Swedish wine

Swedish wine, in terms of wine produced commercially from grapes grown in Sweden, is a very marginal but growing industry which saw its first beginnings in the late 1990s.

In less strict usage, the term "Swedish wine" has also been applied to fruit wine from Sweden, which has a very long tradition, and wine produced in Sweden from imported grape juice, which goes back longer than actual viticulture in Sweden.

Sweden is well north of the area where the European vine, Vitis vinifera, occurs naturally, and there is no tradition of wine production from grapes in the country. Some sources claim that some monastic vineyards were established when the Roman Catholic church established monasteries in Sweden in Medieval times, when Sweden's climate was milder, but traces of this supposed viticulture are much less evident than the corresponding activities in England, for example.

Small-scale growing of grapes in Swedish orangeries and other greenhouses have occurred for a long time, but the purpose of such plantations were either to provide fruit (grapes) or for decoration or exhibition purposes, and not to provide grapes for wine production.

Towards the end of the 20th century, commercial viticulture slowly crept north, into areas than the well-established wine regions, as evidenced by Canadian wine, English wine and Danish wine. This trend was partially made possible by the use of new hybrid grape varieties, and partially by new viticultural techniques.

The idea of commercial freeland viticulture in Sweden appeared in the 1990s. Some pioneers, especially in Skåne (Scania), took their inspiration from nearby Denmark, where viticulture started earlier than in Sweden, while others took their inspiration from experiences in other winemaking countries.

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Wikipedia