What countries are best represented in Sweden’s wine retailer monopoly?

I have recently produced a couple of posts about wine availability in Sweden, pointing out that it is not actually restricted, as is sometimes claimed (The availability of older wine vintages in a wine monopoly; The broad availability of United States wine in Sweden’s wine retailer). This is in spite of the fact that the government owns the alcohol retail chain.

The point here is that government regulation of alcohol consumption is widely practiced around the world, including ownership of the alcohol-retail chain. For example, the history of Prohibition in the U.S.A. is intimately concerned with this topic. In that case, after ceasing the ban on alcohol retail of any sort, there were several subsequent suggestions of government control of alcohol sales, leading to the adoption of the current Three-tier System (A brief history of the three-tier system in America), in which distribution and retail must be carried out by separate companies.

Well, in Sweden’s case, there is an import/production group of companies, which is not hindered by the government, while the government formally owns the retail company (Systembolaget = The System Company). However, it seems to offer no impedance to how this company carries out its activities, in practice. This is all to the good for the (adult) populace, including me.

Import of wine is important in Sweden, because there are not a lot of local vineyards and wineries (Swedish wineries — who'd have thought it?). So, it is of interest to ask where most of the wines available in the shops do actually come from. That is what I have shown in this graph, based on the Systembolaget database, showing the number of individual wines (not their total volume), irrespective of vintage or bottle size. It shows 92.6% of the total of 16,386 available wines.

It can come as no surprise to any of you that the top three sources are the three biggest wine-producing countries in Europe, given that Sweden is part of the 27-nation European Union. So France (28.7% of the wines), Italy (25.0%) and Spain (11.6%) supply 65% of the Systembolaget wines between them. Perhaps slightly more surprising is that Germany (4.4%) and Portugal (3.5%) do not fare so well.

South Africa (4.5%) and the USA (4.0%) surprisingly do better than Australia (2.6%), which slightly bests Austria (2.4%). Given the current political ruckus, the US contribution may soon decrease, of course. South America also does not do so well (Chile 1.5%; Argentina 1.3%).

What I have left out of the graph is the contribution of both Sweden (2.2%) and Japan (0.6%). This is because they do not contribute much in the way of Vitis vinifera wines. Sweden does contribute 367 wines: 91 whites, 30 sparkling, 23 rosé, and 21 reds; but it also contributes 95 fruit wines, and 75 glögg (mulled wines). Japan contributes 94 wines, including 66 sake, and 22 fruit wines.

Anyway, this is enough for the current series of blog posts about wine retail in Sweden. However, things are likely to change at any time. For example, Georgia is currently a candidate country for joining the European Union, having applied for membership in March 2022 and officially been granted candidate status in December 2023. They seem to be keen to get their wines onto shelves around Europe (eg. Georgia backs UK growth with upped investment), presumably including Sweden.