As a warmer climate is disrupting harvests in traditional wine-growing areas, professional wine growers have begun to look further north
According to Magnergard, the emergence of wineries this far north is largely thanks to the development of new breeds of grapes in the 1960s and 70s, such as Solaris. Image: Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP©
Far north of iconic wine regions like Bordeaux and Tuscany, Sweden is seeing a burgeoning industry of vineyards and a first generation of winemakers trying to carve out a niche.
"There are millions of techniques, and I don't have a grandfather or grandmother to ask. So we need to figure it out ourselves," Lena Magnergard, 64, told AFP as she walked through the short rows of grapevines at the Selaon vineyard an hour west of Stockholm.
The former communications professional started the vineyard, the most northern Swedish site to have produced its own wine according to Magnergard, together with her farmer husband Erik Bjorkman in 2019 on the family farm.
They produced their first wine in 2021 but Magnegard, a trained sommelier, is quick to admit that as keepers of some 1,000 vines they are still learning.
"Of course you can read up in books, but that is nothing like generational knowledge," she said, adding that they mostly look to France and its centuries of winemaking tradition as the gold standard.