The most prominent wine importers in Sweden were present at a wine-tasting event at Grand Hotel and Your Living City was invited. We took the opportunity to taste and find the most savoury, priceworthy and high-quality wines available in Sweden, so we can give you our recommendations. These are wines that you can enjoy in the coziness of your home, now that the autumn and winter seasons invite us to settle indoors a bit more. That doesn’t of course keep us from indulging our palate with the grapes and maybe also impressing our dinner guests with a fancy new French wine.
Let’s start with the sparkling CHAMPAGNES:
L’Audacieuse Millésime 2002
Grape: 100% Chardonnay
Systembolaget number: 93051
Tasting Notes: The most beautiful vintage of its decade, powerful, greedy on toasted notes, chalky, waxy, a hint of balsamic and a lingering finish on the palate. A bodied champagne with freshness and complexity.
Recommended food: Oven-baked poultry, noble fishes, or just on its own.
Price: 499SEK
Champagne Deutz Brut Classic
Grape: 38% Pinot Noir, 32% Pinot Meunier, 30% Chardonnay.
Systembolaget number: 7487
Tasting Notes: Dry, fresh, harmonious taste with roasted bread, nuts, cream, biscuits, yellow apple and citrus. This fantastic champagne is aged 3 years in the bottle, a classic and very reliable option for any elegant dinner.
Recommended food: Served at 8-10° C as an aperitif or for fish or seafood dishes.
Price: 415SEK
Champagne De Castelnau
Grape: 40 % Chardonnay, 20 % Pinot Noir, 40 % Pinot Meunier – including 20 % of reserve wine.
Systembolaget number: 76191
Tasting Notes: A blend where the subtlety and complexity of the Pinots are perfectly expressed and where the character of the Chardonnay adds, as if by alchemy, balance and style. The reserve wines in the blend add maturity and complexity, and this is enhanced by an extended ageing of at least 6 years which is quite exceptional in Champagne. It has very tiny bubbles, which show its outstanding quality.
Recommended food: Perfect with canapés such as scampi tempura or scallop croquettes ; or if with a meal then with sole or lightly sauteed veal sweetbreads.
Price: 279SEK
Now over to the WHITE WINES:
Albert Schoech Alsace
Grape: 45% Sylvaner, 28% Chasselas, 20% Riesling, and 7% Muscat.
Systembolaget number: 2135
Tasting Notes: This is a young and fresh wine. It doesn’t have all the sweetness of the Riesling, but the flavour is still there, with hints of citric, green apple, peach, pear and honey. A very crispy and dry wine, almost mineral with a medium-low aromatic expression of this great variety. With all these flavours and very accessible price, it makes for a wine to impress friends at dinner without spending too much.
Recommended food: This is a wine you can mix with a wide variety of foods, so you can have it at a buffet, or with fish or chicken.
Price: 84SEK
Chablis Domaine Thierry Mothe
Grape: Chardonnay.
Systembolaget number: 5564
Tasting Notes: What a delicious Chablis we have here! Feels creamy on the palate, almost buttery. Fruity, fresh fragrance with elements of cereal, citrus and minerals. The taste is fresh and full of tones of minerals, stone fruit and lime. The aftertaste is long with a clear fresh acid.
Recommended food: Shellfish, crab, lobster.
Price: 169SEK
Bourgogne Les Ursulines Chardonnay
Grape: Carignan.
Systembolaget number: 70131
Tasting Notes: Rigorous vine work went into the production of this wine. Very refined nose, with notes of white flowers. Round and delicate in the mouth, with a polished acidity which lends freshness and purity, hints of citrus spices and green apple. Freshly fruity taste with roasted barrel character.
Recommended food: Serve at 17° with spicy tuna rolls, pasta with chicken and/or wild mushrooms.
Price: 139SEK
Some ROSÉ:
Coteaux D’Aix-En-Provence Gassier
Grape: Cinsault, Grenache, Syrah.
Systembolaget number: Bottle: 72909 Box: 2237
Tasting Notes: We’re giving this wine some extra points for being 100% organic. Honouring its provenance it comes with a very fresh taste with elements of lime, watermelon, herbs and grapefruit as well as some red berries like strawberry and raspberry with an overall good acidity. Berries and some herbs in the nose. It’s the only wine in this selection that can be found both in bottle and box format.
Recommended food: Served at about 8 °C, goes well with pink food like salmon or chicken, perfect with spicy food, like some Thai or Indian dishes.
Price: Bottle: 119SEK. Box: 275kr
And last but not least the elegant RED WINES:
Les Fleurs Sauvages Carignan
Grape: Carignan.
Systembolaget number: 2257
Tasting Notes: This is the wine you want to have when you want to stay warm and cozy at home – or have a romantic dinner. It has the perfect balance between dryness and fruityness. It has aromas of red and black berries (black currant and strawberry) with spicy notes of plums, chocolate and tobacco. Fresh on the palate with silky, elegant tannins and lovely roasted notes of coffee and chocolate and a nice little stubborness at the end that lasts on the palate for quite some time.
Recommended food: Serve at 17° with game, lamb shanks, aged Cantal cheese or a molten chocolate cake.
Price: 89SEK
Chateau de Seguin Cuvée Prestige
Grape: Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc.
Systembolaget number: 3570
Tasting Notes: Deep red colour with purplish tints. The nose is powerful with complex aromas of black fruits, cocoa and toasted notes, fine spices and a milky note. Beautiful volume and molten tannins provided by the fact that this wine is aged for 12 month in oak. Nice after-taste, velvety and lively.
Recommended food: Veal, poultry, beef and venison.
Price: 139SEK
Chateau Jean Faux Sainte-Radegonde
Grape: Bordeaux blend red.
Systembolaget number: 74356
Tasting Notes: With a very elegant taste, this is a wine that goes better together with food. In it you can perceive fine fruity flavours and notes of fresh/ripe raspberry, blackberry and ripe cassis, together with discrete hints of licorice and a very discrete hint of chocolate in the end. Tannins are fine and young, attractive acidity and slightly dry. Good persistence.
Recommended food: Cheese plate, lamb.
Price: 219SEK
