Abstract
The article first gives a review of the way wine and spirits have been sold from the time of Norway's first municipal spirits monopoly in 1871 to the time of today's state-owned retail wine and spirits monopoly. A main observation is that Norwegian alcohol policy primarily has been concerned with spirits, and that restrictions on sales of wine have often been the consequence of restrictions imposed on spirits. Today, the number of sales outlets for wine is the same as for spirits, even though the sales figures for wine are five times those for liquor. Now we face a situation where the availability of wine has to be increased. The last part discusses how this may be achieved while at the same time trying to limit the damage caused by the use of alcoholic beverages.