Mariestads
Mariestads
The story of Mariestads begins on 6 March 1848, when the snuff manufacturer Fredrik Rosenlind founded Mariestads Bayerska Bryggeri in the Swedish town of Mariestad on Lake Vänern. The name underlined that the brewery was among the first in the country to brew its beer in the Bavarian tradition, which quickly made the unusually good and high-quality beer popular, at first in western Sweden and a few decades later across the whole country. In 1866 the brewery was renamed Mariestads Bryggeri AB, and when it burned to the ground in 1875, a new building was standing just a year later, this time built entirely of stone, which also survived the great town fire of 1895. By the end of the 19th century Mariestads was already one of the larger names on the Swedish beer market, from 1907 to 1959 it also owned the Melleruds brewery in Mellerud, and in 1957 a new beer, Old Ox, joined the range.
In 1967 Mariestads Bryggeri was taken over by Spendrups and merged with the previously acquired Grängesbergs Bryggeri in Dalarna, and in 1972 production in Mariestad was discontinued and moved to Grängesberg. The brand itself, however, was preserved: in the 1990s Spendrups, under its then brewmaster Helmut Hiltmann, relaunched Mariestads in the form in which the beer is known today, and since then the brand has contributed significantly to Spendrups' growth over many years. The beer is today brewed at the brewery in Grängesberg, and the label recalls the heritage of the original Mariestad brewery with its founding year of 1848.
Spendrups, founded in 1897 as Grängesbergs Bryggeri and in the hands of the Spendrup family since 1923, is today Sweden's leading brewery and accounts for around a third of the Swedish beer market, with brands such as Norrlands Guld, Mariestads, Melleruds and Briska. The Mariestads range includes the classic Export, Old Ox, a light 2.8% variant, alcohol-free beers, among them an alcohol-free Strong Ale with a heavy malt body and fruity, winey notes, as well as seasonal Julbrygd, Påskbrygd and Sommarbrygd beers. Under the series «Den Stora Smakresan», eight limited editions appeared between 2014 and 2017, which were bottled, labelled and numbered by hand by the brewmaster and his team. In this way Mariestads combines the tradition of one of Sweden's first Bavarian-style breweries with the resources of a modern large brewery and remains to this day one of the best-known beer brands in the country.