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!