I found out, through twitter, about a new wine related game in the style of Sim City called “Wine Tycoon”

Wine Tycoon claims you can:

Create the vineyard of your dreams in 10 of the most important wine regions of France. Commanding operations from your very own French chateau, build your winery, plant and tend your vines through all four seasons of the year, and hire staff to harvest and process your grapes.

That part sounds like it could be interesting if it adds a business dimension (who knows, it might train a generation of French winemakers to think about the value of international marketing) and could teach lots of game fans about the wine making process.

There are a couple of hints, however, that this has been developed or marketed by people who know more about games than wine. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it would be good to make sure some of the key things people learn about wine are factually correct. Things like:

Produce 50 French wines such as Bordeaux, Burgundy, Pinot Gris and Champagne from more than 40 different grape varietals

Why Pinot Gris? The others are regions, not grapes, so hopefully the makers will go some way towards educating gamers about what varieties, and blends, are used in the classic regions. Apparently there is a wine “encyclopedia” included in the game, so that should be interesting.

Anyway, for most of my readers this will be somewhat academic as it seems that the game will only be available in the US initially. I hope it does well and we get a chance to try it too. If the makers want to get me a copy for evaluation from a UK/European perspective, I’d be happy to test it!

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• Are You a Wine Tycoon? (goodgrape.com)
• Wine Tycoon (seriousaboutwine.co.za)