Southern Sweden: Manor and Vineyard
A country estate above the Öresund with 163 rooms that feels small, and a winery in Halland where you sleep where the wine grows. The summer you don't expect from Scandinavia.
Southern Sweden is the Sweden the Swedes themselves think of as abroad: flat, Danish in character, beech instead of pine, and in June nights that don't get dark. From Copenhagen you're across the bridge in an hour.
Two houses, an hour apart, both improbable in their own way.
Maryhill Estate: the park above the sound
Glumslöv lies on the coast between Helsingborg and Landskrona, on a rise above the Öresund from which you see Denmark in the evening. Maryhill is a country estate with park, pool and 163 rooms — a number that puts you off until you're there. The house spreads out, the paths are long, and you meet other guests in the park the way you meet people out walking.
It's the house for families who want summer without heat, and for groups that need a place that is large and doesn't feel it.
Ästad Vingård: wine below the 57th parallel
An hour north, in Halland near Tvååker, wine grows in a valley — Solaris, Rondo, varieties that cope with short summers — and the Ästad estate has built a house around it: restaurant, spa, rooms in the forest, a lake to swim in. You sleep where the wine grows, and in Sweden that isn't an advertising line but a rarity.
Ästad is the country's most serious winery, and it has decided not to overdo it: no château, no marketing, a farm with beds and good cooking. Come in August and you eat crayfish.
Practical
Arrive via Copenhagen (bridge, an hour to Glumslöv) or Gothenburg (an hour and a half to Ästad). Best time: June for the bright nights, late August for crayfish and harvest. In winter southern Sweden is grey — go to Lapland instead.
