Xabaarn wine

Traditional Candied Mushroom Wine

You can take an elf away from the surface, but you can't take the pretentiousness away from the elf.

— Nebrik, Gnomish Underworld Explorer commenting on Dral'azie wine making.

The underworld is fabled throughout the overworld for being strange and outlandishness, from tales emerge and the ramblings of delvers venturing into the deeps. Sometimes though, it is not just stories make their way back from these strange lands. On the odd occasions caravans from the underworld breach the surface, bringing with them trinkets, artifacts and the bizarre wares of the sunless realms . Surface dwellers flock to them to purchase their own curiosities from the deeps. Some of the most sought after and prestigious of these curiosities are the strange and exotic wines that come in all manner of shapes and sizes of decorative bottles and queer colours. Rumoured to be made out of crushed and strained mushrooms, spiders venom and the foul ichor of nameless beasts. Like many things pertaining to the underworld, while there is some truth in this, the wines of the deeps contain a far more varied palette of ingredients that grow in the depths beside mushrooms and the secretions of arachnids.

Wines of the Sunless Realms

The vast majority of wines that are made by the Dral'azie. Some of these Aelfaune of the depths, not wishing to so easily give up the luxuries of the surface after The Sundering. became resourceful artisans and alchemists in the pursuit of rekindling the art of wine making in their new underground home. Sending countless centuries relentlessly hunting down substitutes and refining processes to make palatable wines, instead of the swill the Dwarin - Dwarves merchants peddled.

These emerging techniques eventually bore fruit, developing and utilising a vast array of plants, fungi and other various substances to cultivate the desired affect and pallet of wines as similar to those they once enjoyed on the surface as alchemically possible. The result sparked an entire industry and tradition of winemakers in the underworld that spread to other cultures in the deeps, much to the annoyance of the Dwarin - Dwarves and Dvergar.

Candied Mushroom Wine

Most Dral’azie wines produced in the underworld possess a sharp or musky pallet to them. However, there is a wine made using Xabaarn, the honeyed puffball mushroom which is a sweet and refreshing concoction utilising much of the underworlds bountiful flora. Candied mushroom wine utilises Xebaarn to give it a sweet and fragrant flavour. Xabaarn, or honeyed puff balls mushrooms are a well-known sweet treat throughout the Dral'azie Ithen'drels. While the mushrooms are sweet on their own with a noticeably sweet odour, they are traditionally dried and then preserved in syrup for months before being taken out and dried to create caramelised orbs. Having becoming a favourite and widely available treat of many younglings of the city states, Goblins having a particular craving for them, many Dral'azie using them as a reward to keep their unruly servants in line.

The base of all good Dral'azie wine is made from Karris berries, a brilliant vibrant red fruit the size of a ping-pong ball that grows in bunches in the more verdant and Magicite rich areas of the underworld. Before the fruit is picked it is left for mould to grow upon it, attacking the fruit that weakens the skin, shrivelling the fruit rapidly in a process known as 'noble rot'. The rot concentrates the sugars and add its own unique set of flavours to the wine. The process doesn’t attack bunches evenly, so the very best sweet wines need to be individually picked from the vine by hand. Once picked the Karris berries are taken, crushed and pressed before being mixed in with a distilled based of Ludmilla mushroom creates the foundation of the wine.

The Karris berries are highly sugary and sweet on their own, however it is highly resistant to the effects of yeast, and only when combined with the distilled Ludmilla mushroom can the yeast be substantially stimulated enough, acting as a catalyst for the fermentation process. Allowing the sugars to be broken down and changing the flavour of the fruit as it becomes alcoholic into something quite bitter. It at this juncture that the Xebaarn are added to the barrels after three weeks, and will the sit for a minimum of four to six months before deemed ready. This drastically increases the sugar content creating a very sweet and mellow wine. To separate it from their competitors, some winemakers add additional ingredients, or propagate Karris berries with particular qualities to give the Xabaarn wine their own unique twist.

Bottle of Xabaarn wine by Olarae Arcaine / SerenityOnyx

Overtaken by a sense of morbid curiosity I have sampled a number of wines from the lightless depths on number of occasions. In each instance it has been an utterly common and tawdry affair, like some horrid and ineffectual remedy that a witch-doctor might force upon a consumptive. That was until I stumbled upon a Dwarin merchant peddling a curious sweet wine quite by happenstance. A Xebaarn is a gorgeous ensemble of floral-filled aromas with a palate akin to honeyed peach preserves and the concentrated tastes of candied fruit make their way along the palate profile. With minimal tart fruit, a good acidity, depth, and overall balance keep this wine from being over sweet from the semi-sweet start to fairly, full finish.

— Taken from the journal of Toussains Delacroix, influential Orsiétte merchant and wine connoisseur.