Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Stockholm Diary #5: Drinking in Sweden
Unless you're a lifelong teetotaler, you've probably experienced at least one of the following situations:

-You're going to a party and stop en route to pick up a cold six-pack of beer to bring along.

-While shopping for dinner supplies, you grab a chilled bottle of Chardonnay from the grocery store's fridge to serve with tonight's meal.

-On a lazy Sunday afternoon, you decide to bake a cake that calls for a quarter cup of Grand Marnier, Kahlua or some other liqueur you don't ordinarily keep around the house.

In most of the U.S., none of those situations seems the least bit unusual. If you live in Sweden, on the other hand, they're all impossible.

In what many people consider another manifestation of the "nanny state," the only way Swedes can buy alcohol for home use is to shop at Systembolaget, the national liquor monopoly. Systembolaget is the only place you can buy anything harder than light beer. And if you want a chilled beverage, hope you've got a few hours and space in your fridge -- all beer and wine is sold at room temperature.



When I was here last (2005), Systembolaget was closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Lately, they've started opening for a few hours on Saturdays. The ban on cold booze is unlikely to change, however. In an interview with the paper Nöjesguiden (sort of a monthly version of the Village Voice or SF Weekly), Systembolaget's media liaison Lennart Agén said they intend to stay "brand-neutral," so it would be inappropriate to chill some bottles and not others. Also, he added, "we don't want to encourage the immediate consumption of alcoholic beverages. If you're going on a picnic and want to consume chilled drinks, you always have a refrigerator at home."

It's no state secret that Systembolaget tries to discourage drinking by making it as expensive and inconvenient as possible -- it's actually in their mandate, which you can read in English on their web site. Has it worked? Well, some people who have seen Swedes in settings where they are suddenly able to enjoy free or cheap liquor -- business class sections on airplanes, "booze cruises" to Denmark or Finland where you can stock up on duty free hooch -- would claim that the forbidden (fermented) fruit tastes the sweetest. Nöjesguiden publishes a helpful chart of beer prices at various Stockholm bars, ranging from 69 kronor ($11.29) for a 40 cl (not quite a pint) pour at the chi-chi Cafe Opera, 58 kronor ($9.50) at trendy nightspot Spy Bar, down to 25 kronor ($4.10) at a couple local happy hours.

Systembolaget has gotten more customer friendly in recent years; I remember that in the past, you couldn't help yourself to bottles and take them up to the cash register, you had to order by number and a clerk would get your selections for you. Nowadays, most shops are self-serve. The store in the Fältöversten mall near our apartment is well-lit and attractively laid out. There are helpful brochures and signs suggesting wine pairings. But when you walk by a closed Systembolaget at 3:30 PM on a Saturday, it's hard to forget that the government would really rather you have a Coke and a smile instead of a gin and tonic.
posted by 125records @ 5:35 AM  
9 Comments:
  • At 7:39 AM, Anonymous Josh said…

    Well, but as in everything in the U.S., this really varies widely by state. California seems to have some of the most liberal liquor laws, with the hard stuff available at any grocery store. But in Pennsylvania and Utah, the situation is pretty much exactly as you describe it in Sweden, with booze only available from state-run stores (in Utah not even light beer can be sold outside that context).

    There is a bewildering amount of state and local legislation pertaining the alcohol in the U.S. Here in Maryland, grocery stores cannot serve alcohol of any sort, not even beer (which in practice means that that most grocery stores have liquor stores right next door to them). However, drug stores like Rite Aid can sell any kind of booze they want, including hard liquor, and can sell packaged foods -- so at the larger ones, you can do your grocery shopping there so long as you restrict yourself to sealed luncheon meats and canned soup (which, really, many people do!).

     
  • At 7:44 AM, Blogger 125records said…

    That's why I made sure to specify, "in most of the U.S." -- since I'm married to a former Pennsylvania, I know about the state stores, and as a former Marylander, I'm well aware of the crazy grocery store ban. I'm curious, does anyone out there know if the PA state stores are allowed to sell cold bevvies?

     
  • At 9:09 AM, Anonymous Flasshe said…

    I was in a PA state store recently while on vacation there, and I'm pretty sure they had a refrigerated section. I was blown away that they didn't have beer there though. The beer laws are very strange.

    Until just last month, you couldn't get take-home liquor here in Colorado on Sundays (aside from 3.2 beer in the grocery stores). Thankfully they finally repealed that and liquor stores can now open on Sunday. But you still can't get take-home liquor (incl beer higher than 3.2) in anything but liquor stores, so it's not available at grocery stores, drug stores, convenience stores, etc.

    The one exception to that is that one store from each grocery chain can have a liquor section. So there's one Safeway, one King Soopers, one Albertsons etc in the entire state of Colorado that can sell liquor. Beat that for bizarre liquor laws!

    The Swedish alcohol policy is just wrong. As if socialized medicine isn't bad enough*, they're also trying to discourage drinking in general? Ack. It should be free beer for everyone!

    * - T.i.C.

     
  • At 9:36 AM, Anonymous Josh said…

    Ooops, Sue, I totally forgot about your MD connection! Heh.

    Here's a *really* weird one: many of my relatives live in Westerville, a suburb of Columbus, OH, that until recently was completely dry (at the request of a small Methodist college located in the town). This might have actually had an impact on people's lives back when Westerville was a distinct community, but now that it's just part of the sprawling car-centered suburban smear that stretches across central Ohio, it's mostly a minor inconvenience, though it does mean that there are few grocery or restaurants within the town limits. Some years ago, a Big Bear (local big supermarket chain) opened a Westerville location -- though it was right on the town line, and the alcohol cases and checkout lines were all just outside of Westerville, keeping the town dry.

     
  • At 2:01 PM, Anonymous Carrie said…

    That's one thing about Canada that I don't like. You have to go to the Liquor Control Board stores here in Ontario (LCBO) for wine and spirits and some beer or The Beer Store for a wider selection of beer. I love grocery shopping in Michigan when I go home because you can get all kinds of wine in the store. They even sell wine at Target now!

    I wonder if the increased Muslim population in Sweden has had an effect on the alcohol policies of the Swedish government?

     
  • At 3:46 PM, Blogger Joe said…

    Seems like just the opposite - the Muslim distaste for drinking meshes nicely with Sweden's existing policies.

     
  • At 6:10 PM, Blogger Gil said…

    I'd kill myself.
    :)

     
  • At 7:04 PM, Blogger Janet ID said…

    Josh: The pints at the Old Bag of Nails in Westerville are more delicious than at any other Old Bag location. By the way, Big Bear, quite sadly, is defunct. In spite of its corporate cleverness.

    When not drinking in Columbus, my family vacations in dry Ocean City, NJ, where the causeways into town are flanked with what you'd expect. It's nothing like Sweden, though.

     
  • At 5:44 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Westerville's local college may have had some pull in the matter, but I'd suspect that being the headquarters of the Anti-Saloon League, was the real reason it was called the "Dry Capital of the World".

    And in typical American fashion, Newark OH, 30 miles to the East, had previously had a reputation for being one of the wettest, with a very large ratio of stills per capita back in it's frontier days.

     
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