Last April, the UN-delegates dining room in New York hosted a dinner where 60 different wines – one from each of the UN’s wine-producing countries – were served. The occasion was to highlight Cité des civilisations du vin, the new wine landmark to open in Bordeaux in 2016. Denmark’s contribution was a sparkling, a Don’s Cuvée Brut from Skærsøgaard Vin, a small winery that, at 5.5 ha, is among the largest in Denmark. After a mere 14 vintages Skærsøgaard has the record of being the most awarded Danish winery, with 113 medals. One of them a silver medal for their Don’s Pink at the Effervescents du Monde, where it was up against Nicolas Feuillatte and Jacquart.
Yet when Sven Moesgaard, owner of Skærsøgaard, sent his first wines to international competitions they asked if it was cherry wine, or ‘wine-wine’! Their digital systems simply had no Danish categories.
How it all began
In 1981, Sven Moesgaard and a partner founded the pharmaceutical company Pharma Nord, which developed Bio-Selenium+Zinc, a product now sold all over the world. He is still the technical director of the company but now also enjoys the challenges of being a winegrower. Ever since he planted his first vines in 1998 he has been dedicated to doing the impossible: “If people say you can’t make wine in Denmark, I will do it,” he says at his winery, the first to be commercially registered and licensed in Demark, in 2001. He is a happy man, walking around in his spotless winery with white clogs and a white working jacket, like a dairy worker. He is on a mission and is fortunate to have the technical skills, the economic power and the sensitive mind to do whatever it takes, even if it is just to make a few convincing bottles to set new standards.
It is widely recognised that Sven Moesgaard has been the benchmark for the young Danish industry. His opinion and experience matters, as demonstrated in March, when he gave a two-hour speech and tasting, attended by 90 of his fellow winegrowers.
“We have a history of only 14 vintages. Just lousy amateurs – think of Italy with a record of 4,000 years,” were his introductory words. “We have the potential to be a first-class wine-producing country, but we will not copy the established industries. We will be proud of the special conditions we have.” Moesgaard went on to outline those special circumstances: “Our acidity is unique. We will learn to tame it, to control it, to love it and be passionate about it.
In warm winegrowing areas they have to add acid. We have plenty of it and especially our malic acid is of interest. We shall find our own identity.” He said the Danes will make many different wines, most of which will probably not be red. “Where we find the highest consistency in quality is with our sparkling wines.”
Moesgaard outlined the five typical characteristics of Denmark’s cold-climate wine style:
1. Low yields
2. A high acid level and a high malic acid level
3. Low sugar values
4. Unripe tannins
5. With unripe tannins red wine is difficult, and results will be far better with sparkling and rosé
And if that wasn’t inspiring enough, before the applause began he reminded his colleagues: “Quality is not just for yourself – it is a question of Queen and country.”
The first wave
In 1980, 35 years before Moesgaard made his ‘2015 state of the union’ speech, an article was published in the September issue of the magazine Haven (The Garden) with the title Nye druesorter i Danmark (New grape varieties in Denmark). It was written by Jørgen Bech-Andersen and became the seed of the new industry. People began to plant vines in their garden, producing wine in small quantities. This was followed by a new wave of small vineyards that had the facilities to produce wine in a more professional way. The weather got a little warmer and it was possible to get grape varieties suitable for production in cool-climate areas. It could no longer be seen as just a hobby of the dedicated few, and the Danish Government went to the EU with a request to approve winegrowing in Denmark. This was formalised with the August 2000 revision of the EU wine regulations, and it became legal to produce wine on a commercial basis in Denmark (up to 99 ha in total). The Danish growers could now produce ‘vin de table’, with no geographic origin necessary on the label – but this didn’t entitle them to EU subsidies. Eight growers were quick to register as commercial producers. Today the number is 90; the largest have 5 ha to 8 ha; the 20 largest have 60% of total planting, while the rest have between 500 and 2,000 plants. There are just over 1,200 hobby growers.
As the Danish wine area kept expanding, Denmark asked for permission to produce ‘vin de table’ with a geographical indication, and the year of harvest and grape variety on the label. This request was accepted by the EU in 2007 and wine produced in Denmark is now ‘regional wine’ (in Danish: Beskyttet Geografisk Betegnelse, or BGB) from four regions: Jutland (the peninsula bordering Germany), Funen (the island in the middle of Denmark), Zealand (the island with Copenhagen on its east coast) and Bornholm (a small island in the Baltic Sea).
As in other wine-producing countries there are strict regulations for commercial producers. Very few fungicides are approved, so growers are strongly dependent on disease-tolerant cultivars, and can only use approved grape varieties. In order to sell wine on a commercial basis the winery must also have an EU-passport for their wine stock and are obliged to report total field size, grape varieties, harvest information, production and stock of wine to the Danish Agricultural Ministry. The non-commercial producers do not have to report production figures, with the result that statistics are incomplete and underreporting is present.
Wine is sold at relatively high prices ($16.30 to $32.00) and both media and consumers have shown a positive interest.
Who’s Who
Peter Lorenzen BSc (horticulture) was part of the first wave who were influenced by the 1980 article. He visited growers around the country, got cuttings and grew them in his backyard, gathering data to see how they performed, and visiting new growers to learn more. By 1991, he had a list of 15 growers and suggested they create an organisation. This was the beginning of the Danish Vineyards Association (DVA). Established with 75 members in 1993, he was the first president.
At the DVA’s annual wine contest in 2003, Lorenzen was the only one to get a Gold medal for a sweet wine made on 60% Madeleine Sylvaner, 30% Veldze and 10% Reform; only 102 wines were accepted for the tasting, with an unknown number failing to qualify. Of those 102, only 11 won medals and there was only one gold. “The quality of the wine was at that time mostly bad,” says Lorenzen. “Really just to pour down the drain. But it is possible to make good wine in Denmark,” he continues, “white wine and, not least, sparkling.” Here he sees a parallel to the sparkling wine industry in England. “To make a living as a winegrower in Denmark you have to engage in event tourism like they do in England. Sell your wines on the spot as souvenirs and gifts, do tastings and tours.”
Lorenzen became the first professional winemaker in Denmark, hired in 2003 as managing director at Skærsøgaard. He retired in 2009 and, to his wife’s delight, he is now a skilled home brewer.
Jens Michael Gundersen became the second DVA president, in 2003. After the first article about growing vines in Denmark appeared in 1980, he decided he had to try vines. Everybody said it was impossible, but after he had measured the sugar content in the grapes he was growing in his parent’s garden (Früburgunder, Léon Millot, Marechal Joffre) he was convinced. He studied the situation in England – “50 years ahead of us” – and established contacts with Geisenheim in Germany. Because the British used German varieties, he started testing them on a field in Avedøre, a suburb 10 km from Copenhagen. It became known as Dansk Vincenter (The Danish Wine Center) established in 1995 with gardener Torben Andreasen. Here they experimented with 200 varieties before they planted 10,000 vines. In 1998 Gundersen got a prize in La Morra, Barolo: Vignaioli del Mondo (Winemaker of the world), which resulted in a media storm and for some years made him a public figure. The same year he and winegrower pioneer, Benny Gensbøl published Vinavl i Danmark (Growing Wine in Denmark).
Gundersen has now left his partnership with Dansk Vincenter and makes a new wine called Hideaway on the small island of Fejø. But it’s a hobby, as he works full-time to promote German wine for the Deutsches Weininstitut in Denmark.
Jean Becker became the third President of the DVA in 2006. His father was a trained cellar man but established a chain of grocery stores north of Copenhagen. For a while he helped his father in buying wine in Germany and France, but then he went to business school and into the oil business, and worked for Esso Denmark. By 2000 he’d seen enough airport lounges and began to produce wine on a full-time basis. He also arranges tastings and does more than 30 seminars around the country during the year. And he is happy to be the president of the DVA who gets to inform the world that the 99 ha allowed by the EU for the production of wine in Denmark has probably already been surpassed.
After 10 years of commercial production many of the growers felt the need to establish a new organisation, better able to deal with both Danish and EU regulations, and also commercial challenges not faced by hobby growers. This need materialised in Danske Vingårde (Danish Wine Producers) in 2011 with Jan Nyholmgaard as president, succeeded by Svend Aage Hansen in 2014. With a background in IT, Svend Aage Hansen started planting vines in 2004, because, “he simply had to try, simply had to overcome the challenge,” as he explains. His three ha Årø Vingård domaine is on the small island of Årø, between Jutland and Funen. In 2014 he produced 6,000 L, which he sold at his visitor centre: around 15,000 people visit the winery each year.
Torben Bo Toldam-Andersen is associate professor in fruit growing at the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen. He is head of Pometet, Denmark’s national fruit genebank and a research station. Here he has a field growing of 80 cultivars of Vitis vinifera and interspecific hybrids/PIWIs. He also has a micro winery in the cellar of Pometet where he vinifies the grapes he grows.
The annual rainfall in Denmark is around 700 mm to 800 mm, and the growing season usually begins in May with harvest in early October. The past 10 years have been trending above average temperatures and 2014 was the warmest growing season on record. Despite this, Denmark remains what Toldam-Andersen calls a “cold-climate” viticultural area. “For a cool climate with low light intensity, relative high humidity and low temperature sum, the canopy management is critical. It is my experience that when you are on the climate-limit of growing wine, the better a grower you have to be, to make use of the genetic potential of the plant.” He says that vines have a memory they carry from year to year, so if you do a good job one year, you are rewarded the next. “And the opposite. If you make mistakes you will be ‘punished’ the year after.”
Fruit wine emerges
Toldam-Andersen explains that the last three decades of grape-growing and wine making in Denmark has been made possible primarily by the development of early- ripening fungus-resistant varieties, also known as PIWIs. One of the main reasons for this is that spraying legislation in Denmark is so stringent, viticulture effectively has to be organic. Due to vintage variation, many of the wineries also produce fruit wines to ensure that their capacity is fully utilised. Red winemaking techniques are now being applied to these fruit wines.
“Over the past ten years the traditional fruit-growing industries in Denmark have been commercially challenged,” he explains. “They don’t get money for their apples and berries.” A survival strategy could be to make apple and berry wine, so he developed a Cool Climate Viticulture and Oenology course in 2006. His course includes a visit to the Mecca of scientific wine practise: Geisenheim. It became a great success and now students from all over the world attend his courses.
The two established winegrowers’ associations wouldn’t allow fruit wine categories at their yearly competitions, so in 2013 Jens Skovgaard Pedersen established Dansk Forum for Frugtvin (Danish Forum for Fruit Wine), which so far has 50 members and a yearly Danish Fruit Wine Show.
The biggest member is Frederiksdal, which produces 200 tons of cherries each year, from 45 ha. Morten Brink Iwersen, a food journalist by profession, was the one who got the idea of making cherry wine and convinced the owner of Frederiksdal, Harald Krabbe, to do it. In 2011 they employed a German winemaker, Jens Heinemeyer, and in 2013 they made 50,000 L of cherry wine. No wonder Krabbe talks about a Danish wine revolution “in a way nobody has done before”.
Jens Skovgaard Pedersen established his Cold Hand Winery five years ago; he was the headmaster of a boarding school and doing apple wine in his spare time. At that time nobody had any serious thought about fruit wine and there was no technical knowhow about how to make it. He also had some Solaris vines in his backyard, so he used them as an excuse to join the Danish Vineyards Association, where he could take courses in vinification. In 2009 he found a 25 L container of apple juice leaking a sticky brown liquid in his freezer. He was curious and tasted it – and discovered a delicious apple syrup. While he’d heard of ice wine, he’d never heard about anybody doing it with apples, and was thrilled. He not only began experimenting, he began telling people his ice apple wine was “world class!”. This is something he might have gotten away with in Copenhagen, but certainly not in rural Jutland. But not only did he not care what people thought, he also gave up his school job to work with an apple grower on Funen and visit the best fruit wine producers in Canada. In 2013 he won the Pomme d’Or competition in Germany and his production of 25,000- to 30,000-bottles per year now sell out at prices between $32.00 to $70.00 a bottle. Next year he plans to produce 40,000 bottles, including apple sparkling, rhubarb and gooseberry wines, among others.
With Toldam-Andersen from the University of Copenhagen, he is also taking part in a new four-year wine research project called NATVIN, focusing on the development of fruit wine and fruit wine culture in Denmark. “We are on a journey,” says Skovgaard Pedersen. “We will be much better with years of practice. I am looking forward to how good a sparkling I can make in 10 years.” After a few seconds he adds: “Yes, the wind is behind us on the bicycle path.”
Perhaps the next UN dinner will feature not just wines from Denmark, but fruit wines as well.
