Planet:Arcon

Arcon is a culturally significant French planet near. It is the home of France's more reputed winegrowers and the origin of its most valuable vintages. A bottle of Arcon wine, to those who know how to appreciate it, is nearly priceless.

History
Founded in 2357 as a small agricultural settlement with little economic significance or exports, its history as a winemaking planet began in the 2400's when a small community of aspiring winemakers set up shop in Tranquility Valley near the center of its largest continent. Despite its name, the valley was a difficult beast to tame. Grapes died due to unforeseen circumstances, and the valley's first vintages tasted bitter. It took the winemakers ten years and a lot of patience to finally begin their craft in earnest, and it took even longer for them to gain recognition.

Finally, in the 2500's, a winemaker's guild, eager to preserve French wine culture after the abandonment of Earth, visited the Tranquility Valley. They were so impressed by what they saw that they chose the planet Arcon as the site for a massive project to rebuild France's wineries. Castles in the old French style were erected along the Marques river and others nearby, creating a thriving community of winemakers, each competing to make their vintages known.

However, as their culture blossomed, so too did the influx of tourism and colonists eager to take part in the winemaking process. These onlookers often did more harm than good by upsetting water reserves, violating the property of growers, and harassing them with odd requests. It came to a crisis in 2545 when the national government considered recolonizing the planet and turning it into an agricultural powerhouse to meet the growing needs of the French population. To incur the favor of President Jason Durant and convince him of the merits of the Tranquility Valley as a cultural site, the winegrowers built him a small palace, a possible retreat from the noisy capital, on the banks of the river Marques. When Durant visited the planet, their entreaties swayed him to mark the planet as a cultural site and entrusted the guild of winegrowers with its protection.

As a result of the incident, the growers on Arcon attained national fame, and their vintages soon became priceless both nationally and internationally, worth thousands in any currency worth naming.