I grew up drinking gallons of tea a day. My mom is from New Zealand so I didn't have a chance. Once I got out of the house, my tea consumption dropped dramatically. But when I visited home, I'd say "yeah" every time my mom asked if I wanted tea. This got me to thinking why I didn't drink more tea on my own. The answer: shameful laziness. I was too damned slothful to boil water.
Separately, my wife acquired a tolerance to black tea while working in Switzerland. In the hostel where she stayed, it was tea or nothing. In the years since, she saw no need to make tea, except for friends on cold winter evenings.
Somehow, from these modest beginnings, we find ourselves tea addicts. We each drink several cups a day. My wife takes hers black, which I consider icky and unnatural. To my mind, black tea was always intended to be enhanced with a little milk and sugar. I'm careful to not add too much to avoid ending up with "nun's piss", as an Australian family friend calls it.
For preparation, nothing beats the convenience of a tea bag. I can feel all the tea purists shudder. The Irish and English folks at work have a panoply of paraphernalia to make loose-leaf-tea brewing a streamlined, high-tech affair. I can't bring myself to make that commitment. My one concession to loose-leaf tea is a fine-mesh tea ball.
Oh, and when I say "tea", I mean tea that has as its base fermented black leaves of either Camellia Sinensis or Camellia Assamica. That means that the various green teas and bark/herb/twig/lawn-clipping teas need not apply.
Here are my thoughts on the following varieties of Twinings bagged teas. My wife and I recently discovered Republic of Tea, which sells it's own selection of innovative and potent brews. Maybe I'll get to those sometime later.
This is a wonderful fruity tea. Black currants have a dark, musky berry flavor that compliments the traditional black tea flavors. I usually drink this tea as dessert or when I need a change from regular black tea.
Clean and crisp, this tea isn't overly complex. It has lots of strong tea taste without a lot of other flavors getting in the way. It has a distinctive reddish yellow, almost golden, cast.
I wasn't too impressed with this brew. It's supposed to have "muscatel" notes, but it was just thin and harsh no matter how I prepared it. Believe me, when you have 25 tea bags to go through, you try everything.
This is the classic fruity tea. The bergamot that flavors it lends a rich, earthy taste that reminds me of dried orange peel. Bergamot is, in fact, a citrus fruit and, contrary to cretins who assume that anything remotely exotic or sophisticated must be French, it is pronounced like it is spelled, not "bergamoh". Damned French.
A robust brew that will punish you with bitterness and acidity if you let it brew too long.
This here is the Wild West of teas. It will grab you by the nostrils and wrastle you to the ground if you're not prepared. What's the deal? This is a smoked tea, cured over pine chips. Imagine the smell of a fire pit the morning after a campfire and you'll have a pretty good handle on this tea. I ordered this tea sight unseen and scent unsmelled as sort of a personal challenge to myself. When I first made it, I added my usual milk and sugar and almost couldn't take it. After some experimenting, I finally pared the recipe down to a short brew and milk only. Now this is one of my favorite teas. Like Scotch drinkers who revel in the peaty seaside experience of Islay malts, I've grown to enjoy , I've grown to enjoy an odd combination of bracing outdoors and comfortable homeyness when I drink this tea.
One of the most mellow of the strong varieties, this tea always reminds me of Earl Grey. With milk and sugar, it verges on fruitiness with hardly any astringency, even when over-brewed. The first time I had this tea was at high tea in the rose garden of the Huntington Library. I enjoyed it so much I had to ask the serving staff what it was.
Pakeha