Our Master Blenders: guardians of quality
What is a typical day for you?
On a normal day the Master Blending team taste more than 400 cups of tea, each brewed under precise conditions. As each batch is prepared for tasting, I evaluate it using a set of 95 descriptors to categorise the leaves based on colour, viscosity, strength and flavour. Each of the more than 8.5bn+ teabags we produce annually has to be consistent with the flavour consumers expect, so we are constantly comparing and adjusting to ensure quality is maintained. It’s meticulous, but incredibly rewarding work.
How do you keep tea tasting consistent when it’s a natural product that changes with the weather?
That’s really the essence of my role – managing change. Tea is an agricultural crop, so everything from rainfall and soil to altitude and region can alter its taste. Our job as Master Blenders is to take varying batches and blend them into something familiar and dependable. So, even if there’s been a long winter in China or a wet summer in India, your favourite cup will taste familiar, just the way you remember it.
Is there such a thing as the perfect cup of tea?
The perfect cup is always brewed just the way you like it but there are some top tips we recommend. Always use freshly boiled water because oxygen levels matter for flavour and the more the water is boiled, the less oxygen there is in it, which alters the flavour profile. And follow the brewing instructions on the pack. We spend a lot of time fine-tuning those details for every blend. If you enjoy milk in your tea, adding it after it has brewed helps maintain the integrity of the flavours. For green tea, ideally use water that’s 85 degrees, as boiling water can increase the bitterness in the tea.
What does it take to train as a Master Blender?
From first enrolling in our Blending Academy, it’s a journey of between 9-12 years. You need to learn to tell the difference not just between countries of origin like Kenya and Sri Lanka but also between regions like Darjeeling and Assam, potentially getting even more specific down to the characteristics of an individual garden. You travel to tea-growing regions, learning from agronomists and producers to understand how climate and processing affect the leaf.
Our track record of innovation
Twinings has a long and celebrated history of innovation.
In 1706, our founder, Thomas Twining, set a new trend among London’s coffee houses by selling tea, first as hot drinks and then as dry leaves to take home, at his coffee house on Strand, London.
It was not acceptable at the time for women to enter coffee houses, so in 1717 he opened a shop next door which enabled his wealthy female customers to purchase this fashionable drink. It was probably the world's first dry tea and coffee shop, it is still going strong today.
In 1972, Sam Twining, the ninth generation Twining, launched our first herbal infusion blends and in 1994, we first blended our exclusive Lady Grey® tea, a more intense citrus blend than our original Earl Grey tea, which was developed by Richard Twining in 1831.
In 2019, we designed and developed a new product development hub, surrounding our team with the tools to create the next generation of products to delight our consumers around the world.
One of our recent innovations was Twinings Sparkling Tea, a ready-to-drink product. Launched in the UK in 2024, it was our response to consumer demand for a cold drink that is good for you and tastes delicious, reflecting growing interest in health and wellbeing.