Year of ‘Global Boiling’ Creates Opportunity for Sweden’s Winemakers

• The year of “global boiling” is here, but warmer seasons in Sweden have created new opportunities for winemakers there.
• Rising temperatures have led to the growing season increasing by about 20 days in the country.
• “I can see things growing here that were unthinkable 30 or 40 years ago,” said one winemaker.

The year of “global boiling” is here, and winemakers in Sweden — not typically known for producing wine — are seizing the moment to grow this nascent industry, the Associated Press reported Sunday.

“I can see things growing here that were unthinkable 30 or 40 years ago,” Göran Amnegård, who first started growing wine in Sweden more than 20 years ago, told the AP.

He said he felt vindicated by the rise of Swedish wines as climate change affects the country.

Meanwhile, iconic wine nations like Italy, Greece, and Spain face problems like water shortages and overly warm winters, Iban Tell Sabate, a Spanish winemaker who moved to Sweden, told the AP.

“With global warming, Sweden’s in a good position, and it’s a good wine too,” Sabate said.

The extended growing season for vineyards in Sweden is now longer by 20 days due to rising temperatures, the AP reported, based on data from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute. Average temperatures in Sweden rose by 1°C, or 1.8 °F, from 1961-1990 to 1991-2016 — and are likely to rise a further 2 to 7°C by the end of the century.

“In Scandinavia, where your growing season has been four and a half or five months long, a warmer growing season can expand that to maybe a six-month or six-and-a-half month period between frost,” Greg Jones, the director of Linfield College’s wine studies program, previously told Insider in 2021.

And Sweden isn’t the only one who stands to gain. Global warming is likely to create other unexpected wine hotspots — such as England and Russia, Insider reported in 2016.

However, the winemaking industry in Sweden is still growing slowly. Sweden reported $26.3 million in wine exports in 2021. In comparison, traditional wine countries France and Italy exported around $11 billion and $7.7 billion in wine respectively, in the same year.

“The number of bottles produced each year is very few,” Henrik Edvall, the operator of a website that exports Swedish wine, told the AP. Sales have grown by a modest 10% each year and are being held back by slow production in Sweden, he added.

To be sure, climate change isn’t all positive for warming Scandinavia.

Earlier this month, Sweden and Norway issued a red alert over heavy rainfall that derailed a train carrying over 100 passengers in Sweden and flooded roads in both countries.

As global warming reshapes the climate, winemakers aren’t the only ones seeing their fortunes shift.

The melting of the polar ice caps has also led to increasing competition over the Arctic, an area rich in resources like oil, minerals, and fish. Russia currently dominates the race over the warming Arctic, Al Jazeera reported in 2022.