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Concept
Swedish wine
Summary
Swedish wine, in terms of wine produced commercially from grapes grown in Sweden, is a very marginal but growing industry which saw its first beginnings in the late 1990s.
In less strict usage, the term "Swedish wine" has also been applied to fruit wine from Sweden, which has a very long tradition, and wine produced in Sweden from imported grape juice, which goes back longer than actual viticulture in Sweden.
Sweden is well north of the area where the European vine, Vitis vinifera, occurs naturally, and there is no tradition of wine production from grapes in the country. Some sources claim that some monastic vineyards were established when the Roman Catholic church established monasteries in Sweden in medieval times, when Sweden's climate was milder, but traces of this supposed viticulture are much less evident than the corresponding activities in England, for example.
Small-scale growing of grapes in Swedish orangeries and other greenhouses has occurred for a long time, but the purpose of such plantations was to provide table grapes as fruit or for decoration or exhibition purposes, and not to provide grapes for wine production.
Towards the end of the 20th century, commercial viticulture slowly crept north, into areas beyond the well-established wine regions, as evidenced by Canadian wine, English wine and Danish wine. This trend was partially made possible by the use of new hybrid grape varieties, partially by new viticultural techniques, and partially by climate change.
The idea of commercial freeland viticulture in Sweden appeared in the 1990s. Some pioneers, especially in Skåne (Scania), took their inspiration from nearby Denmark, where viticulture started earlier than in Sweden, while others took their inspiration from experiences in other winemaking countries.
Perhaps surprisingly, the first two wineries of some size were not established in the far south of Sweden, but in Södermanland County close to Flen (in an area where orchards were common), and on the island of Gotland, which has the largest number of sunshine hours in Sweden.
Official source
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