Dorwinion

The land of vines

Dorwinion lies far to the south-east of Mirkwood, in the warm country about the north-western shores of the Sea of Rhûn where the River Running comes down out of the north toward the inland water. Its name is Elvish in form and is understood as the land of wine, and the maps of Wilderland mark it below the eastern plains, beyond the reach of any realm of the West. It is described only as a land of gardens and vineyards under a hotter sun than the north knows, and the strength of its wine was proverbial: a draught that Men of the south might drink at ease was enough to lay out a full-grown Elf who was not used to it.

What the tales record

Everything certain about Dorwinion comes from trade. Its casks were carried north by merchants along the Celduin to Lake-town and up the Forest River to the halls of Thranduil, and the wooden vessels were floated back downstream empty when the cellars had been emptied. Thranduil kept the best of it for his own table and for feasts; in the autumn of T.A. 2941 his butler and the chief of his guards broached a jar of it below the halls, fell into a heavy sleep, and so gave Bilbo the keys and the chance to pack Thorin's company into the empty barrels and send them down the river to the lake. The escape that made the quest of Erebor possible turned on a wine that no one in the story had ever gone to fetch.

Beyond this the published texts are silent. Who ruled Dorwinion, whether its folk were Northmen, Easterlings or some older stock, and whether it lay within the eastern bounds that Gondor once claimed at the height of its power, are not told. It is one of the several places in the East that Tolkien named on his maps and left otherwise unwritten.

Dorwinion appears in the record only as a source of goods. Its trade ran north down the rivers throughout the later Third Age, and its vintages were being drunk in the Woodland Realm and in Lake-town in T.A. 2941. The eastern boundary of Gondor in the days of its greatest reach lay at the Sea of Rhûn, close to this country, but no campaign, treaty or embassy involving Dorwinion is recorded, and it took no known part in the wars of the Wainriders or in the War of the Ring.

A warm, fertile land of vineyards north-west of the Sea of Rhûn, east and south of Mirkwood and the plains of eastern Rhovanion, watered by the lower reaches of the rivers that flow down toward the inland sea.