An Alko with flair

In Finland you unfortunately won't find those nice small wine shops you might know from other countries since wine always has to be sold in the state owned Alkos.

But the closest you can get to one of those beautiful intimate shops would probably be the small Alko at Vanha Kauppahalli at the harbour. The wooden shops inside the market hall has some of the athmosphere of what you might be looking for. Obviously due to the size the selection here is also quite limited. It is anyway worth a visit. 

Check it out!

What's with all the #viski posts?

You most likely saw lots of your Finnish friends posting something about whiskey (or rather viski) on their social media accounts. In case you don't know where the sudden interest in this high precentage drink comes from here a short explanaition.

Helsingin Sanomat titled yesterday that Finnish officials had forced private bloggers to take the word viski off their website. This rose a lot of irritation and understandably protest on Finnish social media. As it was reported later every 4 seconds a post containing the word or hashtag viski was published on Twitter throughout the day.

Later on Sunday the responsible state agency denied ever having forced bloggers to change their content. The whole situation is still very unclear and will surely be under investigation during the upcoming days. For more information on the topic please read the linked articles and stay tuned on YLE News.

Have a nice start into the week!

Wine at the supermarket

In Finland wine can't be bough at the supermarket but just at the state owned Alko shops, right?

Well, not exactly. At bigger supermarkets you will indeed also find some wine on the shelves next to the beer and cider. Those are no normal wines though but light wines. Since they have less than five percent of alcohol they can be sold at supermarkets as well.

So if you see them maybe give them a try. But be warned, they taste not like real wine and are also not much cheaper. An additional visit to Alko might make sense.

Alcohol from 9 till 9

As you might know in Finland any alcohol above 4.7 percent can only be bought from the state owned Alko shops. Anything below like beer and cider is also available at the normal supermarket. But also here you have to face some restrictions.

All alcoholic beverages are just allowed to be sold between 9 am and 9 pm. For the rest of the time the shelves are being covered or even locked and even if you find a bottle hidden somewhere between the milk and the sausages it won’t help you since the staff is not allowed to sell it to you anymore.

So keep those times in mind when you plan your next party. Don’t run out of booze after nine!