Can a near-Arctic island in a wind-scoured archipelago known for beer and herring produce drinkable wine without grapes?
Yes, says 72-year-old Ingmar Eriksson, the proprietor of Tjudoe Vineyard in the autonomous Finnish province of Aaland, where the wine is made from apples and served with slabs of ostrich steak.
And he is not alone.
From Finland’s damp southern coast to the northern reaches of the Arctic Circle, there are some 40 wine producers bottling reds, whites, and roses without so much as a grape in sight.
“The fermentation ... and the process is the same as with grapes,” says Mr Eriksson, as he gestures to the massive vats in his barn on the apple farm where he makes 30,000 litres of apple wine a year.
The aroma of Tjudoe’s semi-sweet white is unmistakably apple-like, with notes of something nuttier, and the taste is far more elegant and citrusy than fermented apple juice.
But is it wine?
“You can try to call anything wine if it ferments,” says Pekka Nuikki, wine expert and editor-in-chief of Fine Magazines, which publishes wine and champagne periodicals.
“I remember my father used to make ‘wine’ in the sauna. But nowhere in the world except in Finland would anybody call it wine,” he adds.
In Finland, the state’s alcohol monopoly Alko, which strictly supervises the production and sale of all alcohol, banned farms from selling their own fermented or distilled products until 1995. Since then, producers have been officially allowed to make and sell their own wines on the premises although, as Mr Eriksson points out, “people have always been making wine and liquor in secret.”
Not Mr Eriksson, though, who swears he rarely drinks alcohol at all.
“It’s bad business to produce alcohol and drink it,” he says, leaning on the shiny copper distillation set-up where he also makes an apple spirit that closely resembles Calvados.
While only distilled apple spirits from northern France can bear the name Calvados, Mr Eriksson points out that “we’ve had French people say ours is better than French Calvados.”
“Ours is aged for eight years and we use only oak barrels from Normandy,” he adds.
Many Finnish small-scale wine and spirit makers say their products are not taken seriously because Finland does not have an image as a wine-maker, and obviously, because there are no grapes here.
“It’s a change you have to make in your brain. You have to be open-minded when you taste it,” says Eija Roenni, whose family berry farm Roenvik began fermenting wines in 1995 in central Finland.
“If you expect the details of a red grape when you taste blackcurrant wine, you won’t get what you expect. But if you approach the glass expecting the notes of the blackcurrant, then you can appreciate what you’re drinking.”
Mr Roenni doesn’t stop with apple wine.
She produces an impressive portfolio of everything from full-bodied reds to dry whites and even champagne out of berries, rhubarb, apples, and cloudberries, just to name a few.