IKEA – Egentid Black Tea with Bergamot and Oak
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IKEA sell tea! This is an amazing True Thing that I have only just found out. My daughter bought this IKEA Bergamot and Oak Black Tea for me when she recently visited the Swedish store of flatpacked dreams. I realise that I say “my daughter bought this for me” quite a lot in these tea reviews. She’s basically my dealer.
So, bergamot and oak flavour, eh? What does oak even taste like? There are a bunch of oak trees across the road from me. I could go out and lick one now and answer my own question. Although I’m not sure which bit of the oak tree this tea is supposed to taste like. Bark? Leaves? Acorns? (You can actually cook and eat acorns. They’re quite nutritious. Of course, nobody actually does eat them because they taste horrible.)
I couldn’t taste anything apart from the tea and bergamot. Whatever the oak is doing in this brew, it’s being pretty quiet about it. All the non-tea parts of this tea come from ‘natural flavourings’ so it’s safe to say that there are no bits of actual oak tree in here. What we basically have here is an Earl Grey. And although it’s a perfectly serviceable Earl Grey, big on bergamot flavour, it really isn’t pushing the Earl Grey envelope in any new or interesting directions.
I’ll be cheerfully making my way through the whole box but I don’t think I will be rushing out to replenish it once it’s all gone. I certainly won’t be going to IKEA itself to stock up. I’ve only ever been to IKEA once. When I emerged from the maze after several hours in which time had no meaning, blinking in the sunshine, discombobulated, disorientated and clutching items that I hadn’t even known that I wanted to purchase, I promised myself that I would never set foot inside an Ikea, again.
And reader, I have honoured that promise. And no amount of deciduous-tree-flavour tea is going to persuade me otherwise.
Today’s featured book is The Stanley Book of Designs for Making Your Own Furniture (1966). This is my dad’s book. He made several things from it in the 1960s and 1970s, some of which he still has.
