Meeting up with WOSA in Sweden
Wed, Sep 3, 2008
I just met up with Maja Berthas, the WOSA Swedish Rep, in an area called Östermalm in Stockholm. Sadly, the Backsberg budget doesn’t permit me to hang out in this uber fancy part of the city very often. With Gucci and Prada lined streets this 2.56 km sq district is home to some of Sweden’s priciest real estate. That aside, we had a delicious lunch at a restaurang (Swedish for restuarant) called Sturehof . My small contribution to Sturehof was to bring down the average age of dining customers. This is the restaurant below from outside and further below the building it’s housed in…not bad)
South Africa has become a popular destination for many Swedes and with that, wines sales have swelled. SA has been in the top 3 exporters to Sweden for the last number of years, explained Maja.
Sweden is an interesting place to sell wine as wine sales directly to the public are all controlled through the the Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly Systembolaget. There is no such thing as a bottle store or independent wine shop. The monopoly has got upsides and dowsides for both customers and producers alike (more in another post- I need to do some more of the ol’ research first). According to their website, however, the monopoly ‘exists for one reason only: to minimize alcohol-related problems by selling alcohol in a responsible way, without profit motive’. I think the first part may be true, though I am a bit more skeptical of that latter part.
SB
This post was written by:
Simon Back- who has written
56 posts on the Back Chat Blog. After finishing up studying economics at UCT in 2007, Simon has joined his family wine farm, Backsberg. When he is not trying to figure out what marketing wine means, he is authoring his blog, Back Chat.Author's web site: Backsberg
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Last 3 posts by Simon Back
- 'Do Wine Writers Suffer and all that?' - July 4th, 2010
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Tags: Backsberg, Sweden, Systembolaget, Wine, WOSA
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Well impressed with the blog and site. good work this year!
don
September 5th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Simon — welcome back to blogging
Re Systembologat. I spent quite some time in Stockholm over 10 years and I loathe Systembolaget with an intensity. It is many times better now after Sweden joined the EU, more like a real shop, but you should have seen it before…
I can not think of a single upside for consumers in this monopoly. And if Systembolaget was the only place you could buy wine, neither would you.
September 8th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Hey Peter, thanks for dropping by. I can’t comment on how it was ten years ago, but I think that these days there are upsides to consumers. Take care, SB
November 11th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Well your budget couldn’t have been that bad if you had lunch at Sturehof
One of the better Östermalm restaurants actually.
What is promising is that SA wine seems to be relly well recieved here in Sweden and as you pointed out the demand is only growing…
Good luck with the Backsberg label in Sweden!
Brandon Marc
My Wine Cellar
http://www.brandonmarc.com
November 12th, 2008 at 6:51 am
Hi Brandon,
The catch is that I didn’t pay for lunch! Though given we pay an annual levy to WOSA every year, along with other South African producers, I guess one could argue that I was paying a small percentage of the lunch. I did however take Maja out to lunch when she was in South Africa, so it wasn’t a complete free ride
SB