Easy enough to wrap your head around, when you live north of the Rhine tribunal 
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Not much fresh stuff in winter, no. But there are lots and lots of stuff that can be preserved to last the winter.
Salted and smoked meats. Pickled vegetables. Apples and root vegetables can be stored for many months.
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So i read a paper on this a while back, which i regret not saving. There was a type of coinage, Bracteates, which was single sided and minted mostly in the HRE and that only really had value at the local level. But the kicker is that once in a while the lord who minted it would say that from date X they would no longer be valid tender and would be exchanged at a lower rate for newer coins of the same type. Just a big con to prevent the workers drom accumulating any wealth.
Minting rights were a huge deal whther in the kingdom of France or the HRE, which lords would fight tooth and nail for. So while within a village one might just have a "credit line" at othwr villagers, the use of coin was definitely a thing.
Now when a king devalued currency, he was called all kind of names and was terrible, somehow the bractreate and its reminting was a totally acceptable thing...
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To me the hardest thing to truly grasp was how things are simultaneously more centralized in terms of power structures and less centralized in terms of actual culture and meaningful decisions. France may technically be a country of its own despite the fantasy paradigm of a different king every twenty miles, but every priest presents their own variations on the official church doctrine and every town has its own insular society and law enforcement.
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My saga likes to make jokes about the existence of the potato. Our chef magi made the excuse once that 'Potato is just how the Irish say 'turnip'.'
The most common minor mistake I sea is how often people want to drink tea.
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Guilty!
It is such an common alcohol-free drink that's often the first one that comes to my mind, but in fact, most drinks were - at least - slightly alcoholic, because there was no way to preserve juices or other "edible" liquids. I saw blackberry wine, beer-like drinks, spice wines, sage wines, etc...
Does it mean that all mages are always slightly tipsy while casting BoAF ? Maybe we have the real reason was some spells do not need to be aimed...
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Herbal tea? Infusion?
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Tisanes / herbal teas should be around. I'd have no problem saying that both tea and coffee had become available through contact with the Arab world and Persia. Coffee didn't become a big deal until later but there are references to it as a drink prior to the 10th century.
I've never seen any early references to tea in Persia or Arabic sources but I'd probably be ok with the assumption that some mage had found it while investigating something in Central Asia or Western China.
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There is a long way from whatever that might be to the everyday tea customs of present-day England, as the universal remedy for fatigue, stress, conflict, bereavement, and whatnot.
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In my game one of the herbal Vis sources is a selection of plants acquired from a faerie market that they grow in a greenhouse but the Vis is magical rather than faerie.
Including: "king spike fruit". (Pineapple) and Devil finger cherries (chillies)
Also, when the English discovered Tea we went full evil overlord to control the supply of it. Before we discovered Tea we were so unchill we fought everybody and had wars that lasted 100 years. We seriously need our hot leaf juice to chill out.
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LOL! You are right that while the beverages could easily be in an Ars Magica saga with just a little tweaking the cultural aspects would be different!
IIRC coffee is starting to be used in Ethiopia atound the time of ArM. In my last saga, i chose to have an Ex Misc loving in his tower star gazing, indulging in Sufism and drinking coffee with his mute buttler called Bilal.
But this was cheeky abd slightly anachronistic on my part..
Please excuse the escape of my inner nerd.
The 2010 translation of the Annals of the Caliph's Kitchens 10th century Baghdadi cookbook has references to roasted coffee bean used to produce aromatic smoke, as a snack, as a hand washing preparation (perhaps some form of scrub?). Interestingly there are also hints of coffee used as a drink. Various 9th and 10th century Arabic sources list medical uses including as a drink. Even more intriguing is the reference to a 6th century description of a trip to Damascus that seems to refer to a coffee drink completely outside of any medical connection (it fact it is compared to wine).
Nothing talks about preparation (probably closer to tea than modern coffee) or widespread acceptance but it is enough to make me accept that the 13th and 15th century dates normally thrown around are more about widespread use than initial knowledge. I'd love to learn more about the timeline of coffee in those areas but it's low on my priority list right now.
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My level of research on the topic of coffee was opening the wiki page... if i am less anachronistic than i thought, then all the better.
(Since i do not drink coffee, i never cared enough to look into it)
I think it is obvious I do drink coffee!
I got into medieval cooking 2-3 years ago. I wasn't looking for coffee history but I loved running across the references.
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I know that as a non coffee drinker, i am the odd one out...
Since chicory is a plant cultivated since a very long time, I thought that chicory coffee could have been a medieval beverage. But my research so far only points towards the chicory variety used to make drink starting to become a thing in 1800, and only as a coffee substitute. Which implies that coffee had to be widespread before it could become a drink on its own.
Same for roasted cereals drinks (roasted sorghum, barley, rye, wheat). These cereals are well-known, but their usage after roasting to make a drink seems to be relatively recent, again as a substitute to coffee, not as an original drink.
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Know that you are not alone. We are few, but we do exist.
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I am also amongst those who do not drink coffee. Or, as I often tell my wife, amongst the non-addicted. 
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I don't drink coffee, but I am addicted to diet soda.