Vin- och sprithistoriska museet

The Historical Museum of Wines & Spirits specialises in the technology and social history of alcoholic drinks. It is located in the Wine Store (Vinlagret), alias the Gröndstedt Palace, designed by architect Cyrillus Johansson in 1923. This building, now listed, was the centre of Sweden’s wine trade between the 1920s and 1960s. All Sweden’s wines came this way after being cleared through customs nearby. Whole railway wagon-loads rolled in through the south entrance and were taken down to the storage cellars by the biggest lift in Northern Europe.

In the closing years of the 1950s AB Vin & Spritcentralen had begun collecting various everyday items previously associated with the wine and spirits trade, to decorate the boardroom apartments at the Wine Warehouse. Gradually the idea was born of presenting the history of alcohol in Sweden to visitors from other countries. The first museum opened in 1967, as an exhibition marking the jubilee of AB Vin & Spritcentralen. It had a floor space of 280 sq. m., adjoining the company’s offices.

The present main exhibition, opened in 1989 and designed by Gösta Hillfon, occupies 1,200 sq. m. The latest addition is two multimedia productions, one about drinking songs and one showing the history of Swedish drinking habits as reflected by the labels on the bottles.

Originally owned by Vin & Sprit AB, the Museum became a separate foundation in 1992.

The Museum collections number about 7,000 items. Amenities include a reference library, a picture archive containing about 12,000 photographs, some 20,000 wine and spirit labels, archives of wine merchants, distilleries and other enterprises, collections of price lists and a press clipping archive. In the 1990s the Museum began to collect drinking songs, of which it now has some 9,000 entered in a database.

The Historical Museum of Wines & Spirits Fellowship was instituted in the autumn of 1998 for the promotion of research into the history of alcohol in Sweden. This fellowship is awarded annually, and the occasion is marked by publication of the periodical Spiritus and the arrangement of a symposium on alcohol and society in Sweden.

The Museum also has a wide range of programmed activities, comprising lectures, tastings, historical walks and one-day teach-ins.

A new reception, museum shop, café, wine-tasting room and temporary exhibition gallery were officially opened in February 2001, designed jointly by the architects Michael Dudley and Thomas Eriksson. (www.vinochsprithistoriska.se, 2010-10-05).