Swedish wine

Swedish wine, in terms of wine produced commercially from grapes grown in Sweden, is a very marginal but growing phenomenon 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.

History

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.