Twinings

There is a bit of sweetness to this tea, however it gets very acidic if left too long. It makes an excellent tea when you are sick and is also very nice iced. I recommend adding a bit of sweetener.

Received about 2 cups worth with a purchase from the lovely TheLastDodo! I do believe it originally must have come from MissB though, due to the bag it was in, and the writing on said bag. It was an alright black, not astringent or bitter. I think most of the “Christmas Cake” flavours have dissipated from the leaf though, unfortunately. I did get a nice hinting of vanilla at the end of the sip, but that is really all. The 2 cups I had of this were pleasant, but I would be interested to see what a newer sample would taste of.

Thanks again TheLastDodo! :)

Not as strong as I’d like it, but definitely the strongest straight black I’ve had from Twinings. I nicked this from the stash at work, and it was a nice pick me up this morning.

This is the third Twinings product I bought in the last week. I nabbed it along with a box of Prince of Wales and a box of Darjeeling while all were on sale. It is my least favorite of the three so far, but that being said, it really is not all that bad.

In the glass, this tea is lovely. It shows a warm, dark orange-tinged amber. The nose is fairly nondescript. I can just pick up faint aromas of dried grass, straw, toast, malt, honey, and perhaps a bit of almond. In the mouth, the tea is on the lighter side of medium in terms of body. A crisp, clean entry reveals fleeting impressions of toast, almond, dried grass, malt, and straw with a hint of honey. Even though there is not a ton going on flavorwise, this tea is clean and smooth in the mouth with little bitterness or astringency. The finish is clean and clipped, imparting a touch of almond, honey, toast, and grass flavors.

With an addition of cream, the tea completely transforms. As expected, it becomes smoother in the mouth. The light maltiness and nuttiness of the tea becomes more pronounced while the honey sweetness and dry, crisp grassy notes take a backseat. I imagine that this would be even better with both cream/milk and honey. I will have to give that a try sometime.

In the end, this tea is okay. Truthfully, I am not the hugest fan of most Ceylon teas, and in general, I find orange pekoe to be kind of a basic tea. What I mean by that is I’ve just never found a pekoe that really sticks out to me. In my opinion, pekoe is good to give a blend body and a little bit of crispness, but in terms of flavor, I find it to be too soft, clean, and sterile to really stand up on its own. This product does virtually nothing to change my opinion of pekoe, but then again, it could serve a purpose as an easy drinking breakfast tea to pair with food. Even though it doesn’t do much for me, I guess I’m just not willing to write it off completely.

I bought this tea on a whim from a local Food City store. I tend to have a sentimental attachment to Twinings products and I like Darjeeling teas, so I figured that this is one I should try.

After trying this tea in a couple of different preparations, I can safely say that I like it. The tea displays delicate aromas of honey, earth, straw, and wood. In the mouth, I detected delicate flavors of wood, straw, honey, and earth underscored by a subtle bitterness. On the finish, earthy notes linger while bitterness and astringency become more pronounced. Additions of milk and/or sugar tame the bitterness and astringency and allow the honey notes to really shine through. Subtle fruitiness and caramel sweetness also emerge.

Honestly, I don’t get the low reviews for this tea. Sure, it’s not the most complex Darjeeling in the world, but its straight-forward, unassuming nature is rather appealing. All in all, I find this to be a very thin, light-bodied tea that is super approachable. I also think one has to be realistic with their expectations when approaching this tea and review it for what it is. Twinings Darjeeling is not going to compete with super premium loose leaf Darjeelings from smaller companies and that’s fine because it’s not meant to. This is a readily available bagged Darjeeling that you can get for around $3 from most retailers. For what it is, it really is far from bad.

It’s the last few minutes before it’s officially spring 2016, so with humor I am finishing up my last two bags of Twinings Winter Spice. This tisane is quite tasty, but so light it’s barely discernible, all by itself. The apple is very nice—that’s the first note when one opens the packet containing the teabag. Once steeped, however, the predominant flavor turns out to be the camomile. I can discern the cinnamon, but not the cardamom or cloves. While it tends toward natural sweetness, I liked it even better enhanced with a bit of honey. This is a little too mild for me all by itself. I used the rest of the box making my own custom decaf blends at night. For those, I had been adding a bag of this here or there. It adds a nice note of light sweetness, so ties together different flavors very nicely. But by itself? Not unless I had a tummy ache and wanted something very mild.

Bathdown (135)!

Normally I go for green tea baths, but this was just so tempting that I had to do it.

One of the best bath experiences I’ve ever had, honestly. The smell was just absolutely divine, but then the light tingly sensation of the mint all over my skin made me feel like I was on fire but in the most peaceful, relaxing way humanly possible. Oh Lord I want to experience that again…

My boyfriend thinks I’m absolutely insane though. He just needs to experience it himself, honestly…

Drank this one again, but as an evening cuppa.

I don’t think I enjoyed it as much the second time, though all of my initial observations from last tasting remained true. I wonder if it was a mood thing or a time of day type thing? Regardless, I think it probably boils down to my atmosphere effecting the experience of drinking the cuppa.

But that said, it wasn’t bad. Just not good in the same way…

Morning cuppa with breakfast!

Sample comes from VariaTea and I have to admit that for a bagged tea, this one looks and sounds really, really good! Caramel mint? Hell yeah I’ll drink that one!

It tastes phenomenal too; I’d say I’m getting a good 50/50 of sweet, creamy caramel and soft mint flavour. It is more of a ‘herby’ mint than a candy mint and that’s both nice because it creates a very ‘natural’ profile for the tea and also a little weird to be tasting the more ‘herby’ aspect of peppermint with such a sweet caramel flavour. If it was a more ‘refined’ mint flavour I don’t know whether that would actually be any better or worse, honestly. And actually it took half the mug to place it but what this is really tasting like to me are those Caramint candies sold by Tavener. Those things are phenomenal! I ate a whole tin in one sitting once; wont be doing it again, but it’s a testament to just how tasty they are.

Wow, so disappointing! It smelled FANTASTIC! You could really smell pumpkin and a great chai blend. I checked my expectation levels before sipping and was still disappointed. I tipped it out (a rare occurance). I agree with another reviewer that this tastes a bit of rooibos? Weird.

</3

MAN.

So work sent me to the beautiful city of York to attend a workshop, but as I have friends who live there, I got an open ticket and rolled it into a weekend. That city smells of chocolate, man. SMELLS OF CHOCOLATE. And I got to try the Yorkshire curd tart for the first time, which is really scrummy and I’m slightly cross that in 300something years of existence it hasn’t made it to bakeries further south.

And to make matters awesomer, my hostess was, it turned out, a tea drinker! Yes! punches the air I found a lovely little tea shop in the city centre and bought her a their earl grey and cherry blend, as I’d seen her enthuse about both. She loved it. I win.

I also bought myself their rhubarb sencha, because I need all the rhubarb tea, and my previous source for rhubarb green stopped producing it. I hope this will be excellent.

Anywho. This tea is one I had just before bed on Saturday night, and it’s actually really refreshing and nice! I’ve been looking for pineapple teas lately, and I also super like grapefruit teas, so this is a genuinely good balance of the two. I might need to pick up a box for the office when my current stash runs lower.

Final stray Twinings bag. I left this one until last because I honestly didn’t expect to enjoy it. Liquorice root is one of my least favourite things in the world, at least when it comes to tea. Interestingly, though, I don’t hate this one. The liquorice is there, but despite being a prominent feature in the name, it’s not actually a major contender in the flavour. It’s just a slight over sweetness and a stickiness at the back of the throat, but it’s not nearly as prominent as I’ve found it to be in some blends where it’s not even a major ingredient. The main flavours here are blackberry and mint, and it’s actually a fairly pleasant brew for a bagged tea. The blackberry has a slight sour sharpness that the liquorice helps take the edge off , and the mint adds a cooling freshness. I’m actually reminded of homemade cordial in the summer – it’s rich and sweet and a little sticky tasting in just the same way.

I probably wouldn’t repurchase this one just because it’s got liquorice in it and I’m not a fan. I really prefer to be able to sweeten my own tea (or not), and I don’t particularly enjoy having that choice taken away. As liquorice blends go it’s not so bad, but it would have been BETTER if it was just blackberry and mint.

Nice mint, but I think I like Tazo Refresh-Mint better. Maybe that one has other mint varieties in it that I like.

Super yum with milk and sugar to make milk tea. On its own it’s also nice and smooth.

Love this herbal tea, perfect sweetness to it. It has a little floral aspect to it as well.

The third of my four stray Twinings bags. I actually feel like I’m having a pretty good time with these today, despite them being of the “fine shred” variety. I’m not the biggest ginger fan, but I do love rhubarb, so I’m guessing that’s why I added this one to an order sometime in the distant past. I gave the bag 3.5 minutes in boiling water, and the scent when I returned to the kitchen was pretty amazing – rhubarb and custard sweets!

To taste, this is initially more rhubarb than ginger, which scores it major points with me. The rhubarb is on the sweet side, and just a little bit tart. The ginger emerges in the mid-sip, but more as a warmth and kick of spicy heat than a flavour in itself. The major letdown for me with this one is the liquorice root. It wasn’t listed in the ingredients, but I know it’s around because I can taste its sweet stickiness at the back of my throat. It’s not as overdone as it’s been in some teas I’ve tried recently, but it’s still there and I HATE it.

If it wasn’t for that, this would have been a pretty high scorer with me. I don’t feel I come across a rhubarb tea that often, so when I do it’s a pleasant novelty. I wouldn’t say this was a particularly fiery blend, so it’s not living up to its name in that respect, but it is rhubarb and ginger and that would have been enough. As it stands, I wouldn’t repurchase this one. The liquorice is a complete no-no as far as I’m concerned.

Second stray Twinings of the day. I can’t actually remember when I picked these up? The fact that I only have one of each must mean I was filling in an order to get free postage or something like that, but I can’t actually recall doing it. In any case, this one was a surprise instant hit with me.

The first thing I feel I should point out is that the liquor is a gloriously bright pink. I gave the bag 3.5 minutes in boiling water, no additions, and it cheered me up just to look at it. The second thing to say is that it’s actually beetroot and blackcurrant, which isn’t really reflected in the name. The final thing is that I would happily go out and buy every box of this I could get my hands on (right now, if I wasn’t at work) because it’s the most delicious fruit/herbal tea I’ve tried in a long, long time.

The initial sip is very blackcurrant-heavy, but it tastes just like the actual fruit. I was expecting a more ribena-style flavour, but it’s nowhere near as sweet or artificial as that. There is a natural sweetness, to a degree, but there’s also a touch of sharp/sour in the mid-sip that I’m really enjoying. So flavour accurate! The beetroot plays second fiddle to some extent, but it’s there in the mid-sip contributing an earthiness and maybe even some of the sweetness that the blackcurrant itself lacks. It’s a great pairing, and the two flavours work fabulously together with no tartness (or hibiscus!) in sight. I’m impressed that it strikes such a good balance – I’m not used to getting that from bagged teas in general, or from Twinings in particular, so this one’s a bit of a revelation.

So much for narrowing down my cupboard. I’ll definitely be drinking this one again, not least because I think it’ll make a fabulous cold brew this summer!

Sipdown (125)

I bought a box of these last May when I was in England but then I never felt the urge to even try it so I ended up giving most of the box away. However, I kept a few teabags just to try and today I decided to make them up as a latte. Then I read it was best without milk so I grabbed one of the bags, threw it into a different cup and made one plain tea and one latte. When brewing, both just smelled artificial and off putting.

For the plain tea, it is hard to get passed the smell but if you try, there is a hint of creamy fudge. Alas, there is more than just a hint of green tea and it mixes with the weird smell to create the idea of butter (thick mouthfeel) that has soured just a bit.

The latte only bumps up the butter element and drowns out any semblance of the fudge. It also highlights the green tea more.

Both got poured out so I guess this was a pour down.

I’m not a big fan of Earl Gray teas. The bergamont is usually way to strong and its not a flavor I particularly like (which is surprising since I adore citrus).

However, in Lady Gray this flavor is very slight and the lemon and orange stand out much more. Light, pleasant, and a bit up beat. Nice for a morning when you have not had enough sleep.