From the atlas
Pompette
At A Glance
Producer: Pompette Founded: 2015 Base: Stockholm, Sweden Wine origins: Piemonte (Moscato d'Asti, Barbera from Monferrato), Marche (Trebbiano) Range: Aperò Bianco, Glögg di Arancio, Glögg di Rosso Style: Fortified botanical drinks built on Italian base wines
The Producer
Pompette is a Stockholm wine importer with an unusual sideline: three own-label fortified drinks made from Italian base wines and shaped into formats for Nordic seasonal drinking. Robert Fredh, Tom Telégin, and Fredrik Iveskär founded the company in 2015 after spending their working lives on restaurant floors in Sweden as trained sommeliers. They identified estates they admired that had no Swedish importer and built a portfolio around them. Pompette now represents more than 100 European winegrowers from its office on Åsögatan in Stockholm.
The own-label range sits apart from the importing business. Each drink begins with an Italian grape sourced from a specific region, moves through fortification and sweetening, and arrives at a botanical character built from spices associated with winter drinking across both Italian and Scandinavian traditions. The products are not wine in the table-wine sense, and Pompette does not present them as such. They occupy a specific register: botanically complex, fortified, sweetened, and suited to the cold-weather table.
Place
Pompette's own-label range draws from three Italian addresses. Moscato d'Asti, the appellation in Piemonte known for its low-alcohol, aromatic, lightly sparkling sweet wines made from the Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains grape, provides the base for Aperò Bianco. Barbera from Monferrato goes into Glögg di Rosso. Trebbiano from Marche, the central-Italian coastal region where Trebbiano functions as a light, high-acid white grape, forms the base of Glögg di Arancio.
The geographic spread is purposeful. Each grape was chosen for a specific flavor character before fortification: Moscato's floral sweetness, Barbera's red-fruit density and perceived affinity with mulled formats, Trebbiano's neutral-to-amber skin-contact character. The places on the label are grape origins, not estate addresses. Pompette has no documented vineyard presence in any of these regions.
Soil And Site
No vineyard or soil information is documented for the grapes sourced by Pompette. The Monferrato hills in Piemonte and the Marche coastal hinterland are the stated origins for Barbera and Trebbiano respectively, but the supplying growers have not been disclosed. Moscato d'Asti is a precisely bounded DOCG appellation in the Asti province, and the grape character of Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains, with its high natural sugar and pronounced floral and peach aromatics, is a function of that variety rather than a specific parcel.
Story
The three founders of Pompette came from the same professional world: restaurant sommelier service in Sweden, with all the tasting, traveling, and producer contact that role involves. In 2015, they decided the Swedish market was missing producers they considered important and moved to fill the gap themselves.
The own-label range developed from a separate creative question: what happens when you apply Italian wine traditions to a Nordic festive format? Glögg, the Scandinavian mulled and spiced wine drunk at Christmas, has a long domestic history in Sweden. Vin Brulé, the Italian equivalent, has its own regional logic. Pompette's founders, working between both traditions as sommeliers with Italian wine knowledge, made the case that Italian base wines served the format better than generic wine bases. They chose grapes with existing cultural associations in the mulled wine tradition, particularly Barbera, and developed the spice registers from there.
The range includes three drinks and sits outside standard category descriptions. It is not wine in the unfortified sense, not a liqueur in the spirit sense, and not a traditional Swedish glögg in either recipe or labeling. The official producer page places the Pompette brand in Asti, Piemonte, because Moscato d'Asti is the appellation associated with its aperitivo product, though the company operates from Stockholm.
Vineyards And Cellar
Pompette does not hold or manage vineyards. The grapes in its own-label range are sourced from Italian producers whose identities have not been made public. What is documented is the method applied to each base wine after sourcing.
For Glögg di Arancio, the Trebbiano from Marche undergoes skin maceration before fortification. Skin contact on a normally thin-skinned white grape like Trebbiano extracts phenolic compounds and deepens the color to amber or orange, adding texture and bitterness that persist through the sweetening and spice addition. The finished drink carries a weight that a clear Trebbiano would not.
For Aperò Bianco, the Moscato d'Asti base is sweetened and fortified, then flavored with fifteen or more botanicals including cinchona bark, gentian root, and juniper alongside citrus peel, chamomile, cloves, sage, marjoram, and nutmeg. Cinchona bark and gentian root are bittering agents common in vermouth and amaro production; their inclusion gives the Aperò Bianco a bitter back-note that counteracts the sweetness of the Moscato base.
For Glögg di Rosso, the Barbera base is fortified and sweetened to a sugar level comparable to port, landing at 14.5% alcohol, then spiced with cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cardamom, and bitter orange.
Wines
Pompette produces three drinks under its own label.
Aperò Bianco is a botanical aperitivo made from 100% Moscato d'Asti. The Moscato grape brings high natural sugar, pronounced peach and apricot aromas, and floral lift before any additions. Fortification raises the alcohol and stabilizes the sweetness. The botanical blend, which includes bitter agents from cinchona bark and gentian alongside aromatic herbs and spices, pulls the drink away from pure sweetness toward a bitter-edged aperitivo character. Pompette recommends serving it over ice, neat or extended with soda or tonic water.
Glögg di Arancio is built on skin-macerated Trebbiano from Marche. The skin contact extracts color and tannin from the grape, giving the base an amber tone and a firmer mouthfeel before fortification and spicing. The botanical additions lean on citrus: orange, bitter orange, and saffron alongside the more conventional cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger. Glögg di Arancio is fortified, sweetened, and seasoned with cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, orange, bitter orange, and saffron.
Glögg di Rosso uses Barbera from Monferrato as its base. Barbera is a naturally high-acid, deep-colored red grape with dark fruit and low tannin relative to other Piemonte varieties. Pompette selected it for its perceived compatibility with Vin Brulé, the Italian mulled wine tradition. After fortification and sweetening to port-level sugar, the drink is spiced with cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cardamom, and bitter orange. Alcohol sits at 14.5%.
The three drinks form a coherent set: one aperitivo, one orange glögg, one red glögg, each built on a distinct Italian grape and a distinct spice emphasis. No unfortified table wines appear in the documented Pompette house range.
In The Glass
Aperò Bianco opens with the floral and stone-fruit register of Moscato, peach blossom and apricot rising quickly, before the botanical additions layer in: orange peel and sage in the mid-palate, then a bitter finish from cinchona bark and gentian that keeps the sweetness from becoming cloying. Served over ice with tonic, the bitterness sharpens and the floral notes lift.
Glögg di Arancio shows the amber color expected from skin-macerated Trebbiano and carries more grip than a white-wine-base glögg. The saffron and bitter orange push to the front, with cinnamon and cardamom in the mid-palate and a dry-ish, spiced finish. The textural weight from skin contact gives it presence in the mouth rather than pure sweetness.
Glögg di Rosso leads with the dark fruit of Barbera, cherry and plum underpinning a dense spice load of cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. The acidity that defines Barbera in unfortified form reads here as freshness cutting through the port-level sweetness. Independent tasting notes describe fruit, floral, and herbal aromas alongside freshness and acidity that prevent the sweetness from feeling heavy. The 14.5% alcohol and high sugar make it a slow-pour drink, served in small amounts, warm or at room temperature.
A Bottle To Understand It
Glögg di Rosso is the clearest starting point. Barbera from Monferrato, fortified and sweetened to port weight, then spiced with cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cardamom, and bitter orange: it is the drink that most directly shows what Pompette is doing with Italian wine traditions and Nordic festive formats. The Barbera base means the drink carries genuine red-fruit density and natural acidity under the spice, rather than a generic sweet wine character. At 14.5% and port-level sugar, it is built for small glasses, served warm, as you would Vin Brulé at an Italian Christmas market or glögg at a Swedish one.
Anecdote
The idea for Glögg di Arancio started with a grape more often seen in still white wines from the Marche coast. Trebbiano, grown there as a high-acid, relatively neutral variety, is rarely associated with any kind of skin contact in its conventional form. Pompette had the base wine macerated on its skins before fortification, which turned the clear Trebbiano juice amber and gave it a grip and bitterness that the grape does not carry when pressed directly. Then came saffron: not a conventional glögg spice in Swedish usage, where cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom define the category, but central to the Italian Vin Brulé tradition and visually distinctive in the glass. The finished drink was an orange glögg in color and character that had traveled through an amber-wine method and an Italian spice cabinet before arriving at a format the Swedish market recognized from Christmas tradition.
Final Word
Pompette is a wine importer that made three drinks to demonstrate a point: Italian base wines, chosen with the knowledge of working sommeliers, carry a more interesting character into botanical fortified formats than generic wine bases do. The range is small, the format is seasonal, and the category sits outside standard wine atlas territory. But the decisions behind each product, grape by grape, spice by spice, are specific enough to be worth following.
Sources
- https://www.pompette.se/kontakt/
- https://www.pompette.se/producer/pompette/
- https://www.pompette.se/systembolaget/myrko-tepus/
- https://www.systembolaget.se/produkt/vin/glogg-di-rosso-5421301/
- https://www.winetable.se/drycker/glogg-di-rosso-numero-uno-2/