Twinings

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.

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.

Sipdown (2903)!

Definitely a bit of a more unpleasant, medicinal and herby undertone to this tea from the echinacea inclusion so I wouldn’t call it a favourite from a flavour perspective, but I appreciate that it was an important ingredient for the wellness direction Twinings was targeting. I did enjoy the black currant flavour though, which I thought was a great balance between tart and more jammy.

Because black currant is so much less commercial (and often perceived as medicinal) here in North America, I do feel like this is a blend sooooo much more suited for the UK. I think between the echinacea, elderberry, and currant this would be a tough tea to pass off to the average North American tea drinker…

Sipdown (2904)!

This was more of a “so-so” experience. I think some of the things it gets right are the amount of rosemary – which is just enough to be noticeable but not enough to be too savory – and the sweeter, softer creamed honey note that the profile finishes with. The honey feels really important to me because it softens what is otherwise a pretty generic tart red fruit flavour. I don’t really mind the red fruit notes, but it’s certainly a little safe feeling to me. I also felt like I could taste the cotton paper of the tea bag, and that was a negative element. Kind of averaged out in the end, I suppose.

Sipdown (2905)!

This flavour of this blend was really, really interesting sounding to me (fig/vanilla), so I was very intrigued to try this tea out even though I wanted to keep my expectations in check. I was worried it wouldn’t taste distinctly like fig at all. However, this was quite nice! Very smooth with that sort of sweeter brown flavour of a fig paste with a creamy vanilla finish. To my delight, it is pretty figgy – just less in a “fresh fig” sort of way. I enjoyed it, though! Especially because it felt a little more on the indulgent side despite really not being very sweet at all. Such an interesting flavour direction given that fig really isn’t a super commercial fruit flavour in the tea world at all…

Sipdown (2906)!

Lets be honest – I didn’t have great expectations for this particular blend. However, it managed to not even meet by bare bones hopes for it. Mostly that’s because it really, really tasted like cardboard. Just very flat/stale without much in the way of distinctly grassy, vegetal, or umami notes from either the green tea or matcha dusting.

This was exciting to me because I quite like ginseng as a focus-aid, and in reasonable levels I like the taste of ginseng a lot too. I actually drink a fair bit of mate (especially in the morning) for a similar reason as I find I personally benefit a lot from the more focus-boosting, naturally stimulating properties…

Taste wise I thought it was fine. The tropical notes are pretty nice with the mango being leaned on more heavily than the pineapple. It’s juicy and sweet in a safe, commercial sort of way. I do get a little bit of that woodier undertone ginseng tends to have, but I think it plays pretty well with the fruit. As someone who knows that’s what ginseng tastes like, I find it easy to dismiss and I would like to think it’s also still mild enough to not be an issue for people unfamiliar with the ingredient too. Unfortunately the finish of this was awfully sweet. Definitely has that signature stevia taste, and I struggled a bit to look past it.

The Twinings store was cool to visit because their in person selection is just so, so much greater than anything we’d ever have in North America – even from the online shop. Seeing their large assortment of straight/unflavoured teas wasn’t surprising, but I was a little intrigued that at least a third (if not closer to half) of the store was dedicated just to wellness/supplemented blends…

We picked up a lot because they aren’t readily available in Canada, so expect a whole barrage of reviews for them as I slowly taste my way through. I started with this one for two reasons though – the first is that I find the wellness function so niche and it kind of intrigues me that there would be a blend catering to it. Mostly in the sense that I wouldn’t think people experiencing the negative symptoms of menopause (ex. hot flashes) would think to turn to a company like Twinings for a solution but also because it’s such a narrow pool of people that I would be skeptical what the financial viability of such a specific tea would be…

The second reason is just that I think the flavour combination sounded really delicious. Peach and sage? Yeah, actually sign me the fuck up for that please.

It did taste pretty good, too! For sure a more herbal and savory undertone and not just from the inclusion of sage – but the peach note was so fresh, dewy and floral. Definitely sweeter and more like a white peach with a more supple, tender flesh to it. It balanced out the herby notes of the sage very well, and added a needed bit of natural sweetness. I did leave in my teabag and so the sage got quite strong over time – eventually overtaking the peach a bit. However, if I’d pulled the bag out after a few minutes I think this would have been a really nice, well balanced mug of tea.

This was my favourite of the three. It was also very bright and fresh tasting with an incredibly natural, lively and lightly tart note of raspberries picked straight from the bush with a semi-sweet, citrusy lemon finish. Of all the three, this was the only flavour where I felt I tasted all the named (on the front of can) ingredients – and it was in a very balanced way. Still not a particularly “tea-like” drink but it was very nice nonetheless.

Very middle of the pack for me in terms of the three Twinings flavours. It was very bright, lively and crisp with a lemon flavour that read quite natural and fresh. Like a sparkling lemonade made with real, freshly squeezed lemons. The ginger note was inexplicably absent, which was a bit of a disappointment though. Also, like all three of the drinks, it didn’t really feel like I was drinking a tea based beverage. So, I think that docks some points too – but from all the flavours.

Blank Street was out last tea related stop of the day and, from there, we went out for some well earned supper and then back to our hotel to decompress before our VERY early flight the next morning. We actually stayed at a hotel in Heathrow airport, and I would highly recommend doing that if you have a short (like 24 hours) trip like we did or a very early flight, because the amount of time it saved us in the morning was a GAME CHANGER.

However, before that, I had a nice little hotel room taste test of Twining’s sparkling tea line. We actually bought enough at the store earlier in the day that we got a can of each of the three flavours for free.

This was my least favourite of the three, though honestly none of them were bad. I just found that this one had a bit of a more mineral/chalky sort of undertone and finish and combined with the fresh, effervescent orange notes that made me think of these Vitamin C “fizzy tablets” that my day used to make me and my brother drink as kids. Not bad, but a little Flintstones vitamin-like in taste.

I didn’t taste the elderberry at all, either. Makes sense because it’s such a polarizing flavour that you’d probably want to keep the amount minimal, but I actually like that floral berry note so I wish there’d be a bit more.

This was the last tea I tried while at Twinings! It was cold brewed, which seemed to be a HUGE thing in both London/Germany throughout my trip. Much bigger than it is here in North America. Additionally, the shop had also added lemonade to the sample as well. I found it incredibly sweet, but not unpleasant. The mango was much, much stronger tasting to me than the lychee (which was totally masked) but even that note was a bit tricky to pull out from the lemonade. Though the finished drink was refreshing and nice, I wish I’d have gotten to experience the tea on its own instead of in a mixed drink…

Also, I just want to shout out the girl who was sampling! She had a nose ring, neon blue hair, and was just so antithetical to this sort of more “stuffy and proper” image I had stereotypically put together about what the Twinings staff might be like. She got really excited about the “Satantic Tea Co” shirt I was wearing, and we had a great conversation not just about that tea company but about metal music in general. She was really fun, and made the stop a lot more memorable than it probably would have been otherwise.

Third out of four teas I tried in the Twinings shop, and my least favourite. The orange and cinnamon notes were actually both nice, and I appreciated that it wasn’t an assault of intense, mouth numbing cinnamon either. However, the taste of the rooibos was very unpleasant to me. Really, really woody and mineral with a bit of a cardboard-like finish. It kind of ruined the whole tea for me.

This was the next tea that was being sampled at the Twinings shop. Definitely a more unique flavour than I’m used to seeing from Twinings here in North America, and it seemed to be the most popular of the four being sampled too. I found it very brisk and full bodied with more of a “cocoa” note than a sweeter chocolate I might have expected. The nut element is a roasted almond, and it complimented the darker, malty notes of the assam really well. Just a smidge more astringent than anything else I tried in the shop, as well.

Next up after Jenki Matcha was the Twinings shop! There was a marathon happening on the day we were in London that ran through the street the shop was on, so it was challenging crossing to get into the shop but then, also, when we did get in it was PACKED with bystanders who’d been on the street watching…

We picked up a ton of teas, many of which were tea bag selections we don’t have in North America, so I’m sure I’ll be drinking my way through those for the next little while. However, they also had a sampling station in the back of the shop with four different teas (including this one) so I of course had to try all four!

This was the most “Twinings feeling” of the four to me. A bold, brisk black tea with a familiar note of bergamot and just a kiss of extra, sweet orange to go alongside with it. I found it nice, but not unique enough to want to bring with me. However, I could very easily understand why it’s so popular.

Another teabag from my old misc. collection of samples.

The teabag smells great! I’m coldbrewing 1 teabag, 4 minutes, in 350 mL cold water.

It smells very aromatic, which is nice to see from a very old teabag. The liquid is vibrant red-purple. I’m getting a lot of various berry notes. I can pick out blueberry, strawberry, and general mixed berry flavour. I think there’s another red fruit in there but it is not distinctly raspberry or any other berry I can make out. I get the hibiscus flavour a bit because of the longer brew. I find this tea sour, as most hibiscus teas are. It would make a great addition to a pitcher of lemonade or ice water with sugar in the summer.

This is deeeeeeeelish!!!
I went over to my ex’s Mom’s today for lunch and while I’m there I always pick a tea out of her teabox to enjoy while we visit. This tea bag was a lone wolf so I thought, what the heck!
What a pleasant surprise!
The flavour is so juicy, which puts me in mind of eating fresh mandarins/oranges/clementines/tangerines, with a candy-like sweetness that isn’t phoney or over-the-top.
I found this perfect for just sitting and sipping.
I would happily drink this again, YUM!

Teabg

The bergamot nuances I get in the regular Earl Grey are lost to orange. The two tastes blend well. A somewhat serious disposition peaks from behind the sunny face. Overall, a lighthearted tea.

US teabag version.

Much better than the English Breakfast. It doesn’t hold a flame to the memory of their tinned leaf I had 25 years ago but it’s good enough in a pinch. Rather drying and woody! I get hints of lime-cream swirling within the surprisingly complex bergamot taste.