The availability of wines in government-owned retail monopolies

Government-owned retail monopolies have a bad reputation, in the sense that they are seen as restricting the availability of alcoholic beverages to the masses, for example. However, this is not necessarily the case; and as I live in a country (Sweden) that has such a thing, I thought that I might set the record straight.

I have looked at this topic before (The availability of older wine vintages in Sweden?). That post has an introduction to the topic, but it looks only at Australian wine (because that is what I am most familiar with). So, in this new post I will now extend my coverage to all vintage-dated wines.

I will start, however, by briefly looking at why Sweden’s alcohol sales are supervised by the national government in the first place. They do this by owning the national retail chain, called Systembolaget (The System Company). It has this name because it replaced the pre-existing local “Systems”, by uniting them all.

Government ownership of retail alcohol sales is common in the Nordic countries, as it currently also exists in Norway (Vinmonopolet), Finland (Alko) and Iceland (Vínbúðin). So, Sweden and Finland are a bit odd, because they are both in the European Union, where alcohol is not otherwise supervised. (Norway and Iceland, and also Switzerland, refuse to join the EU.)

The idea of the government taking some sort of control of alcohol availability stems from the long-standing Nordic tradition of drinking lots of strong spirits, which is widely recognized as not being good for your health. So, it is not really a response to any sort of temperance movement (as was Prohibition in the USA, for example), but is instead an example of the government caring about its citizens. (Seriously: the governments are socialist institutions in the Nordic countries!)

Thus, back 7 decades ago when Systembolaget was founded, the government’s stated reasoning was to sell ​​alcohol without profit interest, which would limit the negative effects of alcohol on society (Systembolaget’s history).

So, the modern Systembolaget was born in 1955 when a large number of regional System companies merged into a single nationwide company. Now, alcohol would be freely available for all Swedes who are over 21 years old, and who are not drunk or suspected of being drunk, to buy alcohol in Systembolaget’s stores (From mountain men to Bratt):

The mission is the same now as then: to sell alcohol in a responsible manner with concern for public health. History has taught us that the Swedes’ relationship to alcohol has not been the best. Systembolaget is to lead the way to get Swedes to learn to drink wine instead of spirits and to develop new alcohol-free alternatives.

So, the old System stores had been located largely in secluded back streets, but alcohol sales now came out into the public (Our stores: from back streets to the city centre). Furthermore, things have continued to change since then; for example:

• In 1966, after almost 10 years of campaigning, wine overtook brandy as the most sold drink at Systembolaget.
• In 1984, a specialist wine shop opened in Marmorhallarna in Stockholm.
• In 1991, Systembolaget opened a test store with self-service in Filipstad; and since then almost all stores are self-service.
• In 1999, the Riksdag (national government) approved that Systembolaget can have extended opening hours on weekdays, and accept debit and credit cards, as well as the possibility of ordering via the internet.
• Sadly, Saturday closing was introduced in 1982; and not until 2001 were the stores open again on Saturdays (The Saturday closed years).
• In connection with Systembolaget’s 50th anniversary in 2005, CEO Anitra Steen sent an open letter to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso (and it was published as an advertisement in the Financial Times) that Swedish alcohol consumption is low thanks to Systembolaget’s retail monopoly.

It is worth finishing with the note that Finland and Sweden move to relax strict alcohol laws. In Sweden’s case, the government is moving to allow what it calls “farm sales”, in which alcohol producers can offer beverages directly to visiting customers.

Anyway, enough of the writing. Let’s look at the data. In the above graph, I have shown a count of all of the vintage-dated non-fortified wines currently available via Systembolaget, both in (at least one of) the stores or via an internet order. I have plotted the data separately for each of the 12 biggest supplying nations (Sweden does not make much wine itself).

You can see that most of the wines come from Italy (29%) and France (28%), followed by Spain (13%). Furthermore, they come from the most recent half-dozen vintages. However, they do go all the way back 45 years, with 33 French wines available from last century, along with 6 from Italy, 2 from Spain, and one each from Portugal and Germany.

If you think that this is a poor selection of wines available to Swedes, then you need your head read! This is at least as good as was available to me back when I lived in Australia; and it is easier to get at it because it comes via a national retail chain. All I do is fill in an internet order form, and a few days later the wine is ready to be picked up at my local store — easy peasy.

We can also look at fortified wines, in a similar manner. The above table lists the ones currently available from the 5 biggest supplying nations. Obviously, most of them are from Portugal (Port and Madeira). Once again, this seems to me to be a pretty impressive selection; and it goes back a very long way. There is also the ample non-vintage stuff, of course, which I have not listed here.

Being in the European Union makes a lot of products readily available in Sweden, and this includes alcoholic beverages. The fact that the government officially owns the sole retail-alcohol chain seems to make no difference whatsoever. Indeed, the fact that it is formally run without profit motive probably works in our favour, as the customers, as this is likely to make a wider selection of products remain in the catalog, once released.

I, for one, am very happy with my retail alcohol selection, and its ease of access. I really do not care who formally owns the shops themselves. So, to those of you who have a negative view of government retail monopolies, I think your are wrong, at least in the case of Swedish alcohol.

Of course, none of this addresses the completely separate issue of trade sales of alcohol. There is plenty of stuff available to restaurants, bars and caterers that is not available retail. For example, in the Italian restaurant I was in the other day, I had two very nice apple ciders from the north of Italy, plus an Italian brandy distilled on 20 Oct 1975. Not bad going!

Wine import taxes in the United Kingdom (are very different from the USA)

 As I noted in a recent week’s list of quotes (Quotes from famous people about wine and its role in our lives): “Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized.” — André Simon. It also makes it more expensive, due to government taxes.

New U.S. president Donald Trump made a central part of his ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign the tenet of imposing a minimum tariff on all imports (Drinks firms brace as Trump elected US president). He has made it one of his first actions to affirm the new taxes on trade, including a 10—20 % tariff on all imports (How will Trump’s universal and China tariffs impact the economy?).

So, as a change from the current U.S. news, let us look at United Kingdom taxes, or duties as they call them (basically, excise duty = import tax; What is the difference between taxes, duties, and tariffs?).

In the U.K., all alcoholic drinks are taxed based on their alcohol by volume (ABV), meaning that beverages with a higher alcoholic percentage are subject to higher rates. This idea came into effect in August 2023 (The new alcohol duty system), as previously there had been four separate taxes, covering beer, cider, spirits, wine and made-wine.

Note that the U.K. duty is a fixed cost, based on ABV, irrespective of the cost of the wine itself (cheap or expensive) — this is a very different thing from the U.S. import duties, which are a percentage of the cost of the wine (and are likely to stay that way: Four more years ... of a non-wine drinker in the White House).

The British system for wine looks roughly like this (£1 = US$1.22):
 ABV    Excise duty per 750 ml
    1%    £0
    2%    £0.14
    3%    £0.21
    4%    £0.74
    5%    £0.93
    6%    £1.12
    7%    £1.30
    8%    £1.49
    9%    £1.92
  10%    £2.14
  11%    £2.35
  12%    £2.57
  13%    £2.78
  14%    £2.99
  15%    £3.21

However, this arrangement was too simple, or perhaps too complex, as the government decided that there would be a “temporary arrangement for wine”, up to and including the end of January 2025 (Work out how much Alcohol Duty you need to pay). The idea is that:

If you need to pay duty on wine with an ABV of between 11.5% and 14.5%, there’s a temporary arrangement from 1 August 2023 up to and including 31 January 2025. During these dates you must use an assumed strength of 12.5% when you work out the amount of Alcohol Duty for your wine.

In other words, for 11.5—12.0% alcohol you pay more duty (£2.67) than you might expect, and for 13.0—14.5% you pay less. Go figure!

Anyway, the U.K. government has announced that it will increase tax on wine and spirits in line with inflation from February next year (Autumn budget: British government increases tax on wine and spirits). Wine at <12% may actually decrease in duty, but wine at greater % will increase (anything up to a 20% increase).

It should come as no surprise that taxes increase through time. We can look at the U.K. taxes, as they do not hide the information (Historic alcohol duty rates). I have plotted the data in the above graph, showing the taxes from 1995 through to 2017. It shows that at a minimum the amount of duty paid has pretty much doubled through time (ie. an increase to 200%).

For comparison, based on the Bank of England “Target” (i.e. average) inflation rate of 2% per year (Inflation: UK prices soar at fastest rate for almost ten years), the price of a bottle of wine has gone up to only 150% during the same period of time. So, taxes have increased faster than inflation.

It is therefore no wonder that Nearly half of UK drinkers plan to reduce their alcohol intake over the next year:

New research .... suggests that up to 48% of Britons intend to cut down on alcohol in the coming year. About 9% say they intend to stop drinking altogether. Those who are most likely to cut down are young, with 61% of 18-24 year olds planning to reduce or completely stop. This number increases to 68% for those aged between 25-34. As to why they’re planning to cut down, 34% said they wanted to save money, while an equal number said they wanted to cut down for their health.

My wine life here, as an Australian migrant in Sweden, was much simpler back when the U.K. was part of the European Union (it ended its membership in January 2020), and I thus didn’t have to pay import duty to get Australian wine into Sweden from Britain, which was a good supply source.

Wine consumption throughout the USA

Wine has played an important part in United States history, since the 1500s (with Spanish and French settlers; see: The evolution of wine in America). As but one example, it has been noted (In Vino Veritas):

According to records, in 1801 Thomas Jefferson spent “$6500 for provisions and groceries, $2700 for servants (some of whom were liveried), $500 for Lewis’s salary, and $3,000 for wine”, after taking up residence in the President’s House, upon his inauguration as the third president of the United States.

So, they spent half as much money on wine as on food. Those politicians and their guests did quite well for themselves, didn’t they? *

We might therefore now look at wine in the modern U.S. world.

We could start by simply looking at the amount of wine consumed per person per year, over the past century or so. This is shown in the above graph (from: U.S. wine consumption), based on all wine types including sparkling wine, dessert wine, vermouth, other special natural and table wine. Clearly, there has been a general increase in consumption per person through time, illustrating a growing wine industry.

Note the dip 1943—1947, with the exception of 1946. The reason for this should be obvious, given world events at the time. On the other hand, the dip during the period 1987—2006 seems to be based on a shift in both population (ie. the baby boomers coming of age), along with a decrease in the concentration of the alcohol consumed (eg. less vermouth, more light beer). Also, an increase in alternative alcoholic beverages, such as craft beers, and spirits-based cocktails.

As an aside, the Portuguese apparently consume more wine than any other country worldwide (13.7 gallons per person), followed by the French (12.4 gallons) (from: Average per capita consumption of wine in leading countries worldwide in 2022). Those Americans are way behind!

The dip in U.S. consumption in the past few years has been the subject of extensive commentary in the media, there currently being major wine over-supply relative to demand (What’s driving wine’s structural decline?). This situation shows no signs of changing any time soon (Why 2025 ‘will be a telling year in the wine industry’).

We can now move on to a look at the individual states of the USA. The next graph shows each state as a dot, located based on the state population (horizontally) and the 2022 per person wine consumption (vertically) (data from: Which states consume the most wine? and List of U.S. states and territories by population).

Clearly, most of the states form a blob in the middle of the graph, all therefore being somewhat similar. This is to be expected, culturally.

Note, however, that the most populous states (at the right of the graph) have medium consumption per person. On the other hand, it is some of the smaller states (at the top of the graph) that have the highest consumption per person. From the top, these states are: District of Columbia, New Hampshire, Vermont and Delaware. Does this surprise you? The lowest consumption is in West Virginia and Kansas (at the bottom of the graph).

Mind you, consumption volume has generally been down recently in most of the states of the USA (Areas of strength amid wine consumption shrinkage in the US). Interestingly, some of the biggest dips (–5% or more) have been in D.C. (at the top of the graph) and Kansas (at the bottom).

Finally, we could look at a few individual cities, in terms of the current average cost of their wines (from: Most expensive cities for wine are all in the US). This table lists the top 11 in the world, this year, with 8 of them being in the USA. Note the presence of San Francisco and Oakland, but not, for example, Los Angeles.

Rank	City	State / Province	Average price of a bottle of wine (US$)
1	New York	NY	$20.00
2	Columbus	OH	$18.00
3a	San Francisco	CA	$17.75
3b	Oakland	CA	$17.75
4	Philadelphia	PA	$17.00
5a	Launceston	Tasmania	$16.45
5b	Hobart	Tasmania	$16.45
6a	Washington	DC	$16.00
6b	Denver	CO	$16.00
7	Tucson	AZ	$15.50
8	Victoria	British Columbia	$15.30

So, there you have it. Wine consumption is decreasing, but this matters more in some states than in others; and there are definitely some cities not to drink wine in!

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* For a recent discussion of the United Kingdom government’s wine cellar (£3.8 million = $5 million), see: UK government spends over £97,000 restocking its wine cellar.

Quotes from famous people about wine and its role in our lives

In a previous post on Interesting wine quotes from famous people, I collated three dozen quotations from over the past three millennia. It was apparently quite a popular post, as I tried to pick ones that are cheering. So, here I add another three dozen. This time I also include quotes from people born after 1900, and also a few from less famous people.

• “Good company, good wine, good welcome can make good people.” ― William Shakespeare (1564—1616) [Henry VIII, Act I, Scene iv]
  
• “My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.” ― Jonathan Swift (1667—1745)
• “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.” ― Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
• “In life, as with wines, you have to appreciate the journey as much as the destination.” ― Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
• “One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.” ― Samuel Johnson
• “Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.” ― Samuel Johnson
• “I love everything that is old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.” — Oliver Goldsmith (1728—1774)
• “Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, and makes weariness forget his toil.” ― George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron) (1788—1824)
• “Wine is life. It's the union of the earth with the sun; it’s the essence of time captured in a bottle.” ― Victor Hugo (1802—1885)
• “Wine is the intellectual part of a meal while meat is the material.” ― Alexandre Dumas (1802―1870)
• “Better is old wine than new, and old friends like-wise.” ― Charles Kingsley (1819—1875)
• “One not only drinks wine, one smells it, observes it, tastes it, sips it and — one talks about it.” — Albert Edward of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (King Edward VII) (1841—1910)
• “A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894)
• “Just as the best wines undergo fermentation, life’s challenges refine us into our best selves.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson
• “Alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.” ― George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950)
• “Wine comes in at the mouth and love comes in at the eye; that’s all we shall know for truth before we grow old and die.” ― William Butler Yeats (1865—1939)
• “Gentlemen, in the little moment that remains to us between the crisis and the catastrophe, we may as well drink a glass of Champagne.” ― Paul Claudel (1868—1955)
• “Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized.” ― André Simon (1877—1970)
• “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” ― Charles De Gaulle, President of France (1890—1970) *
• “I shall drink no wine before it’s time! OK, it’s time.” ― Groucho Marx (1890—1977)
• “Wine is the most civilized thing in the world, and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.” ― Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961)
• “The connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes of its secrets.” ― Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
• “If food is the body of good living, wine is its soul.” ― Clifton Fadiman (1904—1999)
• “A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.” ― Clifton Fadiman
• “There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.” ― Bette Davis (1908—1989)
• “Wine to me is passion. It’s family and friends. It’s warmth of heart and generosity of spirit.” ― Robert Mondavi (1913—2008)
• “Making good wine is a skill; making fine wine is an art.” ― Robert Mondavi
• “Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy.” ― Frank Sinatra (1915—1998)
• “The first kiss and the first glass of wine are the best.” — Marty Rubin (1930—1994)
• “Being a wine enthusiast means you care more about quality than quantity.” ― Jean-Claude Carrière (1931—2021)
• Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.” ― Joan Collins (1933— )
• “We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.” ― Eduardo Galeano (1940—2015)
• “More important than the food pairing is the person with whom you drink the wine.” ― Christian Moueix (1946— )
• “Compromises are for relationships, not wine.” ― Robert Scott Caywood (1961—)
• “Wine is, perhaps, the closest thing the planet has to an elixir of life.” ― Thom Elkjer (1980— )
• “Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.” ― Robert Fripp (1946— )

* Okay, so it is not exactly wine, although there the sentiment would be the same. Besides, de Gaulle’s estimate, made in 1962, was a lowball ― France boasts 1,000―1,600 varieties of cheese.