“Abysmal product. I love Lapsang - this is pretty much undrinkable. The smell and the initial taste is of chlorine. Is this actually safe to drink??!!”
“I have been drinking Twinings Lapsang Souchong for over 30 years. I scored it as high as one star as there was no zero or negative ratings. Substituting it with this alternative whilst keeping similar packaging is disingenuous. Like many others I bought it off the internet as I couldn’t find it in the shops and only realised what I had bought when I made the first cup. I shall not waste my time buying any Twinings tea brands again. The standard reply to reviews merely adds insult to injury.”
“The aroma when one first opens the packet is not too bad but then the taste when one takes the first sip - oh so utterly disappointing. There is just nothing of any substance there. It very much feels as if the blenders have merely taken some perfectly ordinary and boring black tea, bunged a few drops of smoke essence on it and then claimed to have developed a worthy successor to the utterly sublime Lapsang Souchang. No, no, no. This travesty of a tea just screams fake, fake, fake, at you. If you have any affection at all for the real Lapsang Souchang then avoid this travesty at all costs.”
“This is disgusting - I can barely drink it. So disappointed because I thought I was buying my usual fix of Lapsang. It has an undertone of plastic with overlying notes of Germolene. I can't drink and can't very well take it back since I have opened it - two packs in fact, because I just thought there was something wrong with the first pack. Why has this happened?”
“Terrible! You put this pale imitation of Lapsang Souchong in the same packaging so that we will buy it, but it's nothing like the original. What were you thinking? Can't you produce the real thing anymore? So disappointed, I will never buy this again and regret buying it. It doesn't taste of anything and doesn't even smell that smoky.”
“While Distinctly Smoky isn't great, I don't think it is quite as bad as some people think it is.
The main problem is that it really isn't very similar to Lapsang Souchong at all. I still have some LS teabags in the cupboard so can compare them side by side, and the smell and taste are very different.
Distinctly Smoky should not be marketed as being "basically the same as Lapsang Souchong" because it just isn't. It feels like Twinings are trying to pull a fast one, which has obviously annoyed a fair few people.
I hope that Twinings bring back the original LS, or at least develop a blend that is genuinely similar.”
