Sweden · Skane

Vingården i Klagshamn

Lena and Murre Sofrakis grow Solaris, Rondo, and Pinot Noir on 1.8 hectares in coastal Skåne, making dry whites, a Rondo rosé, and a skin-contact orange wine from one of Sweden's earliest commercial vineyards.

The producer

Vingården i Klagshamn sits on a coastal strip just south of Malmö where the Öresund strait separates Sweden from Denmark. Lena and Murat 'Murre' Sofrakis planted their first test vines in 2000, a year after Sweden received EU authorisation to produce commercial wine, and formally established the estate in 2001. Murre brought agricultural and horticultural knowledge to the project; the first commercial vintage followed four years later in 2005. Today the estate farms 1.8 hectares, produces under 7,000 bottles a year, and makes every wine by hand from vine to bottle.

Solaris, a cold-climate hybrid bred for northern European latitudes, fills roughly 80 percent of the rows. The grape holds acidity as it ripens and handles Skåne's short season without the interventions that classic Vitis vinifera varieties require at this latitude. It appears across four styles: a dry white (Sömntuta), a barrel-aged white (Solaris Barrique), a semi-sweet aperitif (Nordic Light), and Fjälltopp, an 18-month skin-contact orange wine fermented across old oak, ceramic egg, and steel. Rondo produces the dry rosé and a spiced red. A single barrel of Pinot Noir Précose, bottled at 280 units per vintage, completes the range.

Known for

Solaris-driven dry whites and skin-contact orange wine from coastal Skåne

Notable facts

The story

The Bucket Rule

At harvest time at Vingården i Klagshamn, Murre Sofrakis applies one test before any grape goes into the collection bucket. He calls it a rule, though it works more like a reflex built from his years in horticulture: if you would not put that grape in your own mouth, it does not go in the bucket. The pickers follow the same standard. He walks past anything underripe, split, or compromised, even when the row looks almost ready and the autumn forecast is closing in. On 1.8 hectares with a team picking by hand, the rule is easy to state and hard to argue with. Every grape in the bucket has already passed a mouth. That grape is the wine.

From the atlas

Vingården i Klagshamn

At A Glance

The Producer

In 2000, a plot of land came free next to the Sofrakis home in Klagshamn, a coastal village just south of Malmö on the Öresund strait. Murre Sofrakis, who had worked in gardening and agriculture, saw it as a vineyard. Sweden had only just received EU authorisation to produce commercial wine, and virtually no one in the country was doing it. The family planted test vines that year anyway.

Vingården i Klagshamn was formally established in 2001. Four years passed before the first bottle went to a customer. Today Lena and Murre farm 1.8 hectares and produce under 7,000 bottles a year from a winery built behind the house. Solaris, a cold-climate hybrid bred for northern European latitudes, fills roughly 80 percent of the rows. Rondo, Cabernet Cortis, and Pinot Noir occupy the rest.

The winery philosophy is stated plainly on the estate's own pages: they try to do as little as possible. The aim is to move grapes from vine to bottle without overriding what the place and the variety give naturally. That principle holds across a range that spans dry white, rosé, red, orange wine, and a single-barrel Pinot Noir.

Place

Klagshamn sits on the western edge of Skåne, Sweden's southernmost province, where the land juts into the Öresund strait between Sweden and Denmark. The coast moderates temperature and keeps the growing season marginally longer than inland Skåne, but this is still a cool-climate site. Vines do not break bud until early May, which means the frost window after budburst is short. Harvest typically runs into autumn under lower sun angles than any major European wine region.

Skåne's vine-growing history is recent. Sweden entered EU wine production in 1999, and the estates that planted in the first years after that date are the founding generation of Swedish commercial viticulture. Klagshamn's position between two former limestone quarry sites, Limhamn to the north and the Klagshamn quarry itself, means the vineyard grows on limestone-rich ground: the same geology that was commercially extracted here through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The coastal position and the late bud-break together push the season toward full ripeness in September and October, concentrating sugar slowly. Solaris handles this rhythm well; it retains acidity as it ripens, which is why it sits at the core of the estate's white wines.

Soil And Site

The vineyard occupies former agricultural land in a coastal peninsula. Limestone bedrock underlies the site, the legacy of the quarry activity that defined Klagshamn industrially. The soil above it is light and free-draining. Cool Öresund air keeps temperatures moderate through summer and reduces fungal pressure, which supports the estate's low-intervention spraying programme.

Story

Murre Sofrakis was not a winemaker when the plot next to the house became available. He was a gardener and agriculturalist who had not made wine before. The decision to plant was not driven by an existing winery or inherited vines. It was a response to available land, an agricultural instinct, and a country that had only just been permitted to grow commercial wine.

The family planted test vines in 2000 and took four more years to reach a first commercial vintage, releasing bottles for the first time in 2005. During that period they worked out which varieties could ripen reliably in Skåne's short season. Solaris, developed specifically for northern European conditions, proved the most dependable and became the dominant variety. The estate refined its farming approach toward an ecological model: seaweed collected from the Malmö coastline and horse manure from local riding schools replace synthetic fertilisers; sulphur, milk, and bicarbonate replace conventional fungicides. None of this is certified, but the substances and methods are consistent with certified organic production elsewhere.

Over the years the range grew in ambition without growing in volume. Fjälltopp, the estate's orange wine, now spends 18 months on lees across three vessels. Pinot Noir Précose is pressed from a single barrel each vintage: 280 bottles, no more. The estate has not scaled up. It has deepened what it does with what it has.

Vineyards And Cellar

Almost all vineyard work is done by hand. Harvest is manual and selective. The harvest philosophy is a stated rule at the estate: if you would put a grape in the bucket, you must be willing to eat that same grape yourself. In practice, no compromised or unripe fruit enters the winery; the decision point is the mouth, not a refractometer reading.

Spraying uses sulphur against fungal pressure, milk as a foliar feed, and bicarbonate as a pH buffer. Fertilisation comes from two local sources: seaweed from the Malmö coastline and horse manure from riding schools in the area. Both are low-input, slow-release options suited to a small site with limestone soil.

In the cellar, the approach is minimal. Parameters are adjusted only where necessary. Fermentation vessels are chosen by intended style: stainless steel for freshness, old oak for texture and slow oxygen exchange, ceramic egg for lees integration and roundness. Fjälltopp uses all three in combination over 18 months of lees contact. Sulphite additions are kept low: 10 mg/l in Fjälltopp. Most wines are bottled without heavy fining or filtration.

Wines

Solaris appears in four styles. Sömntuta 2024 is a dry white at 14.5% ABV with stone-fruit and citrus character: ripe and full-bodied for a northern white, with a spiced finish. Solaris Barrique spends time in oak, adding weight and a toasted note to the same fruit base. Nordic Light is a semi-sweet white at 12.5% ABV with 6.6 g/100ml residual sugar, made for aperitif drinking. Fjälltopp is the most complex expression: a skin-contact orange wine from Solaris grapes, fermented across old oak, ceramic egg, and stainless steel, then aged 18 months on lees with minimal sulphite. It is nutty, oxidative, and substantial, a different register entirely from the fresh whites.

Rondo produces two bottles. Klagshamns Rosé 2025 is 100 percent Rondo, dry at 13% ABV, with red-fruit and citrus character: pomegranate, blood orange, watermelon, raspberry, and cherry. It is light in colour, clean, and built on acidity rather than body. Vega 2024, the estate's red, is also Rondo at 12.5% ABV, with red currant, lingonberry, spice, toffee, and herb. It carries some oak contact and a cinnamon note on the finish.

Pinot Noir Précose 2023 is the estate's most limited bottle: 280 bottles from a single barrel of Frühburgunder (an early-ripening Pinot Noir clone) at 12% ABV. It shows spicy red-fruit character with citrus lift, oak, and warming spice. At this scale it is an annual test of what classic vinifera can achieve in Skåne rather than a commercial range pillar, but it reaches full colour and extract with careful selection.

In The Glass

The Solaris whites share a character shaped by the grape's natural acidity and Skåne's cool, slow-ripening season. Sömntuta opens with ripe stone fruit and citrus, moves into a full mid-palate, and finishes with spice from the higher alcohol. The acidity is present but soft rather than taut. Fjälltopp moves in a completely different direction: the lees contact and three-vessel ageing build texture and nutty depth, the colour shifts to amber, and the nose is oxidative rather than fresh. The mouth is broad and long. Where Sömntuta is a dinner white, Fjälltopp is a conversation wine.

The Rosé is the clearest expression of Rondo's fruit character: light-bodied, acidity-forward, with red berry, pomegranate, and blood orange that hold freshness through the finish. Vega adds oak and spice to the same fruit base and gains body from that contact, but stays in a medium-weight register. Pinot Noir Précose at 12% ABV carries red fruit, gentle tannin, citrus peel, and warming spice from the oak; at 280 bottles it demonstrates reach rather than weight.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with Klagshamns Rosé 2025. It is 100 percent Rondo, dry, at 13% ABV, and available through Systembolaget. The colour is light salmon-pink. The nose is clean and fruit-forward: pomegranate, blood orange, and fresh raspberry. In the mouth, the acidity carries the fruit without sweetness. The finish is short and clean. It costs little, it is easy to find, and it answers the basic question about Swedish wine directly: this is what a cold-climate rosé from a hybrid red grape tastes like when the farming is careful and the cellar stays out of the way. Once you have the Rosé, Fjälltopp is the logical next step, because it shows what the same estate does when it chooses complexity over freshness.

Anecdote

At harvest time at Vingården i Klagshamn, Murre Sofrakis applies one test before any grape goes into the collection bucket. He calls it a rule, though it works more like a reflex built from his years in horticulture: if you would not put that grape in your own mouth, it does not go in the bucket. The pickers follow the same standard. He walks past anything underripe, split, or compromised, even when the row looks almost ready and the forecast is uncertain. On 1.8 hectares with a team picking by hand, the rule is easy to apply and hard to override. Everything in the bucket has already passed a mouth. That grape is the wine.

Final Word

Vingården i Klagshamn is one of the founding estates of Swedish commercial viticulture, built by two people on a plot next to their house in a village most wine drinkers have never heard of. The range covers dry white, rosé, red, orange wine, and a single-barrel Pinot Noir from a 1.8-hectare plot. Solaris runs through most of it. The Rosé is the entry. Fjälltopp is the argument for the estate's ambition. Both are available outside Sweden.

Sources

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