How #DrinkChenin Day was celebrated in Sweden

On the 15th of June, the whole world was celebrating Chenin Blanc Day! As part of this, Wines of South Africa in Sweden hosted a #drinkchenin After Work at the legendary Eriks Vinbar in Stockholm.

The sun was shining and it was a beautiful Friday afternoon in the capital of Sweden. When the doors opened at 4pm, some of the guests were already lining up outside, eager to taste some of the finest examples of Chenin Blanc from South Africa. The set-up was easy going with three massive wine coolers on top of the bar. These were filled with no less than 24 fantastic Chenins for everyone to taste. After 45 minutes the venue was packed! People were tasting, drinking and discussing the variety, all very impressed with the great quality of the wines, but also the amazing diversity of the grape. 80 Guests walked through the doors over the five hours and the feedback was overwhelming. We saw a great number of Instagram and Facebook posts and would like to share a some of the many comments from our guests:

“Thank you for a most fantastic evening! The wines were so impressive as well as the number of colleagues in the room!” - Wine writer

“I need to start to drink more Chenin! A great tasting with a fantastic depth and width.” - Wine critic

“If I get to drink more of these stunning wines, I´ll be talking Zulu soon!” - Sommelier

“Can you please host this event every Friday?” - Sommelier

During the evening, we also put together a competition for our guests. It was a small blind tasting with three sweet wines and the task was basically to “spot the South African one”. This was not as easy as it seemed. Half of our guests tried their luck and 9 of them pointed out the right one. After a lucky draw of the correct answers we had a winner – Johan Edström.

Johan is a legend within the Swedish wine trade. He was one of the first sommeliers in Sweden and is now regarded as one of the great Swedish authorities in wine. Now he works as a consultant, conducting tastings, lectures and seminars all over Sweden. We look forward to welcoming him to CapeWine - the competition prize.

It was great to see the excitement and energy in the room and I´m sure the wines opened many new doors while creating a number of new Chenin Blanc fans for South Africa. Despite not serving any food (except for some Pata-Negra ham, olives and crisps) we had a real issue getting people out of the venue at closing time. They didn´t want to leave at all!

- Maja Berthas, WOSA Manager - Sweden