Twinings Tea Museum and Shop

Something very British is TEA! And who knows tea better than Twinings? No one.
Sorry Tetley Tea people...

Twinings Museum and Tea Shop:

216 Strand
London WC2R 1AP
#020 7353 3511
Underground: Temple

Open Mon-Sat 9-6pm

Per their website http://www.twinings.co.uk/about-us/

For us, tea is more than just a drink. It’s a way to calm down, to wake up, to spark an idea, to share a story...
Our own story started in 1706. That’s when Thomas Twining first set up shop on London’s Strand. In the age of coffee shops, he was the man who loved tea and worked hard to bring it to the people.
More than 300 years later, the passion’s still there – and so are we. We still sell tea from Thomas’s shop, and we still work hard to bring new blends to tea lovers. Now we have over 100 varieties, and our teas are drunk all over the world.
True to Thomas Twining’s exacting standards, we only blend the finest tea from the finest tea gardens. Our expert blenders – and we’ve got more of them than any other company – taste more than 3,000 cups of tea every week. So you can be sure the next cup you taste will be every bit as good as the one yesterday or the day before.

Our story

Back in the seventeenth century, the most popular drinks in England were coffee, gin and ale – even at breakfast. Tea had been drunk in China for thousands of years, but it had only just been imported to England, and lots of people were suspicious of it.

One man who was certain that it would be big (and who was sick of drinking ale in the morning), was Thomas Twining. He started selling tea from his coffee house on London’s Strand, promising only to sell the finest qualities and varieties.

His pledge soon won him (and his tea) lots of fans – including Jane Austen and Charles II. By the 1750s, tea was the most popular drink among the working classes. Despite anger from pub owners and increased tea taxes, Thomas kept selling tea – now from The Golden Lyon, the very first tea shop in London.

Three hundred years later, Thomas’s commitment to perfection is still there in everything we do. It was there when we first created our famous English Breakfast blend, during the war when we supplied tea to the Red Cross for food parcels, and throughout the twentieth century when our tea varieties passed the 100 mark.

Ten generations of the Twining family have been there to watch it all happen; Stephen Twining still works for his family’s company, just to make sure Thomas’s promise is never broken.

Other important Twinings moments:

• 1787: Twinings chooses its logo. It’s still used today, making it the oldest commercial logo that has been in continuous use since it was made
• 1837: Queen Victoria makes Twinings an official Royal Warrant holder
• 1910: Twinings opens its first shop in France
• 1933: Twinings first blends its famous English Breakfast
• 1956: Twinings makes tea bags for the first time
• 1972: Twinings becomes the first company to win the Queen’s Award for Export

Cheers,
WMMc