This week, I return to both Classic Earls and Floral Grey blends. I believe this is also the first post in which every tea is international (to me, at least). Two of the blends are from The Cove Tea Company in Canada, and the other two come from Emeyu Tea and Chaplon Tea, which are both Danish. The latter two teas were part of the lovely tea package that came from my Instagram friend @royal_teacups.

This post is also one where I unconsciously started incorporating the knowledge I was getting from my tea sommelier training into my tasting evaluations. The information is starting to really settle in my brain to the part where I can now apply it outside of structured assignments. While I am only on the second course of the program, I can see how consistent engagement with the course material is helping me as I continue with this project.  

Two Classics

This week, I found myself wondering whether I could continue finding interesting things to say about classic blends. I feel like many of the standard Earl Grey teas I’ve tasted lately are good. However, it’s difficult to write about things that are simply good. Even when it comes to excellent blends, I was beginning to think I was reaching to find more to say about tea and bergamot oil.

Fortunately, my in-progress tea sommelier training came to the rescue! Now that I’m learning more about the components of tea and the experience of tea tasting, I’m developing a new vocabulary to augment these reviews. 

Earl Grey, The Cove Tea Company

The Cove Tea Company uses Sri Lankan black tea and Italian bergamot in their Organic Earl Grey. This is an absolutely refreshing blend that is easy to sip on all day. The bergamot shines through, and there is just the right amount of astringency to make the tea brisk without becoming overwhelming. 

I’ve been learning more about astringency in Tea 102, which I’m enrolled in right now as part of my Tea Sommelier training. While we won’t go more in-depth until future courses, even this brief overview has helped me understand this flavor component of the tea-drinking experience. The big revelation for me is that astringency and bitterness are not the same thing. I had always conflated the two. Rather, bitterness is a flavor, while astringency is a mouthfeel sensation. Think of the dryness you might feel in your mouth after eating underripe fruit. (For more detail, including some science, check out “What Does Astringency Mean for Green Tea Drinking?”)  

Ultimately, I do enjoy a bit of astringency in my black tea. That’s even one of the things I enjoy about it. If my black tea isn’t a touch astringent, I’m actually a little disappointed. (Conversely, I would be annoyed by an astringent white tea.) But that dry mouthfeel can get overwhelming, which is why balance is so crucial. Since bergamot is citrus, it is also astringent, meaning that an Earl Grey can become overwhelming.

My belief at this point in the project is that the way to prevent overwhelming astringency is to single-source black tea from a consistent region, and blend accordingly. Since tea and bergamot are both crops, there are a number of variables that impact astringency from harvest to harvest, so not everything is in the blender’s control. But single-sourced black tea seems to be a defining feature. Earl Grey from The Cove Tea Company exemplifies that. 

Tiny Kingdom, Emeyu

Emeyu Tea doesn’t specify what kind of black tea they use in their Tiny Kingdom blend, but Italian bergamot is listed as the next ingredient. On the very first sip, the bergamot came on quite strong and the tea seemed a little weak, but as my cup cooled, things evened out. By the end of my tasting, everything felt well-balanced.

One of the things I’m noticing as I continue with this project is that there are a number of blends out there that are nice, but don’t wow me. I don’t regret tasting them, and certainly wouldn’t object if someone served me them, but I also wouldn’t buy them if left to my own devices. For me, Tiny Kingdom is one of those. On the whole, I enjoyed my sample of it, but ultimately, I felt that while it was perfectly nice, it didn’t rock my world. 

I’ve stated this before, but I’ll say again that every palate is different, so these tasting reviews are ultimately subjective. You might try Tiny Kingdom and think it’s exceptional rather than good. I do think this is a blend worth trying if you can easily get a hold of it. It’s a truly straightforward Earl Grey, and if you enjoy a tea that is no muss, no fuss, this might be just right for you.

Two Florals

This week, I tasted two different floral blends. One is the familiar Earl Grey with a lavender addition. Given what I’ve learned about astringency this week (which I detail even further below), it’s a little amazing to me that lavender is such a common addition, as I’ve learned one reason why this flower, while beautiful, can also throw off the entire tasting profile of a specific tea.

I also tried a blend that incorporates rose and jasmine. While I didn’t delve into astringency levels for these additions, one thing I did start thinking about is how each addition has the potential to introduce a new level of complexity to a tea. Of course, more is not always better. Any sort of addition beyond bergamot means the tea blender has an additional type of challenge: how to incorporate the new flavor in a way that truly enhances the tea tasting experience, rather than distrancing from it. 

Provence, The Cove Tea Company

The Provence blend from The Cove Tea Company contains black tea, bergamot, and French lavender. I was impressed with the balance of lavender to bergamot. While the lavender outshines the bergamot just slightly, it doesn’t overwhelm it completely. I get a well-rounded cup of black tea, lavender, and bergamot flavors.

One of the things I learned in my reading about astringency this week is that lavender is even more astringent than black tea! That makes a lavender Earl Grey extra challenging for blenders. As mentioned above, black tea and bergamot are already astringent. When you add lavender, that’s yet another astringent layer, and it’s more potent than the tea base! No wonder it’s easy for the bergamot and/or the tea flavor to become overwhelmed in a Floral Grey.  

As you might have surmised, I’m fascinated by everything I’ve learned about astringency over the past few weeks. I’m loving applying what I’m studying to this tea tasting project. My major takeaway with this blend is that the folks at The Cove Tea Company once again have a good sense of the different levels and types of astringency in each component of this tea. This is an excellent blend that I would add to my regular tea rotation.

Earl Grey, Chaplon Tea

Because the ingredient list includes jasmine oil and rose petals in addition to bergamot oil, I decided to classify the Earl Grey from Chaplon Tea as a Floral Grey. In this blend, Chaplon blenders have used black tea from the Uva province of Sri Lanka. 

All in all, this was a lovely tea to enjoy on a spring day. (St. Louis has since been plunged back into winter weather.) The black tea has a nice, bright quality to it. There’s some astringency, but it’s not overwhelming. I found it quite refreshing. 

My one minor disappointment in this tea was that the jasmine got overshadowed by the bergamot and rose. I love the taste of jasmine, and when I saw the ingredient list on the tea bag wrapper, I got really excited. I certainly have no complaints about bergamot in general (it would not have been smart for me to take on this challenge if I did). As I’ve noted in previous posts, it can be easy for bergamot to get obscured by other flavor additions. Here was the first time I felt that the bergamot was the one doing the obscuring! 

This was still a perfectly enjoyable tea. Honestly, if I hadn’t read the ingredient list on the wrapper, I wouldn’t have noticed the jasmine didn’t come through. This was an enjoyable tea that I could imagine drinking all day long. I also wonder how it would fare as a cold-brewed iced tea; it’s possible the jasmine might come through better.

By the Numbers

As of this writing, I’ve tasted 29 Earl Grey blends. I only needed to be at 27 for March (I mistakenly said 28 in my Part 5 post), so I’m a little bit ahead. I’m going to spend much of the remainder of the month tasting non-blended teas in order to pass my cupping exam for Tea 102 as part of my Tea Sommelier training. I feel like the cupping exam for this course is going to be much more challenging than the Tea 101 exam was, and I want to give myself ample opportunity to prepare. 

With four more teas tasted since my last post, the proportions haven’t changed that much, but Floral Greys and Special Blends have taken a slightly larger share of the proverbial pie. One of the things that’s interesting for me to note is that outside of the Classic blend, teamakers tend to lean toward florals, followed by additions that don’t fit neatly into a single category. I thought I’d have ended up with more Creme Earls in my tasting list at this point (since that’s an established category), as well as more Tisanes, since not everyone wants caffeine. However, since I’m not even at the halfway point yet, there is still plenty of time for things to change.

While I haven’t entirely settled on the topic for the next post, I have a feeling it will be a mix of classics and special variations. While I’d initially planned on four of a single category per post, there are far more classics in my queue than there are other varieties. With that in mind, reviewing two categories per post seems like the best way to maintain a variety throughout the course of the project.

Support the Project

Read previous installments here:

The Earl Grey Year Part 1: Four Classics

The Earl Grey Year Part 2: Four Florals

The Earl Grey Year Part 3: Four More Classics

The Earl Grey Year Part 4: Greens and Tisanes

The Earl Grey Year Part 5: Cremes and Special Variations

Enjoying this series? You can support my tea wishlist here, or contact me if you have samples you want to share! 

For more tea content, check out my tea pairings playlist on YouTube.

Project References

Note: This is an ongoing list of all the reading I have done so far for this project. The bibliographic entries here are not necessarily cited in this specific post.

Avila-Sosa, Raúl et. al.  “Bergamot (Citrus bergamia) Oils.” Essential Oils in Food Preservation, Flavor and Safety. Ed. Preedy, V.R. (2015). Elsevier Science & Technology. pp. 247-252. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-416641-7.00027-4

Di Giacomi, Angelo and Giovanni Dugo. “Origin, History, and Diffusion.” Citrus bergamia: Bergamot and Its Derivatives. Ed. Dugo, Giovanni and Ivana Bonaccorsi. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2013. pp. 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1201/b15375

Dugo, Giovanni and Ivana Bonaccorsi. “Composition of Leaf Oils.” Citrus bergamia: Bergamot and Its Derivatives. Ed. Dugo, Giovanni and Ivana Bonaccorsi. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2013. pp. 227-236. https://doi.org/10.1201/b15375

Heale, Christopher. (n.d.) “A Guide to the Tea Grading System.” Herbs & Kettles. https://www.herbsandkettles.com/blogs/blog/a-guide-to-the-tea-grading-system 

Nishida, Kei.  “What Does Astringency Mean for Tea Drinking?” (n.d.) Japanese GreenTea Co. https://www.japanesegreentea.in/blogs/japanese-green-tea-lovers-in-india/what-does-astringency-mean-for-tea-drinking 

Twinings. (n.d.) “What is Bergamot?” https://twinings.co.uk/blogs/news/what-is-bergamot