Muffet's finely aged vintage

The wine trader had to make the final leg of the journey on foot. The slope of Mount Ebott was a lovely place to build a cottage, but it wasn't as of yet reachable by car.

The village had odd sensibilities in both practical and aesthetic matters. Doorways were of disparate sizes, with some big enough to admit elephants and others no larger than required for rodents. He felt the architecture was curiously retrograde in imitating old styles while making no effort to disguise that the buildings were new, not graced by the discolorations of brick and wood that marked authentic age.

Even by the standards of the village the house was kitschy, making it easy to locate. It was tall and thin, somewhat wider at the top where it extended over its neighbors, like a mushroom. Everything was painted a garish purple, from the chimney to the (thereby purely ornamental) windowpanes. A cobweb motif extended across its surface, with ever smaller details becoming recognizable as one got closer.

He knocked on the door, and it swung open with a long creak. Candles on the walls burst into flame while spiders on the floor scurried out of the way, leaving a path to only one of the doors in the hallway, already open.

In the middle of the room behind it sat Muffet, at a desk.

"Bonjour, dearie," she said. There was a faint clicking of mandibles to her consonants.

She was, of course, an arachnid monster. Two of her arms rested on the table, two were folded, and the last two gestured him to sit down, which he did.

He inclined his head. "Good day."

"Now then. Are you here about the wine?"

"I am."

"Let's see then." She reached down to receive three bottles from a wave of spiders. "These were found in the Underground quite some time ago. But of course we only consume monster food, so we just kept them in storage. Ahuhuhu."

He inspected one of the bottles. The ullage was good, and the cork seemed intact. The label was faded, so he looked at it more closely.

"I'm just a silly little baker, but I looked some things up on-line. I think that's a Shiraz. Am I pronouncing that right?"

She wasn't, but he nodded.

His eyes were adjusting to the light well enough to read the label. He suppressed a gasp. It was a 2068 Vriesdijk.

The summer of 2068 had been exceptionally hot, leading to unusual vintages from many areas. Dutch wine from that year was particularly renowned, with its scarcity feeding into the prestige, as most vineyards had disappeared from the small country in the years prior.

The supply that remained after half a century was highly valued. This one came from one of the better wineries. A few bottles might be worth as much as the entire house.

Careful not to let his hands shake, he inspected the other bottles. They were similarly labeled.

"I may be able to take these off your hands," he said in a hopefully unimpressed tone. "Can you tell me how they were stored?"

He left the house half an hour later, hardly believing his luck at paying not even 10% of what the wine was worth.

The bottles would pass through the hands of several dealers over the course of a decade before they were discovered to contain spider cider.