The Boat Drinks Book: A Different Tipple in Every Port by Sims Fiona

Author:Sims, Fiona [Sims, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472930675
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-04-20T04:00:00+00:00

S weden

Vodka

The Swedes like a drink. And they have many drinking traditions, and drinking songs – more of which later. But according to their government, they love their drink just a bit too much, so it introduced a state monopoly to control the production and sale of all alcoholic beverages and raised taxes to astronomical levels. I mention this now because it plays a huge factor in their drinking history.

Though it’s not like it held the Swedes back. They just started to make their own booze, or piled on to duty-free ferry routes between countries to enjoy a tipple, or slipped over to Denmark to have a drink or three. But out of this tight control came one of the world’s biggest spirit brands – Absolut Vodka.

It was after one such crackdown – the first of many attempts by the Swedish government to exert control over consumption – that Lars Olsson Smith, Sweden’s most famous distiller, emerged on to the scene. He created the country’s first rectified spirit in 1879, and was so convinced that his Absolut Rent Brannvin (Absolutely Pure Vodka) was the very best vodka on the market that he took on the might of the Stockholm monopoly.

Smith’s distillery was located just outside Stockholm’s city limits – and therefore outside its jurisdiction. He provided a free ferry service to his establishment, and his customers couldn’t get enough of his vodka. When he needed to buy more raw material to meet the increasing demand, Smith switched production to southern Sweden, buying up distilleries and making sure his vodka had the widest distribution in the land. The government responded by raising taxes and taking over control of all vodka sales. Absolut was virtually forgotten about until 1979, when the state decided to release it on to the international market and it went on to become one of the biggest brands in the world.

Not that vodka is the number one drink in Sweden – that’s beer. Up until recently we were talking lager from larger breweries, followed by a flood of imports (the Swedes love American beer). But in the 1990s a handful of pioneers began opening their own breweries, which enjoyed steady growth. Fast-forward to today and that growth has become an explosion, with microbreweries popping up all over Sweden, including FemAle, who recently launched Sweden’s first beer brewed by and for women – a pale ale called We Can Do It.

Beware: drinking in Sweden can be expensive. Though there are ways of softening the blow – either bypass the bars and buy your own booze from the state-run booze shops called Systembolaget , or just stick to happy hour.

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