“Boil the billy, Luv”.  You are in the bush, the birds are singing and your final squashed cheese sandwich makes it out of the backpack.  What’s missing?  A good cuppa!

Twinings have embraced that kiwi spirit and from 13 September New Zealand Breakfast Tea will hit the shelves.  Evocative of billy tea, this world first breakfast tea was blended by a New Zealander specifically for our taste.  It was a lucky competition winner who blended internationally sourced teas to create New Zealand Breakfast tea and it was judged right here in New Zealand.

My interest was piqued when invited to take tea with Mr Twining here in Wellington.  Stephen Twining is a 10^th generation Twining and someone who knows and loves tea.  He is a self-confessed 10 to 15 cup a day man and delighted to be back in New Zealand.  As I sipped the tasty brew I asked if he tried billy tea in our extraordinary native forests, but alas no.  Not yet anyway.  He has visited to New Zealand a number of times and describes us as ‘way up there’ in the tea drinking stakes, hence our importance as a market.  Australians are keeping up with us and we get on to the subject of what age groups enjoy tea.

He says that in England there is a definite peak in tea drinking in the early student years based on students only affording tea, before, as he points out “they drink everything else”.  Of course, we all end up back at the teapot in the late twenties, early thirties and that would ring true of my own experiences.  I remember well in our late twenties being invited over by smug friends for afternoon tea in their first homes, knowing that no-one really puts on afternoon tea in a flat. (Actually, we did own our own home in our late twenties.  It was more of a case of not having decent cups!)

Topics move quickly and I ask where tea comes from in the Twining world.  It seems that traditional markets for tea are all involved – China, India, Sri Lanka, and in his own words “et al”.  The difference is in the purchasing practices.  Buyers are the blenders and Twinings is a blending firm.  The buyers are out tasting to source the preferential crops, they then become the blenders in the tea making process, creating the final product.  It is a sophisticated task.

With my own interest in craft beer through my business Wild About Wellington, we discuss tasting methods, palates and flavour combinations.  I know from holding formal beer tastings with wine experts that tasting is an art which has no bounds.  While I am no tasting expert (I have Neil Miller for that) it is a joy to discuss tastes and flavours with one who really knows.

Taking tea with Mr Twining was a treat;  matching that with a New Zealand inspired tea, tea-riffic!

New Zealand Breakfast Tea is in stores from 13 September.