Twinings has been a connoisseur of tea for over 200 years. As time passes, and palates change, Twinings has expanded their repertoire to follow suit. Now, to satisfy the need of the infusion generation three new teas have joined the family – Early Grey Lavender, Early Grey Jasmine, and Earl Grey Extra Bold.
Recently, I sat down with 10th generation Twining, Stephen Twining, to talk teas – how to brew, foods that pair well, and the hundreds of flavors we may never get stateside.
Can you tell us a bit of history on Twinings?
Okay. So back in 1706 a guy called Thomas Twining wanted to start his own business and actually bought an existing London coffee house. Coffee houses were places men did business because we didn’t have offices. In the city of London, which is basically a square mile, which today is the financial district, there were over 2,000 coffee houses. So to offer something different, to make it different, to attract people in, he offered fine quality tea, which is something he studied in his apprenticeship, and the tea took off. And it was the ladies, the wealthy ladies of London, who supported tea, but a lady would never go into a coffee house. Thomas realized there was a future in tea, so opens the world’s first dry tea and coffee shop, which still exists in London today, and then the tea went boom and the coffee went nowhere, for us.
Happily, he also gave us our philosophy. Having opened the world’s first dry tea and coffee shop, he realized he was not an expert retailer. His skill was in the selection of the tea and the blending of the tea. Because tea, being an agroclimatic crop, affected by the weather, it just is wise if you’re going to pick tea from a tea gum, it’s different from the last time. So therefore, you have to mix different teas together to recreate the taste of English Breakfast or Earl Grey or whatever the tea is that you’re drinking. And that is what we do. It’s the selection and the blending of the tea. And Thomas’s philosophy was to do one thing really well, buy and blend fine quality tea, and that’s what we’ve done ever since.
Let’s fast-forward to now. Can you tell us about the three launches tonight?
As part of his philosophy to do one thing and one thing really well, we definitely have a global philosophy about quality. What we don’t have a global philosophy on is that every country has the same teas. In our portfolio teas we’ve got 600 plus. The UK doesn’t have 600 teas. America doesn’t have 600 teas. No one country. Because you guys have slightly different taste buds to we guys, who have slightly different taste buds to Europeans, et cetera, et cetera. It’s all about acting locally; and for years I’ve been telling people tea is all about choice. You’ve got English Breakfast. You’ve got Earl Greys. You’ve got green teas. Actually, if you’re an Earl Grey drinker, you’ve got no choice. You drink one type of tea. You just love Earl Grey. So what Earl Grey drinkers would tell you guys over here in the United States is, “Can’t we have a choice?” And we went, “Oh, I get you.” Yes, of course you have a choice. We just don’t think about it.
We’ve got to make sure it’s great quality. So we developed a number of things. We checked some of them with consumers over here and some were questioning, and that’s fine. We don’t think we’re brilliant. We don’t think we’re going to get it right every time. It’s a bit of trial and error and testing and so what we’ve come up with are these blends that have … You know you’re drinking Earl Grey, which is what an Earl Grey drinker wants. It’s just got a little twist of the lavender or a hint of the jasmine. And obviously the extra one just gives you a little more of the oil of bergamot, which is the traditional recipe. It gives you just a little bit more of that so you know you’re drinking Earl Grey, but now Earl Grey drinkers have got a choice. It’s fantastic.
You mentioned that not every country has the same flavors. Is there a flavor, I don’t know, somewhere in the Middle East that we don’t have over here? You know what that is unique to that region?
Yeah, green tea and mint over there.
Oh, yum. We should have that.
It’s coming in. What else have they got in the Middle East that you haven’t got over here? Well, over here you’ve got the biggest range of chais from Twining. You have six or seven chais because American people have fallen in love with chai tea. In the UK we have 2 chai teas. In the Middle East I have one chai tea because it’s just not so popular. When the team over here said, “We need to do a pumpkin spice chai,” we went, “Fantastic.” But I don’t think we’re going to sell it in England because the English would go, “Ooh, no.” But that’s great. That’s what the world’s all about.
That’s really cool. Now I want to try every single type of tea. And you’re a master tea blender? So you basically spend all your days …
If only. I tentatively say yes to that question. My taste buds are a reasonable standard. The nine master tea tasters we have, of which we have as many ladies as we do guys … just cause they’re called master tea tasters, it sounds kind of male. Actually, we have just as many ladies … because they do it day in and day out, they keep refining their taste buds. They hone them. Between them, they’re tasting all 4,000 teas a week.
How do all the flavors not run together?
Because you taste one batch of tea, so you’re tasting similar [flavors]. But their taste buds, they can sort it out. So yes, if they all, let’s suppose they win the lottery as a group of people and they all decide that they don’t want to work ever again, which I think is highly unlikely because they love what they do, but if that happened, I can step up and I could buy the tea and taste the tea to a reasonably good standard. But I’m much happier that they’re there.
So then, how are we brewing tea improperly? With the little sachets or with loose leaf tea?
The biggest mistake is the water temperature. So for black tea like Earl Grey, just as the water comes to the boil, you would add it. For green teas, green tea does not like boiling water. They go bitter if you add boiling water so I let my kettle come to the boil, switch it off, leave it for 5 minutes, so it’s going to be about 180 degrees, and then add it. And then it doesn’t go bitter. You get this very delicate, light drink. What you don’t want is bitterness. Who likes bitter? Yeah? In tea, no one. So, that’s one of the most common mistakes.
I think the other common mistake is, as part of the English tea set, you’ve got the teapots and the cups and the saucers and the sugar bowl, and then you’ve got this strange thing called the creamer, which is for milk. There’s no logic in tea and why the milk jug is called the creamer, I have no idea. A lot of Americans put cream in their tea. To me, it’s too heavy. It detracts from the tea. It overpowers the tea. Some of the time I put milk in my tea, and that’s fine. I personally prefer a 1 1/2 percent, a 2 percent – a very low fat milk because that’s what I like. Some people say, “No, I’ll have the regular milk.” That’s fine. If that’s what they like, that’s fine. But cream is too heavy. Half ‘n Half is too heavy. It detracts from the tea. I understand why you do it because an English tea set has a creamer. They meant to call it the milk jug. For whatever reason, it’s called the creamer.
Let’s say you like peppermint tea. Would you let that boil and then turn it off?
For black tea and for things like peppermint, which I would call herbal infusions, you might call herbal teas, just the instant the water gets to boil, you add it.
How long do you let it steep for?
For green tea, we let it cool for five minutes and then, if it’s in a sachet, in a teabag, three minutes.
What I see a lot of is, imagine this is the cup, the bag goes in, the water goes on and then people don’t always (demonstrates a dipping up and down motion). With tea, there are three things in tea. There’s color, which is just color. There is the body, the mouth feel, whether it feels heavy or light or thick. And then there’s flavor. And they are separate components within tea. And people think that color is flavor. So by giving it a jiggle, you wash the color off. So within 30 seconds, your cup of tea looks the right color to drink. And if you left it for the three minutes, it would get to that color and then the flavor would also come out. Cause you just washed the color off. It’s got no flavor. You’ve taken the bag out. Oh, God. Horrible! It’s got no flavor. The flavor is still in the bag. Just let it brew for three minutes.
So, the bigger the leaf, the longer it takes. So if you’re using a loose-leaf tea, then it might take five minutes to give off its flavor because proportionally the surface area is smaller for loose-leaf tea. So it’s like putting a sugar lump in your coffee. You’ve got to stir it for five minutes. Whereas granular sugar is gone. Tea bags, tea made finer to give off the flavor as quickly as they can, but that’s three minutes. So it’s convenience food, not instant food.
How many cups should one tea bag be able to make?
One.
One cup?
One. What people call the strength of the tea, I call the intensity of taste. So imagine that you wanted a soft drink, you wanted non-alcohol, you might have a cordial. So you might have a little bit of lime cordial in the bottom and fill it up with water, it would probably taste of lime. If you only put a drop of lime cordial and fill it up with water, you’re going to get virtually nothing. If you put a whole dollop of lime cordial and put it out in the water, you’re going to, “Oh, my God, that’s strong.” So the amount of water and the amount of tea determines the intensity of taste. And that’s a personal thing. If you like your tea really light, add more water. If you like it really strong, use a smaller cup or a mug and have it really strong. That’s all about your personal taste.
What food pair well with tea?
English Breakfast was obviously designed to go with the sausage, bacon and eggs, et cetera, but also in the afternoon, it goes really well with some dark chocolate cake. Darjeeling, if you’re going savory, I would go duck. If I was going sweet with Darjeeling, I might go meringue. Earl Grey, any of the Earl Greys, are really good with sweet things – so honey sandwiches, crème brulées. Earl Grey refreshes and cleanses your palette as well as having that sort of citric element that picks out the sweetness in our food. So really any kind of sweet. Not with chocolate things. So profiteroles or something like that I wouldn’t do with Earl Grey. But the classic sweet things. All sorts of things I could put in there.