How to Play Viticulture Essential Edition: Seasons, Grapes & Wine
Viticulture Essential Edition is a seasonal worker-placement game. Each year, players choose wake-up order, place workers in summer and winter action spaces, harvest fields, make wine and fulfill wine orders for victory points and residual income.
Choose wake-up order for the year
Players choose positions on the wake-up track. Earlier action order gives better access to contested spaces; later positions provide stronger bonuses. Your choice lasts for that year.
Summer actions build the vineyard
Summer worker spaces handle planting vine cards, building structures, gaining money through tours, drawing summer visitors and other warm-season actions.
Pass into fall to draw a Visitor card
When you stop placing summer workers, advance into fall and draw the visitor type allowed by your position/rules. Visitors create tactical exceptions and resource conversions.
Winter actions harvest, make wine and fill orders
Winter spaces let you harvest fields, convert grape value into wine, train workers, draw orders and fulfill orders. Cellar structures limit which wine values/types you can store, so production must match your building plan.
Harvesting does not discard the vine cards
A field’s planted vines remain in place after harvest. Calculate the grape values produced by the field and place those grapes on the crush-pad tracks as permitted.
Wine ages between years
At year end, grapes and wine generally age upward when legal, constrained by cellar capacity. Residual payments from fulfilled orders also generate recurring income in future years.
The game ends when someone reaches the VP threshold
When a player reaches the standard victory-point threshold, finish the current year and then compare final VP totals according to the Essential Edition rules.