Obtained through Twinings' free samples program, so I know the tea bag was fresh. Thank you to Twinings for the free sample!

The dry tea bag doesn't smell like much of anything. Upon brewing, it has a slightly stronger aroma, but overall the aroma is weak. I steeped for 3 minutes with boiling water.

Dark in color for a Darjeeling. Aroma is very mild, the main quality I sense is rice, with a very faint hint of the muscatel grape quality characteristic of high-quality Darjeeling. Finish is peppery. Flavor is typical for a Darjeeling, but there's much more astringency than I'd expect...this tea is as tannic as some strong Assams, and I don't like that; the finish is especially harsh, in much the same way as Lipton's basic black tea is. Perhaps this tea would taste better with a 1 minute steeping, but I only had one tea bag so I couldn't experiment.

I rarely add milk to tea but I found this was borderline undrinkable without it, so I added milk, and it tasted much better. Perhaps Twinings just caters to a different sort of tastes than me, but I strongly prefer teas that taste well on their own without milk, and I think they could do better at sourcing a Darjeeling tea in this price range. Once I added milk, I didn't taste much of the tea any more.

Disappointing overall. I was eager to try several teas through Twinings' sample program that are not as widely available, and that I thought they'd be likely to be good at, but I continue to be disappointed. My favorite tea from Twinings is still the Ceylon Orange Pekoe and I would take that to this one any day. I can't see wanting to drink this tea again.

Among tea bags, I strongly prefer the Darjeelings from a number of other companies, including Hampstead Tea, Jacksons of Piccadilly, Harney and Sons, and Ahmad Tea. Ahmad Tea's Darjeeling is even cheaper than Twinings, and far surpasses it in quality.

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