The Rise of the European Emperor

In order to make money, Marin immediately found Taylor, the big fool, to learn about the wine consumption of church members. As a result, as soon as he knew it, Marin was surprised. Because, the consumption of wine is too much!

Before, Marin was mainly involved in the liquor industry. This thing is not very popular in Western Europe. If it wasn't for Marin to reduce the degree blending to 40 degrees or even 20 degrees, there is probably no market. Even so, the 20-degree royal salute has only a small half of the market share among nobles. Nobles and priests usually drink wine the most.

And priests, because of their religious beliefs, basically do not drink alcohol other than red wine. But, these priests are rich and consume a lot of wine. How big is it? The average annual wine consumption of the priests in the North Sea is about 500L, which is about 879 pints, which is close to 120 gallons.

Calculated, the priests drink an average of 2.4 pints of wine every day, which is 2.4 mugs of wine, equivalent to 1.37 liters. Basically, drink wine like water.

Of course, the same drinking wine, priests and priests are of different grades. A top tycoon like Archbishop Taylor naturally drank top Burgundy wine at 5 gold coins a gallon. The church leaders in various other suburbs, including some wealthy abbots, are also at this level. This kind of people is not too many in the Beihai country with two million and hundreds of people, only a few thousand people.

And these characters are mainly some small leaders and some deputies of the church, and some poor monastery abbots in remote areas. They get less benefits in the church, and can only drink second-class wine for 1 gold coin per gallon. There are probably close to 20,000 people in this category.

Then, there are about 30,000 middle-level monks. Such people have a little power and benefits, but not many. What they drink is even worse mid-range wine at 20 shillings (a third of a gold coin) a gallon. This mid-range wine already has some bitter taste. The first two gears have less bitterness.

Further down, there are more than 70,000 low-level priests. However, there is also a difference between the bottom priest and the bottom priest. For example, the low-level priests in small churches in remote villages are very poor, and they can only drink one or two shillings per gallon of low-end wine, which is a little better than that of ordinary people. The bottom-level priests in affluent areas have a little more benefits, and can afford to drink about five or six shillings per gallon of medium-to-low-grade red wine.

In the end, to sum it up, the top 3,000 big guys drink 120 gallons of top wine each year, with a total value of 1.8 million gold coins! There are more than 19,000 church bosses at the next level, and each of them drinks an average of 120 gallons of wine at the next level every year, with a total value of about 2.28 million gold coins! More than 30,000 middle-level church members drank mid-range wine worth 20 shillings (one-third of gold coins), with a total value of about 1.2 million gold coins. The wealthy low-level priests accounted for about 70% of the more than 70,000 low-level priests (mainly because the North Sea country is rich, the proportion is a little higher, and the proportion of poor low-level priests in other countries is more), drinking five or six first Ling (one tenth of a gold coin) per gallon of middle and low-end wine, the total value is about 590,000 gold coins. The low-level poor priests, who accounted for about 30%, could only drink one or two shillings of low-quality wine, with a total value of more than 80,000 gold coins.

To sum it up, Marin was surprised to find that more than 100,000 missionaries in the Beihai Kingdom had to drink red wine worth 5.95 million gold coins every year, which was close to 6 million gold coins!

"Damn it, the church is so extravagant!" Marin swears in surprise.

This is 6 million gold coins! Give it to any king, you can raise 300,000 troops! And France is such a big country in Western Europe, the annual fiscal revenue is only about 1.2 million, which is only one-fifth of the annual alcohol consumption of the members of the Beihai State Church...

Of course, this is also because Marin distributed some fertilizer to the church, which greatly increased the income from the land given to the church. For another country, the same population, the same church population,

The cost is not that big, half of it would be nice.

However, other countries have a large population base! The population base of the church is also huge!

Generally speaking, the proportion of church members in each country is about 1/20 of the population. For example, in France, the priest class accounts for 1/20 of the total population, which is about 800,000 people, which is about eight times that of the North Sea country.

Other countries in the German region also have nearly 10 million people and about 500,000 priests. The same is true in Italy, with a population of tens of millions, um... 700,000 priests... No way, Italy is the stronghold of the Holy See, and the church must be stronger...

Then, there are 4 million people in the UK, and there are nearly 200,000 priests. There are six or seven million people in Poland and Lithuania, and there is also 150,000... Wait, isn't it 1/20? Oh, there are many Slavs in Poland and Lithuania who believe in the Orthodox Church, and non-Catholics account for more than half. Therefore, it is normal that there are fewer people in the Catholic Church.

However, the Orthodox Church also has priests and drinks wine. It's just that because the Orthodox Church does not occupy the dominant position in the two countries, they are doing very poorly and have no income. They can only drink low-quality red wine to make ends meet, let alone mention it.

Then, the Nordic countries also have tens of thousands of missionaries, and Hungary also has more than 100,000 missionaries...

I almost forgot that Spain and Portugal have a total population of nearly 10 million, and the total number of priests is about 700,000, which is almost the same as that of Italy. There is no way, the two countries are devoutly Catholic countries, and there is also the Inquisition, so the church is naturally stronger.

Because the church revered red wine as the holy blood, and people in the Middle Ages did not drink white water, only alcohol. Therefore, the more than three million Catholic priests in Europe basically drink red wine as water.

Of course, due to regional differences, churches in various places are not evenly rich, and their spending power is also different. Beihai is rich, and 100,000 priests can drink wine worth nearly 6 million gold coins every year. But other countries are not so wealthy. However, the population base is there, and the wine consumed every year is worth tens of millions of gold coins!

Why was France rich in the Middle Ages? Because more than half of the wine at that time was produced in France. Then, there are southern European regions like Italy and Spain. In that part of England, because of the rainy weather and low temperature, no wine is produced, and wine is mainly imported from Bordeaux, France. Although poor England, most of the Bordeaux wines imported every year are low-quality wines that cost three or four pennies per gallon. However, the demand can't stand it!

The wine consumption of the English is relatively low, but with a population base of 4 million, plus the rigid needs of the church, 20 to 30 million gallons of wine are imported every year. Even if it is all 4 pennies a gallon of bad wine, the total value is as high as one million or hundreds of thousands of gold coins!

Because they basically rely on imports, English priests do not drink wine as water, but also with beer. Otherwise, I can't afford it... For English priests, drinking a little wine every day is a sense of religious ritual. And thirsty, mainly drink beer to quench your thirst...

There are wine regions in Germany, mainly in the Rhine Valley. However, the output is not large. Therefore, the demand for wine in the German region is large, but the output is small. As a result, bad wine in Germany was worth 6 to 8p a gallon, double the price of wine in England. There is no way, England is close to the sea, and it is convenient to import wine from Bordeaux. Most parts of Germany are deep inland. With the cost of land transportation in this era...it is only double the price, which is already considered conscientious...

...

It should be pointed out that these three million priests are not the only ones who drink wine. European nobles also mainly drink wine. After all, drinking wine, in addition to its religious significance, is also a symbol of style. European aristocrats in this era like to set up banquets to eat and drink. Moreover, poor wine cannot be used for noble banquets. Therefore, beer can't be on the table, it must be high-end wine. Of course, the "Royal Salute" launched by Marin is also a good choice. However, Royal Salute is a bit expensive, more expensive than high-end red wine. Therefore, except for the wealthy aristocrats, the general aristocrats use wine to support the scene.

In general, in this era when wine and beer are used as white water, the value of wine that Europeans drink every year is very high, at least tens of millions of gold coins, or even hundreds of millions!

This is an extremely huge market, and Marin will definitely not be able to swallow it. However, he didn't think about swallowing, but wanted to get a share.

The top red wine, Marin is not involved, it is mainly divided by the big wineries in Burgundy and some wineries in Bordeaux. Even if it is blended with glycerin, Marin can't blend the taste of top wine.

Even the taste of the second-grade wine is difficult to blend. However, he can produce mid-to-high quality wines in the third and fourth grades.

As long as you buy cheap, bad wine and use glycerin to remove the bitterness in it, although it is not as good as the best wine, it is enough to use it as a middle-to-high-grade wine.

In addition, if you take a medium-grade wine and use glycerin to remove the astringency, it can also be used as a second-grade high-end wine.

After all, the winemaking technology of this era was backward, and the bitterness in the wine could not be removed. Only the top wines, or white wines with the skins and seeds removed, have little astringency.

Therefore, Marin can buy low-quality wine and process it as upper-middle-grade wine, which is about one-third of the gold coin per gallon. At the same time, buy a mid-grade wine, remove the astringency with glycerin, and pretend to be a second-grade high-end wine with 1 gold coin per gallon...

4 pennies per gallon of wine can be sold for a tenth to a third of a gold coin after processing. In terms of material cost alone, the profit can be more than ten times or even thirty or forty times the huge profit!

However, the middle-grade wine can be sold for 1 gold coin per gallon after removing the astringency and processing it into sub-high-end wine. Although the profit margin is not high, only two or three times. But because the price is high enough, the profit per gallon is higher than that of low-quality wine processed into mid-range wine!

After some calculations, Marin suddenly became a little dizzy—this shit, I knew that I could make a lot of money with this method, and I still make a ball of grain wine? waste of food...

Moreover, Marin does not need to produce grapes by himself, but to make wine by himself. Just wait until the French produce the wine, buy it directly, uncork the barrel, add a little glycerin to remove the astringency, and then sell it at a higher price...

Even, Marin plans to add glycerin to the wine imported from France to remove the astringency, and then sell it back to the French to earn money from the French!

In this way, a large amount of gold and silver can flow from the hands of the French church to the hands of Marin. However, it seems that the French church and the imperial court are very poor, the coinage is not real, and the silver content of the currency keeps dropping...

So, if you want silver, or... Forget it, Marin found that it seems that all of Europe and various countries are not real, and they are trying so hard to reduce the silver content of silver coins. Especially in France and Italy, silver coins are about to become copper coins...

No wonder the Venetians launched the ducat, a gold coin with a gold content of 999, as the standard currency for international trade. In fact, all countries like to cut corners when it comes to silver coin casting, which makes merchants extremely troublesome when making settlements.

However, Marin can choose to barter trade. If you don't like French silver coins, you can purchase materials in France. Anyway, it costs nothing to process inferior French wine with glycerin and sell it back to the French with a price increase of more than ten times.

You ask whether the cost of glycerin is high? Let me tell you this, this glycerin is a by-product of making soap, do you think the cost is high? Moreover, it can be mass-produced. Only digested dry oil cannot be mass-produced because of the low production of nitric acid. The process of producing soap is simple, the output is large, and it is also simple and cheap to obtain glycerin. So, don't worry about not being able to make money like crazy.

In short, not only the French, but also churchgoers all over Europe are in trouble...including those nobles and businessmen who love to drink wine...

Please remember the first domain name of this book: . Mobile version reading URL: