Twinings – Nutty Chocolate Flavour Assam Tea
There are two very pleasing things about Twinings’ Nutty Chocolate Flavour Assam Tea.
The first is that it’s an absolutely delightful hazelnutty chocolatey black tea blend, which is a pleasure to drink.
The second is that after you realise that you haven’t got much more to say about it other than it’s an absolutely delightful hazelnutty chocolatey black tea blend, which is a pleasure to drink, and start googling interesting hazelnut facts, you find yourself sucked into a series of praline-scented internet rabbit holes.
Did you know, for instance, that Ferrero uses 25% of all the hazelnuts grown in the world in Nutella and their eponymous Rocher? I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know that Nutella and Ferrero Rocher were made by the same company, so that shows what I know about anything.
There’s also evidence that people in the UK have been eating hazelnuts since 6000 BCE, but as tea and chocolate didn’t make it to these shores until the early 17th century, then a nutty chocolate tea wasn’t even a hypothetical possibility for another 7600 years.
The Celts considered the hazelnut to be a source of esoteric wisdom. In Irish folklore, An Bradán Feasa, the Salmon of Knowledge (not to be confused with the Salmon of Doubt), ate nine hazelnuts which fell into the Well of Wisdom from nine hazel trees and gained all the knowledge of everything ever. (He wasn’t the Salmon of Knowledge before he ate the nuts, obviously. He was just a regular salmon.)
Clearly, knowing everything ever isn’t all it’s cracked up to be because he was caught, cooked and eaten by Fionn mac Cumhaill, otherwise known as Finn MacCool. (I was quite amused that one of the Amazing Hazelnut Facts web pages mistakenly called him Phil MacCool. Presumably, they were getting him muddled up with 80s comedian Phil Cool. We don’t hear much about that guy these days.)
Fionn could then access all the wisdom of the world if he stuck his thumb in his mouth and recited an incantation. I’m a bit confused about some of the details to be honest, but fair play to the lad. It must be quite hard to look wise when you’re sucking your thumb.
So, what I’ve discovered is there is a link between hazelnuts and wisdom. And while I’m not saying that Twinings Nutty Chocolate Flavour Assam Tea comes with a cast-iron guarantee of wisdom-imbuing properties, it’s got to be worth a go, hasn’t it? It’s certainly a good reason to have another cup, I reckon.
Today’s book pairing is Dubliners by James Joyce because Ireland.
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