This installment profiles primarily exceptional blends, with one tea that was just utterly confusing. July has been busy, because I’m also partaking in the tea challenge hosted by thattealover on Instagram. And her prompts are challenging! However, I’m having fun structuring my tea-drinking in a new way. What can I say? I can’t resist a challenge.
Creme Earl Grey
Both of the teas in this section are exceptional and are getting added to my best-of long list. That being said, they are quite different; one is more outright creamy, and one has more of a vanilla/marshmallow feel. I loved both for different reasons. You of course should make your tasting decisions based on personal preferences, but I suggest trying both. They’re worth it.
Creme de la Earl Grey, New Orleans Tea Company
According to the New Orleans Tea Company website, the Creme de la Earl Grey contains Sri Lankan tea from the Nuwara Eliya, Dimbula, and Uva regions, graded Orange Pekoe, produced by Orthodox methods. Of the various tea company websites I’ve visited to get as much detail as possible about the blends, this one is the most detailed. There are even more tasting notes available than I listed here! Before even experiencing the tea, being able to get that much detail impresses me.
The steeped tea has a medium body. When I smell the finished brew, I get cream, tea, and then bergamot in that order. The tasting experience mirrors the scent, with the three flavors emerging as a progression. You start with the savoriness of the cream flavor, then the bitterness of the tea, followed by the brightness of the bergamot. It’s well-balanced and exceptionally crafted.
This blend really tastes as though cream has been added to the tea, even though there’s none here. If you normally prefer to add dairy to your black tea, I recommend you try this one without at first; I think added dairy could overwhelm the delightful flavors of the tea.
Cream Earl Grey, The Tea Girl
The Tea Girl has made another fantastic Earl Grey blend. This one incorporates a combination of Sri Lankan and Assam teas along with natural bergamot and vanilla. The tea leaves are accented by jasmine blossoms and cornflowers, creating a dry cup that looks as good as the steeped liquor tastes.
The tea and cream scents dominate the aroma of the finished cup. Per the instructions, I did a 3-minute steep first, and the tea was just right. The body is rich yet light. The level of cream flavor in this blend is perfect. When I taste the tea, I pick up traces of marshmallow. To be clear, that is a compliment. I love marshmallow flavor, and the interaction of vanilla and cornflower produces that effect.
Don’t worry, the bergamot is still there even with the creaminess. While the jasmine flowers don’t come through in the flavor, I think they might have been added more for visual effect than taste. One of the things I’ve learned in my tea sommelier training is that how and when jasmine is added to tea influences whether the flowers provide more flavor or more aesthetic value. There’s no harm in either; it’s simply a decision one has to make when creating a blend. In this instance, I have no complaints. The vanilla and bergamot were just right, and there didn’t need to be yet another flavor getting in the way.
Classic Earls
This section brings one excellent tea and one absolutely confusing tea. But part of the fun is that I generally have no clue about what I’m going to taste. There have only been maybe four teas in this entire challenge that I’ve had before. So it’s a challenge full of surprises, and some of them are more interesting than others.
Blue of London, Palais de Thés
This was another tea that I received from my Instagram tea friend royal_teacups. Palais de Thés produces a number of Earl Grey variations, and after trying Blue of London, I am eager to try more from this company! I’m glad to know they’re able to make their teas available in the United States.
This tea produces a light amber body with a bright, bergamot-forward scent. Palais de Thés uses Yunnan black tea for this blend, which is one of my favorites. One of the things that stands out about Blue of London is how well-balanced it is. The bergamot and the tea come through in equal measure.
When I drink this tea, I’m reminded how one of the key components of tea blending is intentional. The best blends I’ve tasted feel naturally perfect, and yet I am aware of how much training, testing, trying, and failing went into getting each blend exactly right.
Earl Grey, New English Teas
Someone left two unopened tins of New English Teas in the break room at work, and one of them was the Earl Grey blend, so I grabbed a few bags and added them to the tasting roster. Even if a blend wasn’t on my initial wish list, I’m not going to turn down free tea!
When digging into the blend details on the New English Teas website, I saw that their Earl Grey contains Assam and Nilgiri. However, I realized I was on the British site. When I went to the American site, the Earl Grey was listed as containing only Ceylon (Sri Lankan) tea, with no region mentioned. Sri Lankan tea is certainly high quality, but I thought it was interesting that they used different teas for blends aimed at different countries, and that they were more specific about the teas used in the British version. There are many tea-growing regions in Sri Lanka! Neither the British nor the American versions of the site specified anything about the bergamot the company uses.
The steeped tea has a nice, sturdy body. The scent of tea was stronger than the scent of bergamot, and when I tasted it, I felt that the flower tasted more like lavender. I was truly confused; this really tasted like a lavender blend. I double-checked the website to see if this was a special Earl Grey that included lavender, but I couldn’t see any mention of that anywhere. I’m not sure if something was wrong with the bergamot, if there had been an error in packaging the tea, or if I’d made a brewing mistake.
When I brewed my second teabag, I did a shorter infusion time, but that didn’t help. I was still getting a strange lavender taste instead of bergamot. Nothing was worse, but nothing was better, either. Ultimately, my big takeaway from this blend is confusion.
By the Numbers
As of this writing, I’ve nearly hit my tasting minimum for July, and the month is just half over! The holiday weekend and an extra work-from-home day last week really helped! (I only do my Earl Grey tastings at home.)
I finally got to the point where I had to think about ordering more tea, and (with the help of a random number generator), I ordered four Earl Grey blends from Simpson & Vail. I deliberately added a green tea blend and a tisane to the list, so those numbers will be a little higher next time (though they’re still going to be lower than the rest). I did this not because I want to skew the results, but because I want the opportunity to try a range of blends. With Green Earls and Tisane Earls being in the blend minority, I want to be sure I try them at every opportunity.
I still need to order a few more teas in order to have enough for my August tasting quota. I probably could have filled out the entire August list with Simpson & Vail teas, because they have several Earl Grey blends. However, I limited myself to four, because I don’t want one particular company to be over-represented in my tasting list. If there’s a tea company that you’d like me to check out for a future installment, let me know in the comments!
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
The Earl Grey Year Part 6: Classics and Florals
The Earl Grey Year Part 7: Classics and Special Variations
The Earl Grey Year Part 8: Cremes and Variations Part 2
The Earl Grey Year Part 9 : Four More Florals
The Earl Grey Year Part 10: Halfway Point
The Earl Grey Year Part 11: Kusmi Tea
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.
American Chemical Society. (1965). “Bergamot Joins Lineup Of Synthetic Oils: Glidden process breaks down ß-pinene, back-blends components.” Chemical & Engineering News Archive 43 (33), 24-25. DOI: 10.1021/cen-v043n033.p024a
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
Galper, Amy. (December 14, 2022.) “Shelf Life of Essential Oils.” Cliganic. https://www.cliganic.com/blogs/the-essentials/essential-oils-shelf-life
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
Lo Curto, Rosario. “Uses of Juice and By-Products.” Citrus bergamia: Bergamot and Its Derivatives. Ed. Dugo, Giovanni and Ivana Bonaccorsi. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2013. pp. 531-542. https://doi.org/10.1201/b15375
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
Petite Histoire. (July 7, 2023). “The [Complete & Complex] Guide to Natural vs. Synthetic Fragrance: What’s the Difference?” https://nyc.ph/blogs/inspiration/the-complete-guide-to-natural-vs-synthetic-fragrance
Twinings. (n.d.) “What is Bergamot?” https://twinings.co.uk/blogs/news/what-is-bergamot