Swedish Cider History
During the last decade, the Swedish craft cider scene has developed into an exploratory range of cider styles. With roots in the New Nordic Kitchen, Swedish craft cider makers are displaying a broad range of expressions. For example the ice cider from Brännland Cider, the fruit pet-nat of Fruktstereo or the birch leaf spiced cider from Pomologik. Regardless of this, world-wide people seem to associate Swedish cider with alcopops; the industrial "ciders" of Kopparbergs and Rekorderlig.
These new lines of development are emerging from a cider history in Scandinavia that, until a few years ago, was unknown. From the depths of Viking death rituals, via Bridgettine monasteries, to the sobriety movement around the turn of the last century.
Until a few years ago, there was a misconception that Sweden had no history of cider making. Referring to Sweden’s well known 18th century scientist and botanist, Carl von Linneaus, who in his travel diaries from the Southern provinces of Sweden, where crabs and apple trees stood in hedgerows, wrote of peasants who didn’t think to make cider from apples.
Together with two friends, myself, sommelier Hanna Tunberg and historian Susanne Nymöller, agreed that since apples appear in archaeological finds dating 5000 years back, people had to have used and fermented apples into alcohol. Regardless of what an old botanist had established as truth.
The earliest mention of cider in Swedish culinary literature was from the late 17th century. We found mercantilist government funded treatises, on how beverages should be made from nationally sourced fruit and berries instead of importing wine, which continued the entirety of the 18th century. Many of these recipes make you wonder whether the final product turned out drinkable.
Browsing through reams of potion-makelike-instructions, we came across an interesting sidenote. A cookbook from the early 1800s referred to a recipe as “cider as of 200 years ago” — i.e. early 1600s. Frustratingly, we could not find this recipe in any 17th century sources.
We despaired. Had our wish for a glorious cider past brought us to an impasse? Was Swedish culinary history really devoid of cider?
The key that unlocked Swedish cider history, however, was a four-letter word that in modern times describes another beverage. In the first illustrated herbal in Scandinavia, the Flora Danica, botanist Simon Paulli declares that a beverage made of apples or pears makes you drunk as if drinking wine or mead. He calls this intoxicating liquid “must”. Which is the same as today’s Swedish word for unfermented apple juice.
"Äppelmust var så stark att den kunde göra en drucken 'ligesom Wijn eller Miöd’” Simon Paulli, 1648
English Translation: beverage made of apples or pears, makes you drunk as if drinking wine or mead
With this fresh view on the meaning of the word “must” we worked back through some of the medieval literature and found a wealth of sources. In the chronicles of Duke Erik, where bountiful royal banquets are described, in the long lists of bragging—how many spit roasted oxen can a medieval party consume? There are beverages: “ale and [must], mead and wine”. This meant we could likely rule out “must” as non-alcoholic.
We found similar evidence in later medieval sources. In the annals of AD 1444, nuns of the Bridgettine monastery of Alvastra are recorded to have been told off by management for handing out too generous alms,of wheat buns, gingerbread, ale and “must”.
In the late 1500s mentions of “must” were fewer and farther between, to cease entirely in the early 1600s. This could be explained by harsh winters between AD 1550 to 1710, dubbed the “Little Ice Age”, that killed off most of the fruit trees. With no fruit and no material to make cider from, the knowledge of cider making fell into oblivion.
As sugar became affordable, around the turn of the 18-19th century, interest in alcoholic fermentation of fruits and berries revived. A flurry of small scale cidermakers and fruit wine makers were established.
Eva Ekeblad de la Gardie’s invention in 1746 to distil vodka from potatoes made many people constantly drunk. Workers in hard physical labour, such as mining or collecting garbage and night soil in cities, got their wages in hard liquor. Two litres of vodka per week for a person was not uncommon.
The sobriety movement started to grow, resulting in heavily regulated access to hard liquor and a state monopoly for all alcoholic beverages in 1917. Thus, cider disappeared once again. In the fifties Swedish fruit growers made persistent efforts to make fruit wine and cider legal, but to no avail.
In 1992 the Swedish state monopoly re-introduced “cider”. Beer producers spotted a business opportunity in manufacturing a cost-effective drink using a minimum of apple wine, artificial flavours, colouring, alcohol and sugar. Basically what we know as alcopops but marketed as cider, following an EU legislation stating a minimum content of 15% apple juice. This would mean that people could make cider with only 15% apple juice and still call it cider. In the UK, legislation is currently 35% apple juice.
Then, echoing the upsurge of craft beer and natural wine in the last decade, Swedish craft cider production started back up again around 2010. Starting from a below nil position, the route has been exploratory and divergent. With no tradition of wine production to source knowledge, orchards containing only eating varieties and a state retail monopoly, craft cider could have been doomed to fail. But Swedes being curious, and used to searching far and wide to gain knowledge, experimentation began. Supported by a small crowd of top chefs and sommeliers cider making gained solidity.
Johan Sjöstedt, Pomologik, chef turned cider maker declares:
“Foraging and discovering flavours in local resources that others look past is my passion. I focus on a particular ingredient, work out how to enhance it to make it play well with other local flavours. Like in the cider spiced with birch leaves ‘Björk’ or the foraged apples in 'Natur/Kultur’”
When I spoke to Mikael Nypelius at Fruktstereo, he was up to his elbows immersed in fruit. Making Plumenian Rhapsody he mixed crushed plums into juice of early apples picked in abandoned orchards on the Baltic Seaboard. Mikael explained:
“Being sommeliers trained in the New Nordic Kitchen and natural wine, we use what is around us. We still don’t see the difference between cider and wine. We need to consider fruit wine as complex, fun and drinkable as wine or cider”
Close to the polar circle, Andreas Sundgren at Brännland Cider is making ice cider, recently awarded the gold ice cider trophy at the inaugural IWSC cider-judging.
“Swedish apples are of fine quality but they, from our point of view, aren’t suited for dry cider. In our research we found ice cider developed in Canada from apples high in sugar and acidity. From that starting point we developed our expression.”
Like the prehistoric peoples of Scandinavia, foraging apples, berries and birch leaves for sustenance, and the 18th century eager mercantilist, the modern-day Swedish craft cider makers, or fruit wine makers, if you will, are making the best use of local resources and climatic conditions.
Timeline
3000 BC charred apples, apple cores and pits at Stone Age settlements
AD 830 apples in a jar in the richest Viking Burial (excavated in 1903)
14th century cider at royal parties
15th century naughty nuns handing out too much cider as alms for poor people
16th century cider making noted in accounts for estates and castles
AD 1550-1710 Little Ice Age killing off most fruit trees, end of cider making
~1750 botanist and mercantilist Carl von Linnaeus suggests making cider from unused apples
Around 1900 creative fermented fruit wines
1917 Swedish Alcohol Retailing Monopoly, cider is “prohibited”
1992 cider is once again allowed in state monopoly shops
2005 EU-legislation minimum 15% apple juice content for cider
2010 start of Swedish craft cider
2017 first national cider competition
2021 IWSC gold medals for Swedish (ice) cider
The New Nordic Kitchen
The Nordic Kitchen Manifesto embellishes purity, simplicity and freshness of locally sourced, seasonal foods, both traditional and new (e.g. ants, lichens). Developing and reviving traditional processing techniques as smoking, fermenting, marinating and salting. The guidelines were formulated in 2004 by a number of Scandinavian chefs, including René Redzepi of the famous Copenhagen restaurant Noma. The manifesto was supported by the ministers of food and agriculture in all five of the Nordic countries, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden in the Nordic Council.
