Twinings Say Farewell To Their Traditional Chai.

Aside from my love of tea, one of my many other loves is window shopping for tea. Earlier this week I was looking on the Twinings website searching for a box of Chai, which I've been hankering after, and discovered, with a dose of surprise, that my beloved chai is being discontinued.

I haven't seen this tea on the shelves in a long time. In fact, it seemed to be replaced by the new Spicy Chai which, due to the addition of ginger, is a totally different tea. Therefore, I've ordered myself several boxes, which I will ration, so I can enjoy this beauty for a while longer.

Twinings Chai is a smooth, black tea, flavoured with cinnamon, cloves and other spices. It's best taken with milk and a liberal amount of sugar. It's comforting and warming on cold nights.

I had originally switched to chai after Twinings discontinued their wonderful Mulled Spice Christmas Tea which was out of this world and simply a tea that Twinings have never been able to replicate during the seasonal period. Their Christmas Cake tea was brilliant but never quite found it's way into my heart like Mulled Spice did!

It seems over the past couple of years that Twinings have gone through a revival, and have radically changed their lines of tea. It started back in 2015 when they repackaged their traditional Earl and Lady Grey with some fantastic new designs.

The sheer amount of tea they now sell is, quite frankly, staggering. They have added to their fruit, herbal, green and black lines. In black tea they have the wonderful China Rose tea (review coming soon), in green tea's they have Apple and Elderflower, in herbal tea's they have added a mint selection pack and in fruit tea have come up with oranges and lemons - and that is just the tip of the iceberg. As a tea lover, it's natural to be excited when new and inventive lines come up. And, I will admit, they seem to have upped the quality of their basic black tea's too.

At the same time, though, it's saddening when regular favourites get discontinued. At the expense of old, much loved tea's come the new, exciting tea's. But, I feel, this is a dangerous strategy. What if the new tea's are not hits? Could Twining's loose the foothold they have on the supermarket shelves?

It is also somewhat galling to see something as hideous as Beetroot Burst sitting on the shelves, when something as nice, and popular, as Chai gets relegated to the Twining's archives. I'm just hoping that my much loved Lady Grey doesn't get discontinued. That would be a step too far.

I am all for change. All for ringing in the new. The fact that there are tea blenders out there creating some wonderful new blends is both exciting and intriguing to the tea obsessive. I also appreciate that there isn't room on the shelves of supermarkets, on in fact, in Twinings own shop for everything. But tradition isn't a bad thing either.

And I generally do not understand why Twinings are discontinuing a line that not only sells well (I can't count how many times I've seen the "out of stock" sticker under the Chai space) but is a customer favourite. But then again, that is probably why I'm a only a tea blogger and not the head of a huge, massive tea company!