The broad availability of United States wine in Sweden’s wine retailer

Recently I produced a post about wine availability in Sweden, pointing out that wine sales are not actually as restricted as is sometimes claimed: The availability of older wine vintages in a wine monopoly. There I noted that some of the currently available vintages in Sweden’s wine monopoly (called Systembolaget) date back to last century. Another way to look at the same issue, which may be of interest to many of my readers, is to consider the extent to which United States wine is available in that same wine monopoly. *

The obvious place to start is with simply how many different wines are currently listed in the Systembolaget catalog. It looks like this first figure.

Well, 672 wines is not necessarily a big deal to an American, but for a small European country it is pretty darned good. As expected, California (= “Kalifornien” in Swedish] dominates, with more than 80% of the wines, but Washington and Oregon also get a look in.

There are 471 red wines, 176 white wines, 12 rosé, 5 sparkling, 6 flavored / fruit wines, and 2 are mixed boxes. Of these wines, 112 are in the standard store assortment (ie. they should be in most stores, and their local supply is renewed), 197 are in the temporary assortment (ie. their supply is limited, and is not necessarily renewed), and 360 need to be ordered (ie. they are not in the shops, but will be delivered to your local store upon request to the importer).

Of these wines, 526 are in standard glass bottles, 88 are in lighter bottles, 28 are boxed wines (with plastic tap), 13 are in PET bottles, 11 are in cans, 5 are in cardboard packaging, and 1 is in a pouch. If you want even more details: 59 of the bottles have a screw cap, and 4 have a synthetic cork.

The wines are mostly relatively recent vintages, as shown in the next figure, but they do go back to 2009. The alcohol content is stated to vary from 7% to 19%.

In US dollars, the wines vary from $3.50 (187 ml) to $4.60 (250 ml) to $5.90 (375 ml) to $7.90 (750 ml), all the way up to $10,000. There are 180 wines (27%) retailing at $20 or less. The six most expensive packages are as shown next (NB: $US1 = 10 kronor). Note that the first item refers to a mixed box of 3 bottles (ie. $4,000 each bottle).

There are many different grape varieties available, as listed in the next figure. (Note that some of the names are actually synonyms).

If we consider what foods the wines are claimed to be suitable to accompany, then the list looks like the following figure. Note that Nut (“nöt” in Swedish) = Beef.

Finally, getting technical, if we define Lower carbon footprint as 0—400 g CO2e/l (carbon dioxide equivalents per liter) then 55 wines are stated to qualify; and we define Average carbon footprint as 401—650 g CO2e/l then 102 wines are stated to qualify; and Higher carbon footprint is 651—1475 g CO2e/l then 511 wines are stated to qualify.

So, all in all, I think that the Swedes do quite well in terms of wine from the United States of America. How long this lasts will be determined by how the current tariff ruckus is resolved, of course.

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* The U.S. three-tier system was originally designed to prevent monopolies, indicating that Americans do indeed object to this business arrangement.