Earl Grey

Flavour profile

Gentle citrus flavours fill the mouth along with the smooth, mellow notes of the tea.

Aroma profile

Fresh and citrus with sweet, woody notes of black tea.

Did you know

This famous tea is the the most popular flavoured tea in the world. It is traditionally a Chinese black tea flavoured with Bergamot, a citrus fruit, the best of which is grown in Calabria in Southern Italy. So who was Earl Grey and why does he have a tea named after him? Charles Grey was Prime Minister of Britain from 1830 to 1834. The stories of his tea are many and varied, According to some sources he was gifted the tea after a diplomatic visit to China, or as a thank you from a mandarin for saving his son from drowning. Or it came about by accident on an East India cargo ship, when gifts of black tea and bergamot, sent to the Earl from diplomats in China, were thrown about so much that the tea absorbed the flavour of the fruit. Both stories are unlikely to be true. Britain was close to war with China at the time, as a result of underhand opium smuggling by the British into China. And there are no records of Earl Grey ever visiting China or of him sending a group of diplomats during his time as Prime Minister. A much more likely (and less romantic) reason for the tea being created comes down to water. Charles Grey spent time in London and at his family home in Northumberland in the North of England. Both these locations have hard water with a high level of limescale, which affects the flavour of tea. Perhaps he asked his tea merchant to create a tea for him, which he could drink and enjoy in both locations? The addition of citrus, would have dispelled much of the limescale in the tea and thus always ensured a pleasurable cup of tea.