Library Grape

The Library Grape is a legendary engineered cultivar developed by avout at the Concent of the Lower Vrone before the Second Sack. It is referenced at the Concent of Saunt Edhar in connection with wine served from long-aged casks and with ongoing local attempts to cultivate the vines.

First Appearance and Context

The grape is described during a communal meal where an ancient firkin is opened and its wine praised. The wine was made from the juice of the library grape and aged in select oak casks, bringing the cultivar to attention as part of a conversation about viticulture and aging practices within the concent.

Roles/Actions and Affiliations

• Origin: Sequenced and assembled by avout at Lower Vrone; each cell’s nucleus stores the genetic code not only for many naturally occurring grapes but also snippets from numerous fruits, flowers, and herbs that contribute flavorful molecules.
• Use: Cultivated to produce wines that reveal place and practice; at Saunt Edhar, it is an avocation among some avout rather than a trade good, and the resulting wine is treated as an acquired taste and not sold.
• Loss of expertise: The specialists who best understood it were executed during the Second Sack, contributing to later difficulties in managing the vines.
• Renewal and expansion: After the Antiswarm and during the early days of the Second Reconstitution, avout and allies begin re-establishing cultivation beyond Edhar, preparing trellises and planting stock to grow new library vines at a site dedicated to Saunt Orolo.

Relationships

• Practitioners: Fanatics and connoisseurs, notably Fraa Orolo, pursue a relationship with the vines despite their difficulty.
• Materials and aging: Discussion of the grape is often paired with talk of careful cask aging and storage practices within the concent’s halls.
• Contributors: Fraa Haligastreme of Edhar brings root stock from Orolo’s former vineyard to support new plantings.

Descriptions/Characteristics

• Genetic “library”: Encodes an extensive archive of grape varieties plus flavor-relevant sequences from other plants; only a subset can be expressed at any time.
• Environmental sensitivity: Expression of traits is “decided” by a hand-coded protein logic that responds to nuanced inputs of sun, soil, weather, wind, and cultivator behavior. Attempts to force sameness from season to season tend to fail.
• Temperament at Saunt Edhar: Local vines “remember” past mishandling via pheromonal signaling and currently produce small, pale, bitter grapes; the wine requires patient, appreciative drinking.

Current Status/Location

Presently cultivated in small efforts at the Concent of Saunt Edhar, where enthusiasts maintain vines despite challenging behavior. Its original design is attributed to Lower Vrone avout before the upheavals that ended their stewardship. In addition, new plantings have been established on terraces at the site named for Saunt Orolo, using root stock from Orolo’s old vineyard; scrap-metal trellises have been erected, and the vines are showing new growth in a high-altitude equatorial climate with intense sun and cool weather.