The availability of older wine vintages in a wine monopoly

Sweden has a single government-owned (but not controlled) alcohol retail monopoly, called Systembolaget (although Swedes often refer to it as Systemet = The System). Many non-Swedes see this as an affront to free trade, and that it obviously must be economically inefficient (e.g. “high taxes are also an issue in the Nordics, where sales are stifled by everything having to be sold through monopolies”).

I have written about this situation quite a number of times, pointing out that the situation is not really the way it is painted by outsiders (ie. sales are not stifled). For example:

• Which countries are dominated by only a few alcohol suppliers?
• Why are there wine monopolies in Scandinavia?
• The WHO is making a mistake about state-owned alcohol retailers

I have also written about the availability of wine under these circumstances, as many people seem to think that it must be restricted in some way, which it is not:

• Wine monopolies, and the availability of wine
• The availability of wines in government-owned retail monopolies
• The availability of older wine vintages in Sweden?

It is the topic of this latter post, about older vintages, that is of interest here. In that post, from 2024, I listed all of the available Australian wines at least 5 years since vintage, available in Systembolaget. There were 24 of them, vintage dated 2013–2018. This seems to me is not too bad a selection, from a single source country, and all of the wines should still be quite drinkable. However, people used to specialist wine shops might find that this selection is nothing to write home about, especially in countries like the USA, where specialty retail is expected.

Today I am going to look at all of the available wines vintage–dated prior to 2000 (ie. last century), irrespective of their country of origin.

The table below shows the results of my searching in the Systembolaget database. These are all table wines, not fortified wines (which can be much older, as their higher alcohol content preserves them). I have shown the Swedish (SEK) price for each wine. Note that US$ 1 ≈ 10 SEK, which makes the conversion easy.

So, there are 7 red wines and 6 whites. This may not impress connoisseurs; but for the Swedish national retail chain, where almost all of the alcohol sold is budget stuff for everyday drinking (the classic “wines for the table not the cellar”), it is as good as I would expect.

All of these wines should still be quite drinkable.

For example, the four Moulin Touchais wines come from a winery that specializes in a semi-sweet wine of great age; so many other old vintages have been available as well (see: Tasting the magical sweet wines of Moulin Touchais through the ages).

Similarly, the current release of the Xavier Vignon wine was not bottled until 2022, and it is widely available elsewhere (Wine-Searcher).

Also, although the company no longer exists, Richmond Grove long specialized in limited releases of its Watervale Riesling (e.g. in 2012 Chris Shanahan noted that the winery offered Watervale Rieslings from 1996 to 2011).

The Luis Pato wine was tasted in 2023 / 2024 by Wine Anorak, and given a score of 95/100.

A perusal of the Wine-Searcher database shows that the Giacomo Borgogno wine is widely available elsewhere. All of the other wines are also still available elsewhere (e.g. Bodegas Campillo, Fontanafredda, Jean Leon, Mastroberardino, Vajo dei Masi).

These wines are rarely actually in any of the Systembolaget retail stores, but are still in the importer / distributor warehouse. They can be ordered through the Systembolaget online order system, and arrive a few days later at my local store, where I collect (and pay for) them. This system works quite well.