The Absolut Company (Destilleriet i Åhus)

Elyx vodka’s home, the town of Åhus, is also the spiritual home of its mother brand Absolut Vodka.

Houses in Åhus, Sweden (Photo: Absolut Elyx)

Pronounced ‘oar-who-ss’, Åhus is a picturesque small town with a population of 10,000 that sits on Sweden’s east coast, about a two hour drive from Copenhagen. The town’s natural harbour was key to its industrial development and today Åhus is popular with the yachting and boating fraternity.

Extensive sandy beaches make Åhus a popular summertime tourist destination and the town is as famous for hosting one of the largest beach handball tournaments in the world as for its vodka.

All the wheat used to make Absolut Elyx is sourced from a single farm, the Råbelöf Estate, just 25 kilometers (15 miles) from Åhus. Lying in a remote part of Sweden the estate is bordered by a huge lake and dotted with large woodlands. It is an idyllic location for the Råbelöf Castle, built in 1763, this looks like something out of a fairy tale but is a working farmhouse and home to Erik Baeksted, the estate’s affable farmer and general manager.

Råbelöf Castle (Photo: Absolut Elyx)

Erik Baeksted (Photo: Absolut Elyx)

One of the estate’s old hunting lodges, still used by hunters of the wild boar and other game that roam the estate’s ancient woodland, has been refurbished by Elyx as a place to host folk like yours truly when visiting the estate. It may still be a hunting lodge but it now oozes the style of Soho Farmhouse with subdued bling, hidden televisions and gleaming copper fixtures. Elyx is famous for its ostentatious brand homes in cities like New York and Los Angeles but this small, humble lodge and the estate on which it sits perhaps should be considered its real home – it’s where it comes from.