Amish workers, a Hobbit tea
Posted: Feb 10, 2010
Wow. It’s hard to choose the most remarkable part of this Cleveland Plain Dealer story out of rural Ohio. Is it the fact that there will soon be a tea on the market that pays homage to Bilbo Baggins? Or is it that said tea is being packed by Amish workers who have had little exposure to “The Hobbit,” “The Lord of the Rings” or anything else by J.R.R. Tolkien? Or maybe it’s that the company producing the blends, Mint Brook Meadow Teas, was started by a young Mennonite farmer and has seen sales hit $300,000 a year.
Actually, from a business perspective, the most fun fact about the Hobbit Tea line is that little-known Mint Brook Meadow was able to secure licensing rights for the product from Middle-earth Enterprises, the company (with a name any Tolkien fan would love) that controls the rights for all of the author’s work. “We liked the small size of his operation,” Middle-earth spokesman Sam Benson told the Plain Dealer, “and the organic approach to the cultivation of his tea resonated with us.”
—Dan Leif
