Yes, Sweden might be known for its snaps, but more and more makers are turning their attention to a different sort of beverage. Get to know Wine Mechanics
Most people shook their heads when Kenneth Gustafsson told them about his dream and business plan to establish a so-called urban winery in the middle of Sweden’s Gothenburg. And they would be forgiven. When you consider significant wine regions on a map, your mind doesn’t exactly hover over Scandinavia, does it now?
And Sweden doesn’t have many vineyards, but actually, that worked for Gustafsson – he had no intentions of using the country’s grapes anyway. Instead, he planned to make wines using truckloads of grapes from all his favourite European wine districts, delivered by lorry to the cellar door in Gothenburg.
“Impossible,” people said, recalls Kenneth Gustafsson when he first hatched the plan back in 2015. “The grapes must not be more than 15 minutes from the winery,” they all said. But Gustafsson, not wanting to be dissuaded so easily, determined to prove them wrong. First off, though, he got his business partner drunk, and convinced him that an urban winery in Gothenburg was a great idea. “As you know, lots of great ideas are born with a bit of wine in the blood,” he laughs.
After spending 14 years as a professional football player, Gustafsson’s venture into wine began when he went to Uruguay and fell in love with the country’s wines. He began importing into Sweden, but soon realised that Uruguay probably wouldn’t become the next big thing. His break came when he was tasked with procuring some unique Oregon wines for the wine list at a new luxury hotel in Gothenburg. It was in Oregon where he was introduced to the urban winery movement, which first began here in the mid-80’s when young people, inspired by the local craft brewing scene, turned their attention to wine, doing their own DIY garage wineries in the city.
“I thought it was so cool that it was possible to do your own wine in the city. There’s a lot of young people that dream of making their own wine, but they don’t want to live in the middle of nowhere. And that’s how I feel too. It’s a relatively new movement that is really picking up speed these days,” Gustafsson says.
In 2017, two years after the brainstorm bender with his business partner, Wine Mechanics became the first Nordic urban winery when they opened the doors in a former slaughterhouse in Gothenburg’s meatpacking district and launched the first bottle – a Riesling from Germany’s Pfalz. The grapes bound for the winery in Gothenburg are harvested in small boxes, put directly in a cooled lorry carrier, and sent straight to Sweden once the picking is done.
Today, Wine Mechanics buy grapes from eight European wineries, seven of these organic or biodynamically certified. Spontaneous fermentation and little or no sulphites are used in the winemaking. The only dogma here is organics, says Gustafsson. As Swedes, he and his winemaker Erik Jonsson are in no way bound by winemaking traditions. He enjoys a great Italian Barolo as much as a funky Eastern European pét nat or orange wine, and up here in Sweden, he could blend them, if he wanted to.
“I love the traditions and history surrounding wine. But I also think that they can sometimes be a burden. If you are a young winemaker in the 6th generation, you’re expected to do things the way they’ve always been done. And that’s the cool part about making wine here in Gothenburg. We’re not bound by wine laws or traditions; I don’t have my grandpa watching over my shoulder, telling me what to do. We can’t compete with the heritage and tradition of the great wine districts, but instead, we can do whatever we want!”
That approach is refreshing, says Eva Tram, sommelier, and co-owner at recently Michelin-star awarded restaurant Knystaforsen in Halland on Sweden’s western coast. On the drinks pairing, Knystaforsen focuses solely on local Swedish drinks, like ciders, fruit or berry wines, as well as the occasional Swedish white wine – or a ‘Gothenburg’ red from Wine Mechanics.
“I think their project and their whole take on wine is refreshing. For instance, they once did a cuvée with half Swedish cider from Glömda Äpplen, a cider house which repurposes waste apples, and half their own Riesling, which we put on the menu.
“Overall, I think the quality of their products is great, and I think their take is emblematic of the way we approach wine and gastronomy here in Scandinavia – we’re not so scared of doing the wrong thing.”