Grand Cru v1.0 — Full Release: The Vintage Comes Home

Grand Cru: The Wine Maker v1.0 — Full Release

Bonjour, winemakers!

Today, Grand Cru leaves Early Access.

This is the story we set out to finish: inherit a struggling vineyard, survive the debt your father left behind, understand the wine he could never forget, and decide what his legacy becomes in your hands. v1.0 brings that journey to its conclusion.

The Father's Legacy — Complete

• A Four-Year Promise — The debt is now a clear, persistent goal that follows your winery from its first winter to the day you finally close the ledger.
• The Father's Notebook — Taste, investigate, and piece together handwritten clues instead of following a simple quest marker.
• Recreate His Wine — Track down the right land, variety, process, and quality. Near misses become clues; a true recreation changes the story.
• Le Clos — Trace a forgotten deed, acquire the lost vineyard, restore it in three stages, and open the hall that completes the family arc.
• A Real Finale — Bespoke story art, new music, a closing scene, full ending credits, and achievements now give the journey a proper last page.

A Vineyard That Speaks Back

• Market Voices — Regulars at the market now trade contextual rumors about weather, buyers, auctions, and your growing reputation.
• The Harvest Gamble — Timing, rot, frost, hail, crop insurance, and scarcity pricing turn harvest into a readable risk rather than a hidden roll.
• Clearer Decisions — Rebuilt event presentation, visible cause-and-effect, stronger goal reminders, and a redesigned library make the long game easier to read.
• Eight New Achievements — The completed story arc now has milestones from the first promise to the final credits, with spoilers kept hidden.

Quality of Life

• The Market Page — The Gazette now runs a market section with quarterly sales trends and a price-per-bottle ranking, so you can see where your wine stands.
• Consign to a Broker — Hand your market buyers to a broker and settle them in a single action instead of one at a time (Commerce Lv3, 1 AP).
• Safer New Games — A new game now explains which slot it will autosave to, and asks before it replaces a slot that already holds a save.
• A Notebook That Moves On — The primary-variety line in your father's notebook folds away once you lock in a blend, instead of lingering forever.

Bug Fixes

• Faces Restored — Chef and buyer portraits were missing from the season summary. All 23 faces are back.
• Blind Tasting — Region and vintage hints no longer describe a red grape when you are tasting a white.
• Blending — The blend button is now locked with the winemaker's reasoning instead of quietly disappearing.
• Story & Interface — Fixed silent visual-novel scenes, stale reservations left behind, notification badges vanishing, and a bright flash on startup.

Technical

• One Screen Can't Crash the Game — A rendering error in any single screen is now caught and contained instead of ending your session.
• Faster Startup — The startup bundle is split and heavy screens load on demand, so the game reaches the main menu sooner.

The Early Access Price, One Last Time

The current price of $11.99 USD will remain through August 15, 2026 at 17:00 UTC. It will then increase to the full-release price of $14.99 USD. Existing owners are unaffected.

To everyone who played, reviewed, reported a bug, or simply kept a bottle in the cellar while we worked: thank you. You helped us bring this vintage home.

Santé!

— hAi Corp