How to become a Master Blender

How much tea does Twining’s Master Blender taste?

Each tea and herb is tasted at least 7 times from bush to cup, to ensure quality and consistency. It means that Twining’s Master Blenders taste more than 500 cups of tea a day!

14 Master Blenders are responsible for the exquisite taste of Twinings tea. With over 260 years of combined experience, they undergo rigours training for 8 to 14 years, focusing on the quality tea and herbs used for Twinings blends.

According to Rishi Deb, Twining’s Master Blender, to earn the title you need to become a master of your senses. Of course, there is much more than that – quality focus, ability to create and years of training.

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What is Master Blender’s focus when tasting the tea?

They look for four key features: appearance, aroma, flavour, and mouth feel. Let’s put it in practice.

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You are already a tea fan, but do you want to master your tasting skills?

Let’s start from basics! You need to learn how to taste and… slurp! So throwing all table manners out of the window - here's what you do:

Scoop up some of the liquor with your spoon and…

1. Take deep breath.

Pucker up like you're about to give someone a kiss, then slurp the liquid up into your mouth from the surface of the spoon. The louder the slurp, the better. You do this to mix oxygen with the liquor as it helps to bring the flavours to life.

2. And breathe out

Now you need to breathe out through your nose (whilst keeping your mouth closed) - this is called retro-olfaction perception. Then swallow the liquor.

3. Pay attention

Tune in to any sensations created on the tongue, for example, sweetness or savory. And remember that bitterness is present in the majority of teas because of varying degrees of tannins.

Now that you started to master the art of slurping you can now inspect the taste. When you're tasting not all aromas and flavours are detectable at the same time. There can be many complex layers of taste for us we will just look for three different notes: head, body and tail. You can go more into detail by checking the taste wheel.

It's funny to talk about mouth feel, but it's important as it indicates strength. Mouth feel is all about the sensations you feel in your mouth when you taste tea. And of course, different teas trigger different sensations. Some are smooth and round, some are drying and bite into the jaw - but all of them help us to decide if the tea feels right.

Often this is the connection between taste and smell - it's what makes us want to taste the tea again.

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Practice makes perfect, so put on your kettle and start your tasting journey!