First off I should give a bit of personal history with this tea which dates back to my freshman year of college and the start of my interest in teas. At the time when I started college I was used to drinking mainly soda but being cheap I soon realized that tea (and sugar) was a lot cheaper than soda to have around the dorm room and I soon found that Twinings was not only the best brand of teabag tea in the grocery store but also frequently went on sale for 3 boxes for $5. At first I focused upon English Breakfast and especially Irish Breakfast tea but when they added it I got a Twinings variety pack which included Prince of Wales. Prince of Wales was my first exposure to Chinese black tea and was what initially lead to my lasting bent on favoring Chinese teas over Ceylon and Indian teas. So when I happened to be at a tea shop that had tins of loose Twinings teas I could not resist picking up a tin of Prince of Wales for old times sake.
My initial taste of the brew in over half a decade was surprise at it being higher quality than I had initially expected. The taste of the Prince of Wales blend is indeed light and smooth as described and it is clear that a good part of the blend is Keemun black tea. Clearly it could be better especially if it was blended using higher quality whole leaves instead of the broken leaf grade, but while it lacks any slight traces of natural semi-sweetness found in some blacks I also would not call it bitter either. The Keemun that it was made from is a good mild variety without any traces of smoke. Finally to complete the experiment of duplicating my early tea experience after finishing half of the contents of the mug of tea I emptied 2 sugar packets into the remaining half cup of tea to make it in the style that I drank my tea during my college days. Wow I never realized how much sugar can destroy the more subtle notes of tea before this experiment not to mention it is no wonder why I gained so much weight during my college years with all that sugar in my tea all the time.
