Stardew Valley is a wonderful setting with fantastical creatures and incredible crops. But what would paradise be without booze? Corking and selling Wine in Stardew Valley isn’t just something to do for fun. It’s also an incredibly lucrative business, and a great way to turn excess fruit into something highly valuable. So, how do you get started in this high-profit process? This guide will explain everything vino fans need to know!
How to Craft A Keg
Before you can even begin the process of making wine, you will first need a keg. You unlock the recipe for Kegs once you reach level 8 Farming. You’ll need one Copper Bar, one Iron Bar, 30 Wood, and one Oak Resin to make your own keg. Alternatively, you’ll get one for free as a reward for clearing the Artisan Bundle or Brewer’s Bundle in the Pantry.
Kegs are designed to be late-game items. Like a Preserves Jar, you will be using these to multiply the profit on your various goods. As a result, you likely won’t be getting this for a few seasons. Be sure to pet your farm animals and harvest your crops whenever possible, as doing so will increase your level slowly but surely.
Of course, you can also get a Keg for completing a Pantry Bundle. For the normal rules, it’s the Artisan Bundle, which allows for a lot of different options! You can clear this with any five from the following list: Truffle Oil, Cloth, Goat Cheese, Cheese, Honey, Jelly, Apple, Apricot, Orange, Peach, Pomegranate, or Cherry. If you’re doing the Remixed variant rule, you may have to instead clear the Brewer’s Bundle. This requires four of the following: Mead, Pale Ale, Wine, Juice, or Green Tea.
Kegs take up a large amount of space, and are a furniture-style item. Make sure you have some room to let them work. You can place them anywhere, inside or outside, with no difference in efficiency.
How to Make Wine
Once you have a Keg, you can make Wine simply by placing Fruit items into the Keg. It takes the Keg around six or seven days to produce one Wine. Each Keg can only process one Fruit at a time.
Once you have placed Fruit into a Keg, it’s time to do anything else. The Keg’s process doesn’t require any maintenance or watch time. It’s all automatic! This goes for Wine and any of the other alcohol, coffee, or Green Tea options you put in there.
Generic Wine takes the price of a Fruit and multiplies it by three. This is to compensate for the very long amount of time it takes to make a single bottle. A week is no laughing matter! At maximum efficiency, each keg can only make four bottles per season. You’re going to want several, especially if you want non-Wine options like Beer or Juice.
All fruits take the same amount of time to ferment, from the smallest Salmonberry to the Ancient Fruit. That week period should therefore be spent on high-quality goods, as the Preserves Jar is often better for cheaper fruits and veggies.
How to Age Wine
Once you’ve gotten your bottle, you can age Wine by placing it in a Cask. Casks are unlocked when you’ve gotten the Final Farmhouse upgrade, and they’re placed in the Cellar. You need 20 Wood and one Hardwood to produce them. Casks refine Artisan goods into Silver, Gold, and Iridium versions.
You need a cellar to even consider getting this item. This costs a total of 160,000g, 450 Wood, and 150 Hardwood. It’s a huge investment, since you need the cellar just to be able to get this item.
Just like making Wine, you can place Beer, Cheese, Goat Cheese, Mead, Pale Ale, or Wine into a cask to “age” it. All this does is give it a Quality bump: Silver, Gold, or Iridium over the course of several days. As a reminder, Silver is a 1.25x upgrade to the price, Gold is 1.5x, and Iridium is 2x.
When you upgrade the house to a Cellar, you’ll get 33 Casks for free.
For the purposes of Wine specifically, turning a standard bottle into Iridium quality takes 56 days… That’s two seasons. This is not a process for fast cash. However, for high quality fruit like Ancient Fruit or Starfruit, waiting this amount of time can yield several thousand gold.
If you need a cash infusion, it takes 14 days to make a bottle Silver quality and 28 days for Gold. Simply hit the Cask with an Axe, Hoe, or Pickaxe to make it spit out the bottle early.
Expert Tip
By placing the casks in 2×2 rows, covering corners, and filling in the walls of the Cellar with casks, it is possible to fill the cellar with 125 casks. Alternatively, you can fill it with 189 by filling the “optimal” layout of casks and then filling the path with new casks, putting fruit in later. Then, when it’s harvest time, you can just remake the paths by harvesting the wine and picking up the casks. This is useful if you want to turn 200 Starfruit into Iridium Starfruit Wine, but is usually not worth the effort.
Other Uses For Wine
Other than for selling for a large profit, Wine is a great gift to almost every villager in the town. It is used for quite a few bundles, including the Enchanter’s Bundle, “The Missing Bundle,” and the Brewer’s Bundle. Finally, it can be used in tailoring to make the Black Leather Jacket or Purple Dye.
All of the bundles that ask the player to hand over Wine appear relatively later on. The Enchanter’s Bundle is on the Bulletin Board, and requires one bottle to complete. The Missing Bundle does not require a bottle, but if you want to use one, it must be Silver quality or greater. Wine is also an option for the Remixed bundle, the “Brewer’s Bundle,” which asks for several different boozes. Most of the other options take less time and are less expensive, though, making it less palatable.
If you wish to make some clothes with the booze, you can! The Black Leather Jacket comes from shoving a bottle into the Sewing Machine with some Cloth. You could also make Purple Dye with the booze, but there are many less expensive options for that. Like Grapes. At the very least, use a low quality fruit for the deed if you wish to use it for dye!
