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Slippy underfoot: getting to grips with the Nordics
By Tom Bruce-GardyneThe Nordics – Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark – each pose their own challenges for spirits brands hoping to become successful there. Producers are getting to grips with conditions in different ways.

*This feature was originally published in the October 2024 issue of The Spirits Business magazine.
In 2020, the Swedish government took a notably lenient approach to the Covid pandemic by not imposing strict lockdowns like the rest of Europe so as to protect the economy and other areas like education and mental health. Norway promptly closed its border in response, locking in alcohol sales for the first time in living memory.
“We always joke that if you want to buy cheap alcohol in Norway you go to Sweden, while the Swedes go to Denmark and the Danes go to Germany,” says Chris Maile, who runs Oslo’s Whisky Consulting, having worked for Diageo in the region since 1998.
Quoting figures from Vinmonopolet, Norway’s state-owned drinks monopoly, he says in 2020 total alcohol sales jumped by 40%, and whisky by 42% – which, in his view, demonstrates the sheer scale of cross-border shopping in normal times. Since reopening its borders, retail whisky sales in Norway have slipped, by 17% last year. With a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label, for example, costing NOK410 (US$39) compared with SEK275 (US$27) in Sweden, the incentive to hop across the border is clear. Yet, if you trade up to top-of-the-range Johnnie Walker Blue Label, the price is much the same and curiously cheaper than the UK. At present a bottle costs NOK1,949 (US$186) in Norway, compared with the £174 (US$233) you would pay buying it from The Whisky Exchange.
One-stop shop
According to Maile there is no drive to dismantle the monopoly system, which makes life easy for producers and importers being a one-stop shop. Nor is there any move to harmonise duty rates to repatriate some of the lost revenue.
In Sweden “the government raised taxes on alcohol last year and again this year”, says Oskar Kalmaru, CEO of Stockholm’s Agitator Whisky. “The Swedes go a lot to Denmark and Germany, but not as much as before the pandemic. The Swedish currency is doing really badly, and what used to be cheap booze in Germany is now less so.”
Kasper Andersen, Nordics managing director at Edrington, has also noticed “less spirits tourism across the region, particularly due to the weak Swedish krona”. His main focus is The Macallan and Highland Park, which he calls “a well-loved brand across the region that enjoys a high profile”. Highland Park has long celebrated its Norse heritage with help from Martin Markvardsen, its global brand ambassador, who is based in Denmark. But aside from any Viking vibe “we find consumers resonate with stories that relate to their modern and contemporary way of life, including a love of the outdoors”, says Andersen.
The devaluation in Sweden and Norway, and to a lesser extent Finland, is pushing up the price of imported spirits, yet bar and restaurant sales have remained strong, at least at Bacardi, claims David Hughes, its business unit director based in Stockholm. “2023 was our best year ever in the on-trade in Sweden, Norway and Finland,” he says. “It’s true that going out in the on-trade is an expensive business in the Nordics, with duty rates among the highest in the world and VAT at 25%.”
Hughes believes the weakness of the currency is putting people off foreign holidays, but not from going out on staycations. Iconic venues such as Stockholm’s Asian Post Office “are packed all the time”, he says. It is here and in similar top-end outlets that Bacardi is building brands like Grey Goose, St Germain, and Patrón, which he claims is “by far and away the number-one premium Tequila” in the region. “Patrón and high-end Tequila are in exponential growth in the on-trade, although it is in its nascency, so it’s not quite at North American levels,” he explains.
Popular initiative
Having previously worked in travel retail for Bacardi, Hughes and his team have employed similar tactics to inspire consumers at top bars such as Himkok in Oslo. “We decided to do an activation – the ‘Patrón flowering season’ – that celebrates the natural pollination of the agave plant,” he says. “We teamed up with Himkok and an urban bee-keeping association called Bybi and took over the terrace.” It was meant to run for just May, but proved so popular it was extended to October. With such initiatives, he admits: “We need to see how it trickles down from those premium accounts to the more core on-trade accounts.”
James McCallum, Diageo’s commercial head – monopoly markets Nordics, talks about a similar strategy for Don Julio Tequila, which is being built in the region’s “key, trend-leading accounts” he says. “This year we launched a limited edition Don Julio 1942 in the Swedish monopoly, and it sold out in less than four weeks. Through the ordering system, consumers can buy the full range that they see in the on-trade to enjoy at home.”
Louise Ryan, Pernod Ricard’s managing director in the Nordics, says: “Tequila is growing double digits in a market where spirits are stable so there’s definitely something happening there, but it’s still very small.” That overall stability can be seen in vodka – the region’s biggest category which accounts for 26% of all spirits, compared to a European average of 19%. According to Ryan, consumers are trading up, albeit slowly, with the premium-plus category up by 0.6% while standard vodka is down by 0.4%. “It’s been an Absolut success story, no pun intended,” she declares, pointing to the brand’s share of premium-plus vodka in Sweden at over 60%, over 40% in Norway, and over 30% in Finland.
“Absolut launched a paper bottle last year, and Sweden was one of the two pilot markets. It’s one of the first carbon-neutral distilleries here,” she says. “Dialling up the sustainability credentials has definitely been an important success factor.”

Dark markets
In the Nordics, Hughes believes growth and potential lie in the super-premium categories. This explains Bacardi’s focus on bars and restaurants for its top-end brands, while in the state-run off-trade “the level of premiumisation is quite limited”, he says. “The shelves in monopoly shops look very different to what you’d see in open retail.” Being dark markets, with the darkest being Norway, followed by Sweden and then Finland, promotional activity is severely restricted. In sponsoring a recent Norwegian music festival, Bombay Sapphire could not mention its brand by name and so had to rely on its blue colour to promote itself. “You just have to be creative,” says Hughes.
Head south to Denmark, and the rules are much more relaxed, right down to the minimum age of buying alcohol – just 16 in the case of beer and wine up to 13.5% ABV. “As producers, we actually want the age to increase to 18, but the parliament declined,” says Alex Munch, co-founder and chief marketing officer of the Danish whisky distillery Stauning. From a UK perspective, the idea of a government being more liberal than the industry is hard to believe. But in other respects, the two countries are similar, with supermarkets competing on price, while consumers who are into whisky tending to buy in specialist shops.
At Stauning, which is backed by Distill Ventures, the innovation incubator funded by Diageo, domestic sales account for 30% of revenue, and earn a higher margin than exports because “we sell direct to retailers in Denmark”, says Munch. “Last year, after a huge decline in sales, we changed our strategy, and invested quite a lot in advertising and promotions.”
Stauning also slashed the price of Høst, its new entry-level whisky, from DKK495 (US$74) to DKK395 “because people have less money, and that’s been a game changer”, he says. The brand’s latest figures show 26% growth in Denmark, it says.
While new distilleries keep opening, and there is coverage in the media about supporting local brands, Munch says domestic spirits are struggling: “We have invested a lot of money and taken share from other Danish producers.” Without the economies of scale of international brands, it is hard to compete on price, and he says that for many consumers there’s an attitude of “why buy a Danish or Swedish whisky at £60 when you can buy Scotch at £20?”
Shared identity
If there is any kind of shared identity for Nordic whisky, Munch believes it revolves around rye, which both Stauning and Kyrö in Finland have focused on.
Kyrö’s co-founder and chief marketing officer Mikko Koskinen reckons “the majority of people are trading down a little bit. However, there’s a segment that is virtually unchanged, and that’s people with generational wealth.”
Meanwhile, in August, Sweden’s first whisky distillery Mackmyra, founded in 1999, filed for bankruptcy. Kalmaru of Sweden’s Agitator Whisky suspects the company was hemmed in by its cost structure, and suffered “first-mover disadvantage”, having to make all the mistakes that others have learnt from. He says: “Affordability is a driver in Sweden. There has been over-premiumisation, with a lot of big brands raising prices, and now there’s a bit of a backlash.”
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