Designer Uwe Rosenberg (Agricola, Caverna, Bohnanza) has helped to combine the Second Edition of Viticulture with a few elements from Tuscany to make Viticulture Essential Edition.

You’ve inherited a meagre vineyard in pre-modern Tuscany and your dream is to create a successful winery!

Each player has to allocate their workers throughout the year; as each season on a vineyard is different, workers have various tasks to complete in summer and winter.

There also are a lot of visitors coming to the winery who need to be accompanied.

Using workers and visitors, the players can expand their vineyards by building structures, planting vines and filling wine orders all working towards the goal of having the most successful winery in Tuscany!

Viticulture - Essential Edition comes with components for Viticulture, but adds some of the expansions from Tuscany, including 36 Mama & Papa cards, Field cards (previously known as "Properties"), and 24 Automa cards (solo variant), along with a couple of minor rule changes.

This is basically a more robust version of Viticulture without adding the complexity of some of the “heavier” Tuscany expansions. Mamas & Papas gives players different starting resources. Field cards let you sell fields you’re not using for an influx of money. A larger set of visitor cards offer a lot more variety, and we’ve selected only the most balanced cards so there’s never a bad draw.

These are the expansions we always play with–they no longer feel like expansions. So they’re now included in the core game of Viticulture.

How does the Essential Edition differ from the second edition of Viticulture?

Aesthetically, the box art is slightly different and the rulebook is more detailed. The components are largely the same as the second edition of Viticulture, with the addition of several expansion modules from Tuscany, and a new mix of Visitor cards, including some new and advanced visitors from Tuscany.

In terms of components, the Essential Edition makes the following additions to standard Viticulture:

Mamas & Papas expansion from Tuscany: 36 Mamas & Papas cards
Property expansion from Tuscany: Field cards
Solo variant from Tuscany: 24 Automa cards
Selected mix of cards from Viticulture & Tuscany: 76 Visitor cards

Are there any rule changes?

Yes, two small changes that are "official," but it's not imperative that you play with them.

There's no longer a 25-point max in any version of Viticulture.
If you want to gain the 1 VP bonus from a tasting room, you need to have at least 1 wine token in your cellar. You don't do anything with the token--it just needs to be in the cellar, representing a cask from which guests can sample wine when they visit the tasting room. This change is meant to stymie strategies that try to completely avoid making wine while still making elements of those strategies viable.

Also the wording on the Promoter card has changed from "and" to "or".

The Viticulture Essential Edition contains 164 cards at the 44 x 67 mm size and 88 cards at the 63 x 88 mm size.
1 game board
6 vineyard mats
36 worker meeples in 6 different colors and 1 gray temporary worker
60 clear grape & wine tokens
6 wake-up tokens (roosters)
6 victory point tokens (corks)
6 residual payment tracker tokens (wine bottles)
48 wooden structure tokens (8 unique tokens for each colour)
108 punch board lira (78 bronze ₤1 coins, 18 silver ₤2 coins, 12 gold ₤5 coins)
1 first-player token (grapes)

Author: Jamey Stegmaier

About 60 minutes
Requires 1-6 players
Minimum 13 years old


It may not be possible to ship very heavy items outside of the Mainland UK.
Released: 18 July 2024