A NOSY OBSESSION Andreas Larsson heard about a sommeliers’ competition through the grapevine. He won it, which kick-started a lucrative career. Now he educates other wine lovers, and wants to take the drama out of wine tasting. “I’m obsessed with wine and food,” says Andreas Larsson while swirling and sniffing a glass of Riesling, overlooking a surprisingly sunny November Stockholm from the Gondolen bar. For the last three years he has been the best sommelier in Sweden, and last year he also became the Scandinavian champion. It all started in the kitchen. He was working as a chef, and one of the sommeliers said he should enter a competition, just for the fun of it. Andreas won, thus becoming the rookie of the year, and the rest is history. “Maybe my knowledge of flavours and produce in the kitchen made me know more about flavours than the average waiter,” he says. The winner takes it all Winning the competitions has opened many doors. Apart from his part time work as head sommelier at Bon Lloc, he now teaches at restaurant academies around Scandinavia, and when he is not away on wine trips around the world, he organises private and corporate tastings on request. And as you have probably noticed, The Stockholm Bulletin is one of the magazines where you can enjoy his musings. “I write for a younger generation. I want to make wine tasting and drinking less dramatic, and if I describe a wine as a sexy blonde, the guys will know what I mean. Let’s face it, most wine nerds are guys. But I find women to be more daring when it comes to trying new wines.” “For me, a meal without wine is either a sign of poverty or madness,” says Andreas Larsson, who drinks about five bottles every week. He prefers classical European regions like Bordeaux, Rhone and Bourgogne to the New World. “With wines from the New World you get a lot of flavour for the money. Sometimes a bit too much. The more elegant and complex European wines are often easier to combine with food.” Bags the box As much as he loves European wines, he hates one of the Swedish wine trends. “The bag-in-box destroys the wine, since it takes on a plastic flavour from the bag. And they have to sulphur it so much, it’s stripped from its aromas and aftertaste. It becomes only a shadow of its former self,” he says. He has tried bottled and bagged wines that are suppose to be the same, and found them to be miles apart. “The bag-in-box is a threat for the wine culture. I just can’t understand why it has become so popular in Sweden,” he says passionately. Besides wine and food Andreas also has an obsession for music. He plays the guitar and has had a couple of records produced with his jazz band, Andreas Larsson quartet. But a career with musical notes is momentarily put on hold for one with financial security. – Anders Modig © 2006, Swedish Bulletin. All rights reserved