DO not misunderstand when I say I have been inhaling from a tin and now feel uplifted. I have not been taking snuff. Rather, I have been smelling the aroma of Lapsang Souchong tea. The tin is from Fortnum’s and the smell is a bit like, oh, the afterwhiff of an expensive cigar, or the aroma of peat-smoked whisky or a smouldering bonfire in the woods. What the smell actually derives from is Chinese red pine over which the tea leaves have dried, slowly, in the Wuyi mountains of Fujian Province.
Once, you could buy this in Twinings, formerly one of the great tea emporiums. I’ll be heading to its outpost on Fleet Street shortly to snap up any remaining stock. Because, in one of those terrible misjudgments that business schools may well be brooding over in decades to come, Twinings has sold the pass and has replaced real and authentic Lapsang Souchong with something called Distinctively Smoky.
It’s distinctive, all right. Those who tried it have competed to express the hate. “Undrinkable,” said one review on the website. “What have you DONE?” asked a customer. “I’ve thrown it away after using two teabags”. One Lapsang fan compared it to the taste of fake bacon bits in pizza joint salad bars. “Like old cigarettes,” said another. If I were the Chinese ambassador, I’d be sarcastically inviting Foreign Office ministers round to try the real thing.
The reason for the product change isn’t far to seek. The original Lapsang cost £12.50 for 100g; Distinctively Smoky costs about a tenner less. It’s from a blend of teas from around the world “including China” and is billed as “reminiscent of Lapsang Souchong”.
If you are lucky enough to have a product which is unique, the lesson is not to bastardise it once it becomes more expensive to source. Instead, as one disgruntled customer observed, “CHARGE MORE and sell the proper product.” Rarity is prized, you know.
The great Lapsang row is, in one way, heartening because it shows that people care about tea in what is still one of the great tea-drinking nations of the world. Young people may be less sold on hot beverages generally, but there’s still a large constituency out there which knows and loves its tea, even if the tea in question is strong breakfast blend.
Meanwhile, until Twinings recants on Lapsang, can I recommend Fortnum’s?
