Traenafestivalen Wine Choices.
Traenafestivalen Wine Choices.
Traenafestivalen, in Norway. Part 2. The boring bits about the wines.
Hey Team,
Part 1 is linked below.
This is the comparison piece, considerably shorter and focussed on the wine I managed to find throughout the weekend.
Firstly a recap on buying booze in Norway.
Wine & Spirits
You see the thing about Norway is that it’s really hard to buy alcohol.
The domestic market is controlled by the Government and you can only buy upto 4.5% abv in the shops. You have to go to the Vinmonopolet to buy anything else.
Wine at a Festival?
Essentially, buy whatever wine you can at Oslo Airport Duty Free. Preferably a 3ltr BiB of something sufficient for camping.
On site the standard bars will sell you wine, but it will be pretty boring, and quite expensive. I think they were selling 200ml glasses of BiB Côtes du Rhône from a 3ltr box, for around 140nok (£10). If, like me you’d rather do this, than for the same price drink lots of shit beer, then knock yourself out.
The Good Stuff can be found in one of two places: The Sky Bar, or the Museum Garden Wine Bar. The Good stuff is expensive. Think London-restaurant-by-the-bottle prices.
Like I said, the Museum Garden is great, there was about 10 different wines available by the bottle, including decent NV Cava, Louis Jadot Bourgogne Gamay, dry German riesling. Surprisingly interesting stuff, which maybe gives you an idea of the wines they like in Norway.
I grabbed a bottle of Orange Wine, for around 650nok (£45), the NOrange Sylvaner from Karl May, probably €16 retail in Europe. It was pretty tasty to be fair. I had some of the Jodot Bourgogne Gamay Later.
What I didn’t realise until the last day was that the Sky Bar is where it is at with wine. It’s a bar that is above the food trucks, and one one of the nights, there was a 3-course dinner at 9pm that totally passed me by, but after that the bar is open.
We found it at 10pm on the Sunday evening, and smashed through a delicious bottle of modern Garnacha from Spain. They had about 20 wines to choose from, and tech sheets on the bar for those that might be interested. Again about 650nok (£45), for a bottle that is around £20 in the UK, but it was cool, bright, strawberry juice delicious.
It didn’t last long, and I think we’d have gone back for more had it not been Sunday night already.
Wine, Before & After
Before the festival, we spent a couple of days in Bodø. While we found a pretty decent brew house, I did, as expected get bored of drinking pints quite quickly.
At the hotel bar, there was a rudimentary selection of single serve stuff, the same wines you’d see in any hotel bar around the world.
I did manage to find, stick with me here, because after a few pints it’s a bloody delight, some German Pinot Noir Rosé! Honestly, we should all drink more of that.
Regardless of where we bought the wines, there was always something interesting to drink. I think I’d rather that more pubs in the UK sold good but expensive, rather than shit but affordable wines.
I rarely drink wine when I’m out, unless I’m at a dedicated wine ‘thing’, while the standard level of wines, in any Norwegian bar seemed, better, but you pay for it.
Government mandated ‘better but less’ can’t be a bad thing?
Dan