I was making myself a nice cup of Twinings Irish Breakfast [1] when I noticed on the side of the packet that they were founded in 1706 and have been at the same address in The Strand [2] ever since. It also said that they had been “making tea for over 290 years”, so obviously the packaging predated 2006. 🙂
They have a (Flash based) history of Twinings and Tea [3] and, for those who can’t stand or read Flash, there is an HTML history [4] on their US site.
Apparently they had the Govenor of Boston [5] as a customer in 1773, though they claim that a writer of the time (unattributed unfortunately) recorded:
“…it was not Twinings tea the Boston rebels tossed into the sea.”
Obviously they too agreed that they do make a rather nice brew. 🙂
At one stage they even had their own bank [6], though they eventually amalgamated with Lloyds bank in 1892.
