Coloration of Rosharan ‘wines’

[Antioch]

Do we ever find out what’s used to give the wines their colors? Looking at the illustration of the various colored wines in Oathbringer (I think? My memory is hazy on where that particular one appeared) I’m most curious about the blue one. That seems like a tricky color to pull off. Over here on Earth I figure you could swing it with butterfly pea flowers, or red cabbages, but Rosharan flora is so different. (Aside: Are there pollinators on Roshar, let alone pollen? The only plant I know vaguely how it reproduces is the prickletac.) Maybe there are cremling shells that could do the trick? That’s my best guess with my limited knowledge.

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Antioch said:

Do we ever find out what’s used to give the wines their colors? Looking at the illustration of the various colored wines in Oathbringer (I think? My memory is hazy on where that particular one appeared) I’m most curious about the blue one. That seems like a tricky color to pull off. Over here on Earth I figure you could swing it with butterfly pea flowers, or red cabbages, but Rosharan flora is so different. (Aside: Are there pollinators on Roshar, let alone pollen? The only plant I know vaguely how it reproduces is the prickletac.) Maybe there are cremling shells that could do the trick? That’s my best guess with my limited knowledge.

Do we know specific infusions for specific "wines"? Not that I know of. Various wines use juice, food dye or some combinatoin thereof for flavor and color.

Spoiler

OB Ch 18:

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“Kid,” the barkeep said, somehow leaning on the boxes near her and not knocking any over. “That’s the same stuff, just without the fancy infusions the lighteyes put in theirs.”

Infusions?

“You some kind of house servant?” the woman asked softly. “Out for your first night on your own?”

“Of course not,” Veil said. “I’ve done this a hundred times.”

“Sure, sure,” the woman replied, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. 

WoB:

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sciencetor2

I was the one with the weird alcohol question. I'm a brewer so I was trying to complete the article I wrote--I wrote the article on the [Coppermind].

Brandon Sanderson

So really, you're going to have to give me advice. What would you think?

sciencetor2

Basically, if they have distillation apparatus? Because they've replaced a lot of technology with Stormlight technology

Brandon Sanderson

They do have distillation apparatus.

sciencetor2

Okay. Then anything above 20% alcohol has to be a distilled spirit. Anything below has to be a brewed spirit.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, brewed. So a wine can be brewed? You call wine a brewed spirit?

sciencetor2

Technically, you call it fermented, but I'd say brewing process. Otherwise it's a distillation apparatus, and you have to actually distill it and boil off the alcohol.

Brandon Sanderson

That I know about. But the actual terminology...What we don't see a lot of in the Stormlight Archive is a beer. The hops, the fermented, the bubbles. You just don't see that. What you see is things we would call a wine, and things we would call a hard alcohol. A spirit, I guess. That spectrum is, to most people there, one spectrum. They do use grains for making things like a Horneater White. So that's probably going to be as close to a..

sciencetor2

Everclear?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, there you go. Yeah.

sciencetor2

Pink, by the way, doesn't have any alcohol according to the chart?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah it's just juice. Just a squeezed juice, I actually kind of imagine that one. And the next one is they squeeze the juice and ferment it. And then at some point during that line, I guess it would be at the 20% mark, they start distilling, and some of them are going to be grains that they made and stuff like that.

So you can take that all as canon now, and you can write it.

sciencetor2

So it's juice, not tea? Because it said tea in the little chart? It said, "I've had tea stronger than this."

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah. It's not a tea. "I've had tea stronger than this" is just a joke that it doesn't have any alcohol in it. It is a juice.

DragonCon 2019 (Aug. 29, 2019)

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signspace13

I think wines in Stormlight are more similar to fermented juice than alcoholic beverages, the word wine is just the closest thing in English to whatever they are saying in Alethi.

nucleomancer

I guess you're right. With all the storms, I don't think they can grow grapevines.

Just like the word 'chicken' seems to be used where we would use 'bird'. 

Brandon Sanderson

This is correct; these are both several examples of linguistic broadening and semantic change in Vorin languages.

When and Alethi says "wine" they generally mean "alcohol." Though some of them are fermented juices, much of what they drink wouldn't seem like wine to you at all. Several that the Alethi lighteyes are fond of are akin to a harder liquor with an infusion. In others, the colorings are added for the same reason we add coloring to a cola--for convenience, feel, and tradition more than taste. A character in Book Three finds themselves in possession of some distilled Horneater liquor, and it's colorless.

General Reddit 2016 (June 9, 2016)

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Questioner (paraphrased)

You very clearly make rules for the wine in this world, like the different colors and different alcohol content. I was wondering what the inspiration for that is, and also what some of them are actually made from, because it doesn't seem like grapes.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It's not grapes, it's a local fruit. So we would not probably call it wine, we would probably call it something else. And it's based on my desire to do funky things with world building in every way I can. The color is a cultural thing.

Words of Radiance San Diego signing (March 4, 2014)

 

True wine (from grapes) are known as Shin Wine. RoW Ch 76:

Spoiler

Raboniel had brought a stool—a low one, so that when she sat on it, she was at eye level with Navani. The Fused set a basket on the floor, then pulled out a bottle of burgundy wine. A Shin vintage, sweeter than traditional Alethi wines, known as an amosztha—a Shin wine made from grapes.

“Your journals,” Raboniel said, “indicate you are fond of this vintage.”

“You read my journals?” Navani said.

“Of course,” Raboniel said, setting out two glasses. 

Hope that helps

Edited December 30, 2024 by Treamayne
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