Like the creamery, this is simple too. The various prices of the liquors are based upon the cost of the items necessary to make the recipe for the liquor, adjusted for the distiller's overhead. The cost and weight of the bottle, an 8 oz. glass vessel is included. The 'bottle' is standardized for my world - when speaking of a 'bottle' it is always this size and made of glass. If the same size item is made of ceramic, it is called a flask.
The higher cost for things like arak and arrack (see this post) is due largely to the sources for those liquors being far, far away from eastern Transylvania, which this table was generated for.
The 'spirits, ordinary' category refers to whatever local liquor is common in that particular area. It isn't specified because the table is meant to be universal, so that if I were to generate one for some other place I don't have to remember to change something. With a lot of work I could probably fix this, but I don't feel its necessary. For the record, a common liquor in Transylvania is something called palinca/palinka, the origin of which is claimed by both Rumania and Hungary.
Jeeze, Alexis, you make me feel like I ought to check in more often; I finally come back after making my last few comments, and these equipment tables seem to have multiplied like rabbits!
ReplyDeleteI plan on looking them all over, of course—but right now, I have one little question about this table that just sorta popped out at me:
Is the cost of the almond liqueur so high due to the relative scarcity of almonds in this part of the world, or is it simply so because almonds in general are expensive to produce and make use of for this purpose? (My knowledge of almond history is sadly lacking, so the major difference in pricing from the other liqueurs kinda shocked me.)
My knowledge of almond history is limited to what Jared Diamond writes in Guns, Germs and Steel. But the FAO statistics yearbook tells me that treenuts in general are very expensive pound per pound compared to fruits, and this is what makes the difference in price. It takes four pounds of almonds to make an 8 oz. bottle of almond liqueur, and the process is time consuming and accomplished by only a few distillers.
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