Yeah, strict rules. But the Wine Monopoly is great and quite beloved. For more expensive wines/liquors where the alcohol tax is a small amount of the total price, it's actually reasonably priced. The monopoly get good prices due to the volume they purchase of stuff.

And the selection is great. In Denmark for instance, every store has a selection of alcohol, but it's quite limited and always the same everywhere. You have to hunt for specialty stores. But the monopoly has everything even in smaller cities.

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cinntaile 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

In Denmark you're not dependent on a monopoly for your selection, you can order whatever you like.

Wine Monopoly is by definition a specialty store. It's state subsidised, operating and capital expenses are almost irrelevant so that's why you have everything in smaller cities as well. This comes at a financial cost of course.

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elygre 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The two revelations of the wine monopoly. The first is «you have a monopoly???», and then later «and you actually like that?????»

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jenadine 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It is a state owned monopoly, whose purpose is to address the actual problem of too high alcohol consumption, and not necessarily to make profit. I'm sure not everyone likes it though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinmonopolet

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cess11 2 days ago | parent [-]

If it's anything like Sweden they have coddled reactionaries that are incapable of even the slightest planning and hence are constantly whining about the monopoly not being open at night or some weekend when they get a sudden urge to get drunk.

For someone who drinks moderately and enjoys variety and access to obscure alcohol products it's likely a very good deal, as it is in Sweden. If I want a single bottle of lebanese Ksarak it'll cost me roughly fifty euros and I'll walk across the street to pick it up after a week or so. Unless I'm misunderstanding something the danish have to get it from german suppliers, though it'll be a bit cheaper (~33 euros), probably due to taxes.

Sometimes I've engaged in tentative planning of imports, e.g. ukrainian bubbly wine and whatnot, but it typically falls through because people don't actually want to put in the effort to organise a drive or getting someone to mail a package, even if there would be a bit of money in it. On the other hand it's trivial to get into contact with people running rather large scale imports of cheap beer and wine from Germany that sell for less than the monopoly takes.

I don't think there is actually any improvement to gain from getting rid of the monopoly, it would quickly turn our local alcohol availability into something similar to what I've seen in Russia and Bulgaria, fifty shades of Flirt vodka, sour wine and useless lager. The rest I'd have to import myself.

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SOLAR_FIELDS 2 days ago | parent [-]

I mean give the reactionaries a little credit. The systembolaget by my house closes at 1500 on Saturdays. Come on.

It is a really reasonable deal to buy from there though often. Selection is pretty good and the taxes on beer and wine are less and as a result due to the flat markup you can get really good deals on fine wines and the like.

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cess11 2 days ago | parent [-]

The one where I live closes at 1400. I've never been bothered by that, if something social suddenly comes up that I'd like to be tipsy for I'd grab something I already have or buy some "people's beer". I.e. 2.8 or 3.5 percent alcohol, available at any grocery store, cornershop or petrol station, sometimes lovingly called "emergency rockets".

In my area it's also trivial to find both illegal vodka and legal beer people make at home, which is common outside the larger cities in Sweden. This compensates for the lack of greyzone importers from Germany and Denmark.

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impossiblefork a day ago | parent [-]

I think the big appeal for me with Systembolaget is actually their non-alcoholic alternatives.

You simply can't get anything of that level in a normal store. Dealcoholized Rieseling, Morello cherry juice, cider apple juice, etc.

	▲	SOLAR_FIELDS a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In general the NA game of Sweden (and Denmark) is incredible compared to many other countries. My understanding is that there is a law in Sweden that indicates that bars must offer non-alcoholic options and as such there's a pretty large market demand and opportunity for the popular craft breweries like Mikeller to come in and make awesome NA beer that the whole region gets to enjoy.
	▲	cess11 a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah, that's another perk. Service is typically very good as well, you can ask for advice and get decent, trustworthy answers beyond what shelf something is on. It's a quite different experience compared to regular profit optimised mass retail. Now, I'm very aware of the drawbacks for local producers. It's a bit tricky to get things onto the monopoly shelves, you can't have anything the least provocative or advert-like on the label and even if you're only going to sell through your local monopoly shop you still need to price in sending your bottles to a logistics hub in Örebro or wherever. This is surely annoying, but pretty much every monopoly shop has inventory from local smalltime craft brewers and distillers and the like anyway. As I see it, this is an unexploited business opportunity, one could likely live quite comfortably skimming a margin from small alcohol producers in exchange for lower transport costs and reliable advice in product design that shortens time to market.

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tallanvor 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's definitely not loved by everyone here! Really the main concern a lot of people have is what will happen to prices if they got rid of it. The limits on how much they can mark up the prices does, like the previous commenter noted, mean that the more expensive stuff is actually more "reasonable".