At £2.70 a punnet with a multi buy offer at £4.00 for two I went for two and boy did I wish I’d stuck at one.
The variety of strawberries in question were the Eves Delight produced by the Tasker partnership in Nottinghamshire.
I love fresh strawberries. I don’t buy imported strawberries throughout the year because British strawberries are unbeatable. I would say fresh strawberries are my favourite fruit and I am a bit of a connoisseur and have grown and sampled by own strawberries in my greenhouse hot house in the past.
I remember going strawberry picking as a kid, filling up those cardboard baskets with metal handles, the taste sweet and oozing juice, devouring one after the other, my mother turning what was left into jams and tartes and discovering never freeze strawberries, they turn from plump and sweet and succulent into floppy, watery mush, useless unless you are using them to make strawberry daiquiris.
I remember my father pulling the car over to buy fresh strawberries throughout the summer from roadside vendors up and down the A1 in North Yorkshire and eating the unlimited supply on the drive home.
I love strawberries, fresh strawberries, not strawberry ice cream or strawberry milk shake but give me fresh British strawberries and I’ll eat them in large quantities, no cream required.
That is until I bought Waitrose British strawberries. Oh my what a disappointment, tart, even sour, a mix of under ripe and almost moldy. No shine, no succulence.
Does anyone ever return fruit to the supermarket and complain? I didn’t on this occasion, I ate one after the other hoping the next one would be better but come on Waitrose. You are supposed to be the superior quality supermarket. I’ve attached a marketing film I found on You tube about the strawberry selection process. I work for a supermarket. A not so fancy supermarket as Waitrose and our strawberries taste better. There are so many strawberry growers across Yorkshire alone who would love and die for the Waitrose contract with 100 times better product than these.
Whoever did the taste testing on this produce needs reassigning.