Tea Tasting Workshop at Twinings: A thoroughly swanky affair

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Twinings Tea Masterclass – 216 Strand, London WC2R 1AP

Last month, I went to a tea-tasting masterclass at Twinings with my lovely friend Rebecca, who was given the tickets as a birthday present. It was hosted at Twinings’ London flagship store at 216 Strand, which has been a Twinings tea-selling establishment for approximately a million years. (I just checked, and apparently, it’s been a Twinings tea shop for 307 years since 1717, which is pretty much the same as a million years if you round up to the nearest million.)

I’ve never been to 216 Strand before, and it’s definitely one to tick off the Tea Fancier bucket list. It started life as Tom’s coffee shop. And then Thomas Twining realized that given that coffee shops were men-only establishments, he was missing out on a good chunk of revenue from 50% of the tea-drinking population.

The shop – possibly the first of its kind in the world, sold loose-leaf tea for tea preparation at home, which a lady could just wander in and purchase without having to send in their footman to do it or risk starting a whole pearl-clutching scandal in their social circle.

The original building was – and still is – located mainly in Devereaux Chambers. But with an eye for the marketing potential of having the perfect address, Thomas Twining purchased just enough real estate to tunnel his way to a doorway on The Strand. So when you enter the shop, you encounter a long, thin corridor with enticing tea products on each side, literally the width of a door.

The tea-tasting session took place downstairs in a beautifully appointed Tea Bar, complete with bar stools. I think tea bars should become as commonplace in towns and cities as regular alcohol-themed bars are now. I can picture myself heading to a tea bar of an evening. “Barkeep!” I’d say, “Pour me a tea. Make it a Pu’erh. I’ve had a rough day. Leave the teapot.”

It was hosted by a very knowledgeable lady named Rachel. She really does know her tea stuff, does Rachel. The first half of the session was a history of tea, during which I had to rein in my tea swottiness a little so I didn’t keep shouting out “Shen Nung” and “Catharine de Braganza” every couple of minutes like an insufferable teacher’s pet.

Rachel was very happy to go off script and answer people’s questions throughout, often prefacing it with “I’m not entirely sure but…” or “This isn’t my area of expertise…” and then giving a wonderfully detailed answer, covering the science of taste and the history of botanicals.

There were eight of us in the session, and we were each given six teas to try, one from each tea type:  white, yellow, green, oolong, black and pu’erh. The teas we tried were Chakra Silver Tips from Indonesia, Hua Shan Huang Ya, Long Jing, Tie Guan Yin,  2^nd Flush Darjeeling and Tuo Cha Pu’erh. We were given a handy tasting notes sheet on which to record our impressions of each tea and on which I completely failed to write anything useful at all. They were all jolly nice, though. Although the Pu’erh, I recall, was really quite unnervingly like soil. Possibly in a good way.

Rachel was multitasking like a good ‘un, pouring out cups of tea for each of us, leading tea-based discussions, answering questions, and preparing the next batch of tea in a smooth bit of multitasking choreography that I’m sure I would have made a complete hash of.

I have to confess my hitherto complete ignorance of the range of Twinings tea. Mostly, I just think of Twinings as the purveyors of Earl Grey, Everyday and English Breakfast tea bags available in supermarkets. I’m also aware that they do a range of not-tea herbal nonsenses called things like Detox, which I obviously stay clear of.

I had no idea that Twinings even produced delicate white flower tips and excitingly long-needled oolongs. To be fair, they’re not front and centre on Twining’s website. You do need to do a bit of hunting to find the premium teas, so it’s easy to miss out on all the fanciness like I’ve done for the last 50 years.

One thing I really, really liked about the Twinings tea tasting session is that — unlike the Bird & Blend session I went to last year — they stuck exclusively to actual tea and didn’t muddy the waters by incorporating rooiboses, chamomiles and other such ingredients.

Black tea is always my go-to for day-to-day drinking. So, when I emerged from the basement, credit card at the ready, set to make a ridiculous amount of tea purchases, it was obviously all their fancy schmancy black tea blends that caught my eye. I now have a bunch of exciting new teas to tell you about and will be reviewing them all in due course.

The fancier blends do come with fancier prices, but happily, I didn’t have to fork out for the cost of the ticket. Twinings Tea Masterclass at 216 Strand costs £45 per person.

This covers 2 hours of tea-steeped knowledge, all the tea you can slurp down and a couple of biscuits. Honestly, if I had spent forty-five quid on the experience, I would have considered it money very well spent indeed.

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