Svensk Absint, Sweden

The Svensk Absinth Distillery is a small distillery in Örebrom, Sweden. It was founded by Mikael Norell and Tomas Runnquist in 2009.

After several years of hard work and many distillation tests, the two friends put their first two absinthes on the market: the Vit Opal and the Grön Opal. The Vit Opal (White Opal) is the first Blanche absinthe ever produced in Sweden. Every step in the production is done by hand: from the growing and harvesting of the best plants to the bottling and the labelling.

The Svensk Absinthe Distillery focuses on small batches made with high quality selected ingredients, that both friends harvest by hand. Almost all plants come from the distillery's herb garden: roman wormwood (Artemisia pontica), melissa, hyssop and many other ingredients, carefully picked by hand. This allows a better control of the plants' quality. The high quality is particularly important to Mikael and Tomas, which explains why they spend the largest part of their time in the herb garden.

The grand-wormwood, one of absinthe's most important ingredients, is not cultivated, but rather foraged from the wild. It is only found in certain locations in Sweden. The amount of absinthe they can produce depends on how much wormwood they harvest in August. After the harvest, the absinthe is brought back home and hung up for drying in the distillery's attic for one year. The aroma of these two absinthes is particularly intense and fragrant. The distiller himself says that this wormwood is of much better quality than any cultivated ones.

The distillation takes place in a 125l still, filled only to 90l. After the distillation, the absinthe is stocked in barrels for at least three months before being bottled, to ensure a rounded flavour.

Ecological thinking is very important to Mikael and Tomas: they are careful to respect nature when growing their herbs and foraging their wormwood, and a large array of solar panels provides the distillery with power.