[matsemann]

Hehe. But where I'm from (Norway) it's only allowed to serve drinks with 40 cl (edit, I meant 4 cl heh) of liquor (with exceptions for international recognized cocktails). So if you were to get less ice you wouldn't get anything more for your money anyways. Except more soda water and a diluted taste.

[jansan]

International recognized cocktails must be quite popular in Norway. I remember when going to Norway for a friend's wedding and they explicitly asked all guests to bring the maximum allowed limit of liquor with them. I understood this after I saw the ridiculous high prices at those liquor stores, which they shamelessly call "wine monopoly" and have higher security than bank buildings. You guys sure have a special relationship with ethanol.

[matsemann]

Yeah, strict rules. But the Wine Monopoly is great and quite beloved. For more expensive wines/liquors where the alcohol tax is a small amount of the total price, it's actually reasonably priced. The monopoly get good prices due to the volume they purchase of stuff.

And the selection is great. In Denmark for instance, every store has a selection of alcohol, but it's quite limited and always the same everywhere. You have to hunt for specialty stores. But the monopoly has everything even in smaller cities.

[cinntaile]

In Denmark you're not dependent on a monopoly for your selection, you can order whatever you like.

Wine Monopoly is by definition a specialty store. It's state subsidised, operating and capital expenses are almost irrelevant so that's why you have everything in smaller cities as well. This comes at a financial cost of course.

[elygre]

The two revelations of the wine monopoly. The first is «you have a monopoly???», and then later «and you actually like that?????»

[jenadine]

It is a state owned monopoly, whose purpose is to address the actual problem of too high alcohol consumption, and not necessarily to make profit. I'm sure not everyone likes it though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinmonopolet

[cess11]

If it's anything like Sweden they have coddled reactionaries that are incapable of even the slightest planning and hence are constantly whining about the monopoly not being open at night or some weekend when they get a sudden urge to get drunk.

For someone who drinks moderately and enjoys variety and access to obscure alcohol products it's likely a very good deal, as it is in Sweden. If I want a single bottle of lebanese Ksarak it'll cost me roughly fifty euros and I'll walk across the street to pick it up after a week or so. Unless I'm misunderstanding something the danish have to get it from german suppliers, though it'll be a bit cheaper (~33 euros), probably due to taxes.

Sometimes I've engaged in tentative planning of imports, e.g. ukrainian bubbly wine and whatnot, but it typically falls through because people don't actually want to put in the effort to organise a drive or getting someone to mail a package, even if there would be a bit of money in it. On the other hand it's trivial to get into contact with people running rather large scale imports of cheap beer and wine from Germany that sell for less than the monopoly takes.

I don't think there is actually any improvement to gain from getting rid of the monopoly, it would quickly turn our local alcohol availability into something similar to what I've seen in Russia and Bulgaria, fifty shades of Flirt vodka, sour wine and useless lager. The rest I'd have to import myself.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

I mean give the reactionaries a little credit. The systembolaget by my house closes at 1500 on Saturdays. Come on.

It is a really reasonable deal to buy from there though often. Selection is pretty good and the taxes on beer and wine are less and as a result due to the flat markup you can get really good deals on fine wines and the like.

[tallanvor]

It's definitely not loved by everyone here! Really the main concern a lot of people have is what will happen to prices if they got rid of it. The limits on how much they can mark up the prices does, like the previous commenter noted, mean that the more expensive stuff is actually more "reasonable".

[Barbing]

>40 cl of liquor

RIP all Norwegian drinkers

[typo correction and conversion likely: 4 cl = 40 ml ≈ 1.35 fl oz]

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

Alcohol is insanely expensive in Norway. Not the place to be if you are a big drinker

[OldfieldFund]

Unpopular opinion, but I think this is a great idea for alcohol and cigarettes, especially in areas with high rates of alcoholism.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

That is in fact why alcohol is insanely expensive in Norway. Because they have historically had high rates of alcoholism and want to combat that.

[punnerud]

Long ago there was a law that every farm in Norway had to produce beer, because the king could potentially visit. It’s said coffee was introduced to try to reduce the alcohol consumption, but Norwegians kept consuming alcohol like before and staring to drink large amount of coffee also.

[pc86]

It's because of the insane taxes and government-owned monopoly on sales. But you'll still find apologists in this thread saying with a straight face that "it's actually reasonably priced" which is objectively false.

[tallanvor]

It's really only because of the taxes. Vinmonopolet prices are marked up by 10.4 NOK per liter plus 21% of the purchase price excluding taxes and duties up to a maximum of 250kr per item. Of course, this means they can't have loss-leaders, but at the same time, you can end up with very good deals on expensive drinks relative to many other countries.

Of course I would love to see Norway lower some of it's sin taxes - these mostly only hurt poor people.

[beAbU]

40ml is a decent double tot. I would not want more than that in a single drink anyway. Especially if its a strong liquor!

[pc86]

40ml is 1.3 oz so not even a double. I didn't realize the Norwegians were all drinking weak cocktails!

[beAbU]

For some reason I had in my mind that a shot was 20ml, but clearly I'm wrong.

A cocktail with only a single shot of liquor, especially if the rest of the drink is large volume, is pretty weak I agree.

[Jedd]

In Australia, a nip of alcohol (spirits) is 30ml - so anything involving more than one ingredient is generally multiples of that.