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My Name is Jeremy Sturgess. I am the senior tea and herb buyer. I have worked for Twinings
for 23 years. I joined the company as a graduate trainee in 1990. I have worked my whole career,
therefore, with Twinings. I have brought Twinings tea from all around the world, with particular
fond memories for India, both North India and South. But Darjeeling and Assam in the
North and high grown tea in South India. I am currently involved in buying herbs and
fruits. The herbs and fruits that Twinings buy can be from any origin in the world. It
is unlikely, or unusual that they also come from similar origins as the tea. Teas tend
to be specific areas of the world, defined tracks of land that are producing certain
types of tea. Whereas the interesting thing for me buying herbs and fruits is that it
spins you into different parts of the world. Last year I visited Sudan in East Africa looking
at a project we are running there. I visited South America in Paraguay to look at a lot
of citrus peels, lemongrass and some pilot growth of some hibiscus etc. You tend to get
thrown out into different areas of the world which makes my life quite interesting. Camomile
is one of the biggest selling products that Twinings sell worldwide. We have sourced this
material, looking at the quality and the purity of it. You see a lot of stalk in other products,
and we are trying to get closer and closer to the pollen head in order that we deliver
as much of that sweet flavour as possible. It has taken quite a bit of time to get to
the standard and the quality that we are looking for, in order that you get that light, golden,
floral honeyed flavour through, and that amazing clarity which only comes from the pure pollen
head. That is what we have captured for this product. Camomile tea has a nice, natural,
pure, sweetness. It looks fantastic in glass. It has a golden clarity to it. It looks very
attractive, has a wonderful sweet, floral, almost honeyed aroma. It is drawing you in
before you have even tasted it. It looks great, it smells great.
They are the type of products that we are really interested in, and really engage our
consumers. We have looked all round the world at various areas that camomile is grown in,
of which there are several. But we have ended up buying this product from Eastern Europe,
in Croatia, where the climate is nice and warm so in the spring time there is good intensity
of sunshine, which really brings out the floral heads of the camomile plant. And really concentrates
those flavours into something intensely sweet that we are really looking for, that really
benefits this product. The camomile from these fields is produced in a particular time of
year, it is early summer, end of May, early June. The sunshine is nice and intense, we
get good ripening, and the camomile flowers are reaching for the sky and then they cut
those and they get them straight into a dryer, which is right nearby the fields, in order
to encapsulate all of that sunshine and flavour into those camomile heads. It is about the
climate, and the agro-climatic conditions. It is what the French would, perhaps, call
terroir. All those nuances of geography, and weather all combine to concentrate the flavours.
Fertile soil, intense Mediterranean sunshine to bring the brightness and to bring the flowers
to the fore at the perfect time of year, in order that they are cut at the optimum time
so that the quality that we deliver is absolute to the maximum. The flavour from the camomile
that we have bought is coming purely from the pollen head. The further down the plant
you go, the more fibre, the more salt, the more petals you get coming into the product.
That doesn't necessarily give flavour. It tends to give some bitterness and some astringency,
which is not what you are looking for. You are looking for a nice rounded, smooth, sweet,
honeyed quality. Which you are only going to get from the pure camomile head, which
is what we have got in this product. The perfect way of brewing it, is freshly
drawn water, probably best to brew this in a cup that is clear, a glass cup, a couple
of spoonful's of the camomile flakes, and brewing for two or three minutes. You are
looking for a nice, rich, golden colour, and also you are looking for an amazing floral,
honeyed aroma. If you brew it too long it can become a little bit astringent, probably
too dark. It is just for two or three minutes with a couple of spoons, will give you the
perfect camomile brew. I think this range of blends typifies what Twinings as a business
is about, and what we as tea tasters and tea buyers are absolutely best at. It is the combination
of origins, of different terroir, north and southern hemisphere, tea and herbs which when
combined together using the knowledge of the team at Twinings, means that you get all the
subtleties, the nuances, and all the complexity you get from the agro-climatic conditions
that all these material have been produced in. It is the knowledge of the blender, combining
some of these individual ingredients together, which is making and producing some fantastic
flavours all in one product. It is the complexity of the range and the skill of the blender,
as much as it is the material itself, which really typifies what we as a business is all
about.