Twinings

Twinings randomly sent me two teabags and a coupon for $1 off. I’ve never interacted with them before, beyond buying tea at a grocery store. So maybe they bought my data somewhere.

The brewed tea smells strongly of peach! The first sip hit me with a strong mix of peach and orange. Oh, there’s some hibiscus flavor too. It’s very tart, not for hibi haters, but I like it. Okay, there’s a hint of orange peel at the end of the sip too. I’ll bet it would be refreshing iced too.

Okay, I put some into a mug and threw it in the freezer for 10 minutes. I like it even better! It’s refreshing, and oddly reminds me of Tang, LOL. Thanks, Twinings!

Twinings was the first Earl Grey tea I ever had; I fell in love with it. Now that I’m older and have to worry about my caffeine consumption throughout the day, I go to Twinings Earl Grey Decaffeinated. As other tasters have already noted, one can let this steep, even forget about it—and it’s still smooth, not bitter. I don’t have a lot to add, save to say I prefer it to the Bigelow Earl Grey Decaf. That one tends to knock one out with over-flavoring. This, the Twinings, is more subtle, and blends better with wanting to rest!

Sipped on this a few days ago while doing a little bit of admin-type work where I needed to be fairly focused. I was correct in my assumption that this would be the kinda tea where it would sort of just fade into the background while I worked. Barely green tea tasting at all, and certainly not matcha. But just a bit citrusy in a soft, mellow way with a more gentle but coating black licorice-y sweetness after the sip from the fennel. For a teabag, it had a fairly fresh feeling that I suppose makes sense with the cleanse positioning. If I was expecting good green tea/matcha I would have been sorely disappointed, but because I think my expectations were relatively low I thought this was just fine.

Made this earlier in the morning today and it was just so fresh and vibrant tasting with a really nice balance of sweet mint notes and crisp, juicy red apple. I don’t know if the mint was actually spearmint or something similar like nana mint or apple mint, but it read a little like spearmint to me and I really enjoyed the soft, cooling feeling it left on the palate after the fruitiness of the apple had passed. Such a good apple flavouring, too!

Decaf & Herbal TTB, tea #3
Not bad, to be honest! Camomile was fine, vanilla wasn’t fake, honey was sweet and surprisingly not fake either. Very mellow and smooth in the throat, relaxing and enjoyable. I wouldn’t drink this one regularly, but it would be nice to have a few, when looking for camomile tea. As I don’t like plain camomile, this seems like a blend that I can drink.

This was too sour and generic. It was okay cold with sweetener, but not something I’d ever want again. It’s definitely what you’d expect from a standard bagged fruity tea.

This tea was very different than what I’d expected based on the sachet overwrap. They really focus in on the chamomile and vanilla, and sort of downplay the spice element a lot but in reality this barely tasted like chamomile and the vanilla was a much softer and less creamy touch than you might expect. Instead notes of cinnamon, cardamom, and the more roasty earthiness from the chicory pop out. It tasted so familiar to me, and I had a hard time pinpointing what it was reminding me of – but I think maybe like a mix of horchata and gingerbread? There was a festive sort of undertone.

TTB. Being an American that is allergic to dairy I am constantly seeing dumb things with dairy in them. When I first came across this bag tucked away amid the many others I immediately dismissed it. “What have they done this time?” Was my first thought. Maybe added butter flavor like they did in that Buffalo sauce. But curiosity got the best of me and I took it back out.

The flavor is strong with mint but the vanilla finds its way around your palate. It’s quite unique actually… Mint overpowers so much generally that it’s all you taste and while this starts out with mint in your face the vanilla slides up quietly and leaves you with a gentle mouth feel in the after taste that is really quite nice.
That all being said I do grow and sell my own mint. And this mint is a bit stale in comparison

This tastes like a lot of the berry or red fruit flavoured teabags from Twinings with a bold, sweet and jammy flavour coupled with the tart punch of hibiscus. It’s not particularly unique in any way, but I still enjoyed it for that straight forward strawberry and hibiscus flavour. It has a slight citrusy undertone from the lemongrass and that almost creates a Strawberry Lemonade vibe – but ultimately it’s too much red fruit to totally nail the lemon. Fine, though. As advertised.

I was not sure what to expect from this teabag, but I liked it a lot. It’s actually much more of an orange tea that turmeric, in my opinion. Very fresh and sweet with a flavour that reminds me a little bit of Tazo’s “Wild Sweet Orange” blend. Not overly tangy, but just a little bit of that element. The star anise is also quite present (again, I’d say more than the turmeric) and that only adds to the overall sweetness of the blend, but I think it creates a nice depth that gives need weight to what would otherwise be a very bright, surface level sweetness from the orange.

There is a bit of a grounding, earthier taste present here and the slightest little bit of spice, but it’s so in the background compared to the other two flavours. It makes me wonder why Twinings decided to focus in on the turmeric with the positioning for this tea. But, regardless, I think it’s actually very nice (if you like anise, anyway).

I made a cup of this for myself and my friend tonight. We both enjoyed it, enough that we both commented on how tasty it was and my friend even said that she was going to buy a box.
A nice combo of lemon and ginger, not flat or boring but rather bright and zesty.
I would happily sip this one again any time!

Very light, slightly grassy green tea flavor.
Surprisingly dark for a white Tea.
Steeped longer than I normally do, still not bitter at all.

Another that I drank with Marika this past weekend! After all of our gongfu sessions we moved to the big ass teapot portion of the evening, and this was first up. It was definitely a nice darjeeling with a lot of delicate, refined feeling malt and honey notes and a sort of autumnal “crunchy leaves” kind of undertone. Medium bodied, but crisper in the finishes. Certainly a type of tea I can see hitting it off really well with a more British style high or afternoon teas with little finger sandwiches and pastries.

However, and I’ve said this time and time again, I think living in Montreal I really am incredibly spoiled by my proximity to Camellia Sinensis. Kevin’s expertise in Darjeeling is just exceptional, and what he sources every year is so fresh and unparalleled compared with other Darjeeling I’ve experienced. So this is fine, but maybe less impactful feeling that just going to the shop and asking for whatever his favourite thing of the season is.

I think y’all know how I feel on Detox messaging with tea, but shoving all of that aside the actual ingredient profile of this blend was interesting to me. I sipped on it during the morning at work today and I actually enjoyed it a lot. It’s very lemon forward in a bright, fresh way. Not too sweet, but not overly sour/tart either. I liked that there’s was this very light, gentle earthiness and herbaceous quality to the backend of the sip from the inclusion of things like the milk thistle that kept this otherwise highly citrusy tea pretty grounded feeling. I felt like it would have been very good with a little honey.

Our hotel in London gave us free cheese and tea every night, and we always chose this one! It was relaxing to wind down with some warm chamomile with oat milk. This doesn’t get good reviews, but I found it to be lovely! Just what you expect from a chamomile.

I saw a Reddit post a few days ago from someone complaining that Twinings had added little mint candies to this tea and, if you’re looking closely at the leaf in the tea bags, I can see where the confusion would maybe be coming from because there are super tiny white balls mixed with the peppermint. This is not candy, though. It’s actually encapsulated flavoring. Basically, a solid version of flavouring that “melts” into your tea as its steeped. Much less common than the liquid flavouring that’s usually added in tea production which then coats all the ingredients.

There are pros/cons to both types. Encapsulated flavouring is much less aromatic, so the dry leaf aroma of a blend could be significantly less impactful if this type is used. That can be a big deal for physical tea shops where customers might be smelling the tea out of tins before purchasing it. However, since this blend comes only in prepackaged boxes that seems like less of a concern. One of the pros to encapsulated flavouring is that it tastes much longer for any sort of flavour loss to happen due to aging. If I had to make a guess, I think that might have been why Twinings made the change? Regardless, to the best of my knowledge there has always been the same flavours in this blend and it’s just the format of them that has been updated.

Anyway, after reading through that thread I decided to pull this out and make myself a mug. It’s just so wickedly smooth and creamy/buttery with such a crisp, cooling peppermint. I love this blend a lot!

This is basically just peppermint tea with vanilla flavouring, so I wasn’t totally sure how significant the impact of the flavouring addition would be. I wanted to try it anyway because I’ve had some other good experiences with buttermint flavoured snacks and tea blends from London (looking at you Bird & Blend’s Buttermint Matcha).

Well, it turns out the flavouring does make a big difference because this was a REALLY stand out cup of peppermint tea. Very, very smooth with a lightly cooling finish. The crispness you sometimes get from a peppermint tea was replaced with a silky flavour that was sort of equal parts butter, sweet cream, and French vanilla. It reminded me loosely of these Scottish Caramint candies I used to buy from a tearoom I used to frequent when I was still living in Regina. Much more peppermint forward in the tea, but similar vibes.

Like, at the end of the day it was just a fancy peppermint tea and there is for sure a ceiling of quality when it comes to something like peppermint. Didn’t make me like it any less in the moment, though!

I was really intrigued by the combination of strawberry and cucumber in this blend, and it turns out that steeped up it’s actually incredibly fresh and juicy tasting! My experience with Twining’s other strawberry teas have been that they’re quite tart and sometimes almost saccharine, but this was just right. Sweet but not cloying, and just a little tiny bit floral leaning. The cucumber doesn’t necessarily distinctly taste like cucumber but it has that sort of cooling, crisp sort of feeling to it. Really rounds out the sip and provides a lot of freshness and balance.

One of the best decaf teas I’ve tried; it’s very true to the Chai flavor without that “off” decaf flavoring. A little cinnamony, cardomomy, nice.