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Did you know that Twinings have their own shop in The Strand? I didn’t. I thought they just got stocked in supermarkets and stuff. The shop is on the original premises purchased by Thomas Twining in 1706 and it’s one of the oldest shops in London in its original location. It is now on my list of places I want to visit.
My daughter went there the other day and she bought me this Orange Grove black tea. (She also got me some Caramel Rooibos which I will review soon.) It’s an orange-infused Keemun Chinese black tea and it’s really rather marvellous.
‘Hang on a minute’, you’re thinking. ‘Isn’t that pretty much exactly the same as Twinings own Lady Grey?’ Wait, that’s not you thinking that. It’s me. I thought exactly those words. They are both black teas and orange peel blends, how different can they be?
In order to get to the bottom of the matter, I did a head-to-head comparison of Orange Grove and Lady Grey. (I seem to be doing a lot of those lately. I think I just like having an excuse to make myself two cups of tea at once.)
Looking at the ingredients list, it actually looks like Lady Grey has the upper hand here. Orange Grove contains black tea, 4% orange peel and flavourings. Lady Grey is black tea, 3% orange peel, 3% lemon peel and flavourings. Lady Grey has 50% more peel!
And yet, as much as I love Lady Grey, Orange Grove is actually the nicer tea by far. It has a flowery and fragrant vibe with a lot of proper-tea-ness going on at the base which hits all the right notes. I think the big difference between the two teas are the tea leaves which constitute 90% of each teas makeup.
To be fair, at £6.50 for 15 teabags, Orange Grove is eight times the price of Lady Grey. It’s part of their fancy ‘Discovery Collection’ range. So you’d expect it to use higher quality tea leaves. Maybe there’s higher quality orange peel and flavourings in there too.
The price might be steep but in its defence, Twinings Orange Grove is a damn fine cup of tea. The smoothness of the black tea coupled with the bitter-yet-sweet orange flavours tasted like a much needed holiday.
I hope that Lady Grey isn’t too upset with me showering the newcomer with praise and affection. I reckon she can handle it, though. She’s the fictionalised wife of a dead 18th century Prime Minister who almost certainly had no connection with Earl Grey tea that he’s named after. You don’t survive that sort of backstory without building up a bit of resilience.
Today’s featured book is A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
