathed the lush green grass, and the intoxicating aroma of wine filled the air. In a vineyard outside the city of Athens, handsome men and beautiful women, lightly dressed, were drinking heavily and staggering around. Centaurs ran across the grass, and several cyclops sang and laughed heartily around a table, filling the entire scene with joy and laughter.
The table was laden with delicious food and jugs of wine. Linley had quite a bit to drink. He sat under an olive tree, feeling hot all over, his face flushed, his thoughts seemingly drifting into the boundless universe.
From time to time, someone would pull Linley up to dance. He could no longer tell who it was, whether they were human, horse, or cyclops. He just danced along, and when he got tired, he returned to rest under the olive tree.
Just then, someone else approached. Linley grabbed them, and a beard pricked his face.
"Wait, wait," the person laughed heartily. "I'm too old to handle the enthusiasm of you young people."
Linley looked closely and realized it was Talia, the owner of the vineyard. He was a nobleman of Athens, owning many estates, including this vineyard.
"The wine you made is indeed excellent, worthy of Dionysus' apostle," Talia praised.
Linley laughed awkwardly. Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and the inventor of grape wine. His apostle were naturally skilled in winemaking, hosting banquets, and cultivating grapes.
But Linley was not a apostle of the wine god; he was a time traveler. That day, he had gathered with some old classmates, intending to drink until they were completely wasted. They got tired of the barbecue halfway through and couldn't handle more than two or three bottles of beer.
The food from the barbecue joint couldn't be returned, so they had to divvy it up and take it home. Linley, lugging half a case of beer, staggered home. He got lost while wandering through the park and eventually fell asleep under a tree. When he woke up, he had traveled through time.
When he first met the Athenians, they couldn't communicate. Both sides babbled on for ages without understanding each other. It wasn't until Linley managed to pick up some of the local language that he realized he had been mistaken for an apostle of Dionysus.
When he was found, he only had half a case of beer with him. To the Greeks, the cardboard box and beer bottles were treasures, so they concluded that Linley was an apostle of Dionysus.
Dionysus roamed around, teaching people to grow grapes and make wine. Linley was mistaken for an apostle bringing new wine from afar, so everyone let him stay to see if the god would show up.
Linley muddled through and stayed. Being an apostle of the wine god was way better than being an unknown stranger. An apostle of the wine god had status and position, while an unknown stranger might be sold into slavery or something worse.
Being a slave meant working until you died, but worse was being captured by a barbarian tribe or falling into the hands of ogres, which meant being killed and eaten right away. This world wasn't the ancient Greece of history, but a mythical and fantastical Greece.
Here, there were not just monsters and different races but also gods.
Linley thus became the Apostle of Dionysus, but even as the Apostle, he couldn't just freeload. The grapes in the vineyard had ripened, and Thalia asked Linley to help with the winemaking to test his skills.
Linley couldn't refuse and had to tough it out. Even though he had never made wine himself, he had watched his family do it. Grapes are the easiest fruit for winemaking because their skins naturally have yeast.
Pick ripe, plump grapes without washing them, crush them to separate the skins and flesh, and then put the skins, seeds, and flesh into a container. The yeast on the grape skins will convert the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Grape juice usually starts fermenting in a day; bubbles on the surface show that the yeast is active. After two or three days, a lot of carbon dioxide is released, and the grape skins float to form a cap.
At this point, you need to press the cap back into the juice to prevent mold and let the pigments infuse, improving the wine's color.
Fermentation continues until all the sugar is converted, the carbon dioxide stops bubbling, and the liquid becomes clear.
Then, separate the residue from the liquid to get wine. This is the usual method in Greece, but Linley knew it wouldn't satisfy Thalia.
Linley noticed a key difference from how his family made wine: his mother would add sugar. Regular grapes have 13 to 15 grams of sugar per 100 grams, and each gram of sugar can produce about 0.6% alcohol. Relying only on the grapes' sugar, you can only get 8 to 9% alcohol.
Ancient Greek grapes were less sweet than modern ones, containing less sugar and resulting in lower alcohol content. To boost the alcohol content, extra sugar was needed.
Adding 17 grams of sugar to a liter of grape juice increases the alcohol content by 1%, but back then, there was no white sugar. It was only hundreds of years later that India invented sugarcane processing.
Back then, the only sweetener in Greece besides fruit was honey, and it was very expensive. Linley reluctantly sold a beer bottle to buy a barrel of honey. He added it to the grape juice, creating a unique, stronger honey wine.
Talia was overjoyed and honored Linley as a distinguished guest, inviting him to a banquet and proclaiming that the vineyard had received the wine god's blessing.
"There's another banquet the day after tomorrow. I'll have a servant invite you," Talia said
"Okay," Linley replied, swaying slightly.
"Next month, an envoy from Sparta is coming. They might ask for your wine recipe, but you mustn't sell it to them," Talia instructed.
"Don't worry, I won't tell them," Linley assured.
"Next year, the governor is marrying off his daughter. I gave him your wine, and he might invite you to the wedding. Be prepared," Talia added.
"When next year?"
"I don't know yet, it hasn't been decided," Talia said, then continued talking.
Linley was already drunk and didn't catch everything. He found himself dancing with a voluptuous woman for quite a while before realizing she was a centaur, which explained her strength.
Thirsty from dancing, he went back to the shade and took a big gulp of wine, making the whole world spin. In a blur, a handsome youth wearing a crown of grapevines and holding ivy sat down next to Linley.