IKEA wine – their little-known accessory

IKEA keep unusually quiet about this particular product. I found IKEA’s wine in one of its restaurant’s chiller cabinets, but it’s not listed on their Beverages page, like their lagers, or shelved in their food department. And it is not to be confused with IKEA Vinglögg, for that is not wine per se; Vinglögg is described on the label as an “aromatized wine based drink”, and so lies beyond the remit of Sediment, which is not an aromatized wine based drink blog.

No, this is a seemingly proper Cotes de Provence white wine, of undeclared vintage, called, rather oddly, Navicert  – and with the IKEA logo on the label.

It comes in, unusually, a 25cl bottle – that’s 1/3rd of a regular bottle. Trust an IKEA product to employ its own unique measurement system. In their restaurant it’s £2.80 plus VAT, which adds up to what would be a little over £10 for a full bottle. Conveniently, its components do come ready assembled. And with a combination of practicality and economy typical of IKEA, it eschews either cork or Stelvin in favour of a juice-bottle cap.

Now, I could go into the taste of it, using IKEA-related terms to describe aspects such as its construction, its legs, its playful florals and its oak finish. In fact it’s perfectly drinkable; its taste will please most people through being relatively minimal, like everything at IKEA apart from its checkout queues.

But it’s the very concept of offering wine to IKEA customers which deserves some thought.

A traditional Navicert, or ship’s cargo certificate, was meant to aid passage during hostilities, which is of obvious benefit in a trip to IKEA. And a stiff dose of something alcoholic might, like an 19th century explorer of Africa, aid one’s journey around its badly-mapped interior. 

Yes, wine might fuel even more marital rows in the furniture areas; but it could also blur one’s sight, so that one does not spot all those unnecessary but irresistibly cheap items in the strangely compelling Marketplace.

But IKEA wine would surely be of the greatest benefit to its customers if it was incorporated into the actual flatpacks. In the spirit of which, consider the following instructions for use:

PK