Where to begin? I'm from South Africa, or more specifically, I lived in Cape Town, for 9 years, before moving to Gothenburg in Sweden. I really like drinking and talking about wine. There's so much to learn.
When I moved to Sweden, I realised that the apartments in Sweden is not the ideal place to store wine, and that not a lot of my friends here, have wine stored away, as they do in South Africa. Most people tend to just go to the liquor store and buy what they need, then drink it either the same night, or the same weekend. You don't often find really old wines in people's homes. It's basically the last vintage or the one before that.
What Sweden does have though, is one of the biggest selections in the world to choose from. Their liquor store is called System bolaget and is state owned. They have wine from every country that produces wine. South Africans mostly drink South African wine, and the choice is basically grape variety and wine farm. Not here. Here you add country into the equations as well. So the choices are huge. A bit too much choice if you ask me. Sometimes I feel like a kid in a candy store, not knowing where to start and what to buy.
One thing I do miss is wine tastings. Here you have no chance to taste the wine before you buy it. You have to go on what others have said and their recommendations. With that in mind, I have decided to start a wine tasting group, with my friends, so we can taste more wines than we regularly do, and have a wider range of wines we "know", before we buy. But more on that later.
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