The Interview: Stephen Twining

I was born into this industry. One of my family’s traditions is that the next generation has to volunteer to be part of the Twinings business; you have to have a genuine passion and love for wonderful tea. I don’t know a Twining who doesn’t like tea, but not all of us have a deep passion for it. In my case, it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

I wanted to do something a little bit different before I joined the family business, in order to see a bit more of the world and how it worked, so worked in the financial services industry for a while, then was lucky enough to get the opportunity to work for a firm of tea brokers in London and attended tea auctions – this was fascinating and stood me in good stead. I joined Twinings as a business in 1985. I’ve worked in most professional functions during my time at Twinings – in sales, marketing both in the UK and internationally, and with the tea tasters. I’m certainly not a qualified tea taster, but working in this department gave me a strong appreciation of the skills they have and the work they do. I’ve also worked in the manufacturing side of things and can work a tea bag machine, so I’d say I do have an all-round understanding of how the business works which is invaluable.

It’s my role to open people’s eyes to the immensely complex world full of tea’s fabulous flavours. On my business card I’m described as the director of corporate relations, which really means I’m the glorified global ambassador to the company. Certainly, when I joined back in 1985, most people weren’t as discerning as they are now – tea was simply an accompaniment to a cake or a ham sandwich, whereas now people ask specifically for a Ceylon or an English Breakfast blend. Tea drinkers generally are much more aware of the choices to them and what they like, which is great.

One of the biggest trends at the moment is personalisation, and tea is ideal for that – you can stick a bag of Earl Grey and English Breakfast in the same teapot and change both those tastes to create a blend which you enjoy drinking. Taste is a very personal thing, so I certainly wouldn’t expect everybody to follow my tea drinking day. I need a stronger cup in the morning so an Assam or an English Breakfast to get the blood turning, then when I reach the office I have a Ceylon which is a bright, lighter tea. I then move into more delicate teas, so by 11am I’m almost certainly drinking Darjeeling, and come lunchtime Earl Grey or Lady Grey is the perfect after-lunch cuppa. In the afternoon it’s a free for all, and my decision tends to be dependent on the weather. On sunny days I tend to go for light teas like Lapsang Soushong, then after dinner a green or peppermint tea. That adds up to between 10 and 15 cups of tea per day. The beauty of tea is that it doesn’t have just one taste – there’s a cornucopia of flavours out there. A cup of tea has one job – to please the drinker – and it can be personalised to the drinker’s taste.

People who inspire me are those who have specialist knowledge and craftsmen, for example our master blenders. It takes a lifetime of commitment to become a master blender, at least twenty years of tea-tasting experience. To put this into context, it takes a whole five years to become a useful tea buyer from being an assistant buyer. Tea is immensely complex, and the best way to explain it is by using wine as an analogy – consider the fact that if you go back to the same vineyard year after year to buy your favourite wine, it’s going to be different every time as there’ll be a fluctuation in taste due to the weather. Tea is harvested in seasons and in some areas of the world all year round, but every time you go back to the same bushes the flavour of the tea will have altered. The job of our master blenders is to blend them together to recreate the taste you had last time; wine drinkers accept a difference in taste, while tea drinkers don’t. It’s a huge skill to create a consistent tea product.

The opportunity to make a difference and to make things better is what gets me out of bed in the morning. Twinings was set up with a great philosophy by Thomas Twining 309 years ago, and that was to do one thing and one thing well – which is buying and blending fine quality teas. We don’t want to deviate from that, and we haven’t, but it is then the challenge of keeping up with trends. At the moment we have 400 blends of tea, and if we need to go to 600 that’s absolutely fine, so long as we’re delivering the cups of tea that our customers want. I want to invite more people to drink tea, and we’re doing this by challenging ourselves to do things better and, if possible, quicker than we have done thus far.