Museum of Spirits

This guide to Stockholm's Museum of Spirits follows Lars Olsson Smith, a former shop boy turned trader who believed in 1879 he had found a way to make Swedish spirits truly pure, and built a distillery on Reimersholme island beyond the reach of the capital's liquor monopoly. It traces the continuous still he gambled on, the free boats he ran to draw drinkers to his door, and how his invention grew into the vodka brand whose bottles now fill an entire floor of the museum. Look at the old stills and labels in the cases around you.