Tea fans splutter as Churchill’s favourite cuppa replaced with ‘stale cigarettes’ blend

Tea drinkers are up in arms after Twinings discontinued a popular blend, only to replace it with an alternative likened to “stale cigarettes”.

Lapsang souchong, a centuries-old Chinese tea favoured by Winston Churchill, was recently swapped out from the brand’s range for a black-tea blend named Distinctively Smoky.

Twinings told The Sunday Times it had experienced “some challenges with sourcing the [lapsang souchong] blend”, and had made the “difficult decision to delist” it, replacing it with “a new blend which replicates the distinct flavour of the original”.

The company recently reduced the size of packs of many of its bestselling teas by a fifth, bringing them down from 100 to 80 bags.

Twinings said it took this decision in order to drop the recommended retail price of the new packs so shoppers would not have to pay more per bag.

The firm describes its new offering as “reminiscent of lapsang souchong”, but many customers have said otherwise, with one likening it to “sipping a swimming pool after a chemical incident”.

While in a review on the Twinings website, one customer described the new offering as an “insult to customers”.

Others took to Twitter to share their disdain, with one user challenging Twinings over the decision to replace its “lovely Lapsang with this Distinctively Dreadful tea”.

“Initially, the taste is just watery blandness. Then the aftertaste hits, and it’s disgusting,” they added.

Another customer, who has been drinking the blend for 20 years, expressed disappointment that the smoky flavour has “none of the mellow notes of the original, and instead tastes stale and like old cigarettes”.

“Lapsang has a very special place for drinkers such as myself: ex-smokers, hippy students, men and women of the world. If this new product is to replace the original ... then that’s a matter of great heartbreak to myself,” they added.

Others compared it to the taste of ash, glue and the “fake bacon bits” in restaurant salad bars.

A company spokesman said of its recent cuts to the size of its tea boxes: “We recently reduced the number of teabags in some of our black-tea range and therefore we have reduced our manufacturer recommended retail prices so that the cost per bag to the consumer would remain unchanged.

“Ultimately, we can only recommend retail prices and it is at the discretion of retailers to set the shelf price for the products they sell in their stores.”

He added: “We regularly review our pack sizes... we now offer 40, 80 and 120 pack sizes across this range.”