My Score Twinings – Plummy Earl Grey You know when you completely fall in love with a tea blend and you want to elope with it and have its half-human, half-Camelia sinensis babies? Well, that, my friends, is exactly how I feel about Twinings Plummy Earl Grey. It’s perfect. It’s fragrant, flowery, and fruity, yet remains an honest-to-goodness cup of proper tea that you can add a splash of milk to and dunk a biscuit in. It’s one of Twinings’ premium loose-leaf teas, a well-hidden Twinings secret of which I was completely unaware until I went to a Twinings Tea Masterclass and expanded my horiz ..read more

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. 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 ..read more

My Score The Tea Keepers – Quince and Plum This here Quince and Plum green tea is the first non-black tea I’ve had from The Tea Keepers. It’s no coincidence that this has lingered in the tea stash longer than their Earl Grey, Earl Grey with Vanilla, Apricot Tea and Belfast Breakfast. I always reach for a black blend before one of its more delicately flavoured unoxidised siblings. I like green tea—I really do—but it doesn’t sustain me as well as black tea. I need all the oomph I can get to get me through all the things I need to do in my life that aren’t reviewing cups of tea. Teas like Tea ..read more

My Score ChaTraMue – Thai Tea Mix If you have a daughter* travelling to Thailand anytime soon, I suggest you ask them to pick up a tin of ChaTraMue’s Thai Tea Mix for the sheer novelty of the experience, if nothing else. (*Other family members, friends, or work colleagues, or even your own actual self, could also work here, I guess.) I’m certainly pleased my daughter bought me some on her Thailand-based excursion. Not that this tea is good, exactly, but it is interesting and an entirely authentic experience of day-to-day store cupboard purchases in Thailand in much the same way that PG Tips ..read more

My Score Bird & Blend – Wedding Cake Happy Valentine’s Day to all those of you who celebrate it. Does it work like that? Can I just send out Valentine wishes to the whole internet, or does it sound like I’m romantically propositioning? Frankly, I don’t think I’ve got the time to get into a relationship with all of you. I am not, as you may have gathered, a big celebrator of the festival of Valentine, the Patron Saint of beekeepers and shoplifters. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for love and romance and all that malarky. I just think that romantic gestures are a lot more romantic if they ha ..read more

My Score Nok Yoong – Oolong Tea 303 and Oolong Tea 111 It’s the second day of Lunar New Year, known as Kai Nian. It’s a day to honour the God of Fortune. I’m celebrating with two oolongs my daughter brought back from Thailand, Nok Yoong Oolong Tea 303 and Oolong Tea 111. I’m not sure what the numbers refer to. They’re probably not sequential as it seems unlikely that they’ve got hundreds of oolong teas in their catalogue. Nok Yoong is a Thai company but Oolongs 303 and 111 are grown in the Fujian and Anxi regions of China. 303 is a lighter Oolong which uses full leaves that expand impressi ..read more

My Score Sopa Estate – Coffee Flower Tea Happy Lunar New Year! It’s the first day of the Year of the Dragon, so expect a slew of Far Eastern teas over the next fifteen days of New Year celebrations. My daughter went to stay in Chiang Mai in Thailand over Christmas and New Year. She brought me back a whole bunch of teas as a Christmas present because Thailand is a tea-growing nation. and she knows I’m rather fond of tea. I shall be reviewing them all in due course, but I’m starting with Sopa Estate coffee flower tea as it’s the weirdest. It’s not – even though it has tea in the name – actua ..read more

My Score Whittard – Lemon and Ginger Earlier this month, I promised you more reviews of me drinking herbal ‘teas’ while feeling poorly and complaining about them. Well, you’re all in luck because I am about to make good on that promise. I got Covid. Again! I didn’t enjoy it much the first time, so I don’t know why my body thought it’d be a good idea to catch it again. I decided to try some Whittard Lemon and Ginger in the hopes that it might help me feel vaguely human (and help me get on with some actual paid work which was well past its deadline). I thought lemon and ginger would be the w ..read more

My Score Twinings – Pure Chamomile I’m frequently very rude about herbal teas here. But I do, nonetheless, respect the restorative properties of plants, which is why I find myself currently sipping on a cup of Twinings Chamomile. I’m headachy and grumpy, and chamomile is generally good for whatever ails you, isn’t it? My Encyclopedia of Herbs and Herbalism tells me it’s anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, antispasmodic and carminative and that it can be used as a tonic and to “treat the common cold”. The only problem is that chamomile tastes disgusting. In fact, it tastes like what I imagine we ..read more

Co-op – English Breakfast Twinings – English Breakfast I wanted to do a review of Co-op English Breakfast (or “Irresistible Bright and Refreshing English Breakfast Fairtrade Tea” to give it its full – and rather lengthy – title), but the problem with reviewing your standard everyday black tea blends is that it’s bally difficult to think of things to say about them. So, I hit on what I thought was a genius idea. Why not conduct a head-to-head tea-off between Co-op English Breakfast and the English Breakfast of another major teamonger and see how it fares against the competition? Twinings Engl ..read more