Twinings – Assam
Twinings Assam tea is a perfectly nice, strong, black tea. And, um, that’s about it, really. Some tea reviews are easy to write. A tea might be particularly nice or particularly horrible or contain something unexpected like gooseberries, cumin seeds or Branston pickle. And then sometimes you get a tea which is just, well, tea.
Not that I’m disparaging Twinings Assam, you understand. It’s rather pleasant in a ‘rather pleasant’ sort of way.
Assam tea comes from the tea variety Camellia sinensis var assamica. It was first discovered by Westerners in 1834 in Assam in Northeastern India. (The locals I’m sure were aware of its existence before then.)
It’s funny, the British were going to all kinds of covert and underhanded means at the time to smuggle tea plants out of China in order to set up tea production in India. And tea plants were growing there the whole time.
Mind you, China was so good at keeping tea growing and production under wraps in the early 19th century that Europeans knew very little about the plant from which their beloved tea leaves came. People believed for a long time that green tea and black tea came from two different plants.
So, the progression of tea knowledge for Westerners seems to be
- There are two types of tea plant.
- No, there isn’t. It’s actually one type of tea plant.
- Oh, wait. Actually, there are two types of tea plant. Just not in the way we thought.
After Assam tea was categorised, Chinese tea was renamed Camellia sinensis var sinensis. (The tautological name does make some kind of sense because sinensis means ‘from China’. But I don’t know, it still looks like sloppy plant naming to me.)
Another tea variety Camellia sinensis, var cambodiensis was added in 2014. So, by my reckoning, based on that timescale, we can expect another brand new tea variety by 2184.
I look forward to trying it. I’m sure Twinings will turn it into some perfectly serviceable tea bags.
Today’s featured book is One Hundred Years of Servitude – Political Economy of Tea Plantations in Colonial Assam by Rana P Behal.
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