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Oh dear Twinings, what’s going on? This Dark Chai is really not your best work, is it? We both know that you’re capable of great things. You make the best Earl Grey in the world.
But Dark Chai, quite frankly, is a bit of a mess. It tastes like a cup of standard tea, which has had half a spoonful of ground cinnamon stirred in. You can practically feel the spicy grittiness on your tongue afterwards. I felt like I carried out my own version of the inadvisable cinnamon challenge that proliferated on social media a decade ago.
The more cynical members of my readership might think, “Well yeah, it’s Chai. It is just some black tea and a few spices. What did you expect?” Well I expected better than this. Offblak and Tea India, for example, both produce Chai teas that are rich flavourful and satisfying. And don’t taste like something that’s been hastily flung together out of things I already have in my kitchen.
I’m concerned that people who have never had a decent cup of chai tea before will give this a go and conclude that a tea and spices blend isn’t actually their literal or figurative cup of tea.
In fact, Twinings your whole Dark range has been a bit of a disappointment. I appreciate what you’re trying to do. You’re branching out into tea-and-other-stuff territory. And, as tea with weird shit added to it is my favourite kind of beverage, I was excited to try everything in the range. (Except Dark Earl Grey, because it has Lapsang Souchong in it, which I always find problematic.)
It was like you had a focus group at Twinings headquarters, where you all asked yourself, “What would Em like?” And then, sadly, you cobbled together this collection of unsatisfactory nonsense.
Dark Mint barely scraped two stars. I think, in retrospect, I was absurdly generous in giving Dark Caramel three stars. I wanted to like it but it’s evident after another cup of this stuff that I’m not going to be able to finish the box.
And as for this one, well, let’s just pretend it never happened, shall we? We can just move on from this whole sorry Dark Blends experience and get on with our lives.
But I have to say Twinings, I’m a bit worried about you. Is everything okay at home? PM me if you ever need to chat.
Today’s featured book is the Penguin Classics edition of the Bhagavad Gita.
