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Christmas booze gets stuck in the post

Sending alcoholic drinks through the Swedish postal system can be a tricky business - unless you happen to order from the state alcohol retail monopoly, explains Mark Majzner.

Published: 12 December 2008 12:57 CET

A much loved Christmas tradition in many English speaking countries is the sending and receiving of Christmas Hampers. A basket (or a box) containing gourmet food and delicacies such as ham or turkey, fruit cake, mince tarts and a few bottles of wine or Champagne to brighten up the festive table.

Whether you believe in Santa or not, whoever delivers these epicurean treasure chests resists temptation to ensure it finds its way under the Christmas tree in good time.

But try and send some Christmas cheer to friends and family in Sweden and you will realize that it is the Grinch that lives near the north pole, not the jolly fat guy in red and white.

Although completely legal, the three major logistics companies in Sweden – Posten, DHL and Schenker – do not allow alcohol to be collected from their thousands of collection points throughout the country. You can send a box without declaring the contents but mention the word wine or alcohol and you are treated like a Mexican drug baron.

Swedish Post refuses to allow alcohol through its network of 1,600 collection points (petrol stations, grocery stores, video stores, small shops etc) because they say they can not afford to change their systems to enable age checking when people collect the product. Schenker and DHL cite legal restrictions of an unspecified nature.

Swedish Post’s own lawyers have approved the delivery of alcohol and the type of packaging permitted through its handling system but Lars. G. Nordstrom, its CEO, thinks it politically wiser to avoid handling alcohol. Lars recently agreed to forgo his 5.6 million a year salary which has freed up a bit of cash which could be used to implement an age checking system.

However, if you wish to order wine from Systembolaget and have it delivered to one of their 510 collection points around the country (petrol stations, grocery stores, video stores, small shops etc) then Posten will deliver it and you can collect it within 2 days of ordering. These small stores have a system to check the age and sobriety of the recipients, something which seems to be beyond the capabilities of Posten, DHL and Schenker.

Posten, Schenker and DHL will deliver the ingredients required to brew your own beer or distill your own vodka (an old Swedish tradition called Hembränt) so if you want to make your friends and family in Sweden happy this year you should send them a Do It Yourself Christmas Hamper – ham, fruit cake, sack of potatoes and a home distilling kit!

My message for the festive season to all readers is a simple Australian slogan: If you drink and drive you’re a bloody idiot!

So play it safe and sober to keep our roads clear of fatalities this season.

Mark Majzner is an Australian and the founder of Antipodes Premium Wines, a partner of The Local, which operates wine clubs including Australian Wine Club and Fine Wine Society. He also maintains an even flow on the Wine Freedom Weblog.

ALCOHOL

Spain has second highest rate of daily alcohol drinkers in EU 

More than one in ten Spaniards drink alcohol every day, making them the Europeans who drink most regularly after the Portuguese, new Eurostat data reveals. 

Published: 10 August 2021 14:15 CEST
Spain has second highest rate of daily alcohol drinkers in EU 
Photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP

Thirteen percent of people in Spain drink alcohol every day, a similar rate to Italy, where 12 percent enjoy a tipple on a daily basis, and only behind Portugal, where 20 percent of people have an alcoholic drink seven days a week.

That puts Spaniards above the EU average of 8.4 percent daily drinkers, data published by Eurostat in July 2021 reveals. 

This consistent alcoholic intake among Spaniards is far higher than in countries such as Sweden (1.8 percent daily drinkers), Poland (1.6 percent), Norway (1.4 percent), Estonia (1.3 percent) and Latvia (1.2 percent). 

However, the survey that looked at the frequency of alcohol consumption in people aged 15 and over shows that weekly and monthly drinking habits among Spaniards are more in line with European averages. 

A total of 22.9 percent of respondents from Spain said they drunk booze on a weekly basis, 18.3 percent every month, 12.5 percent less than once a month, and 33 percent haven’t had a drink ever or in the last year. 

Furthermore, another part of the study which looked at heavy episodic drinking found that Spaniards are the third least likely to get blind drunk, after Cypriots and Italians.

The Europeans who ingested more than 60 grammes of pure ethanol on a single occasion at least once a month in 2019 were Danes (37.8 percent), Romanians (35 percent), Luxembourgers (34.3 percent) and Germans (30.4 percent). 

The UK did not form part of the study but Ireland is included. 

Overall, Eurostat’s findings reflect how the Spanish habit of enjoying a glass of wine with a meal or a small beer (caña) outdoors with friends continues to be common daily practice, even though 13 percent does not make it prevalent. 

Spaniards’ tendency to drink in moderation also continues to prevail, even though a 2016 study by Danish pharmaceuticals company Lundbeck found that one in six people in the country still drinks too much. 

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