THERE’S ENGLISH Breakfast Tea and an Irish version, but there’s not a tea blend based on New Zealander’s preferred black tea taste.
So during a visit to New Zealand just before Christmas, Stephen Twining, 10th generation of the founder of the Twining’s tea company, launched a competition to find just that.
The winner of the competition, which closes this month, will be able to go with a friend to England to visit the Twining’s tea factory in Andover, Hampshire and also visit the original Twining’s tea shop in London’s Strand.
“We are challenging New Zealand people to come up with a blend of tea specific to New Zealand,” said Stephen.
“There are not a lot of markets where we have developed a tea specific to that market. And yet New Zealand is one of the great tea-drinking nations of the world.
“The new blend will then sit alongside English Breakfast Tea and Irish Breakfast Tea. Anyone can enter. We are putting together a judging panel, which is coming together quite nicely.” Among the members of the judging panel will be Bell Tea taster Matt Greenwood and TV personality Paul Henry.
The way the blends will be judged is that there will be a shortlist of ten blends from which the judges will be asked to choose a winner.
Stephen said Twining’s would take two people to London to meet its blending team, who are expert master blenders.
“The expert blenders have to step in. Then we will come back with the first commercial package of it and it will go on sale later in the year. We hope it will capture the imagination of the New Zealand people.
“We are very excited about it. We have done a blend for the Australian people, but it’s not quite ‘the Australian blend’.”
Admitting that not having a New Zealand blend was a glaring omission, Stephen said the blend would be produced in England and packed in New Zealand.
This is one of the only two countries in the world where tea is packed outside England by The Bell Tea and Coffee Company. The other is Japan.
He hoped the blend would be on sale by the end of this year.
