Earl Grey Tea: A Beloved Blend with a Twist

Just like cookie dough goes with vanilla ice cream, peanut butter goes with chocolate, and lime goes with tequila, bergamot goes with black tea to create one of the world’s most beloved teas: Earl Grey.

Earl Grey tea, believe it or not, is not its own category of tea. It falls into the category of flavored teas. Flavored teas include any type of tea—white, green, oolong, black—that has been scented or flavored with fruit, flowers, spices, oils, extracts, and natural or artificial flavors.

Earl Grey origins

While Earl Grey tea was popularized by the English, it was not an English invention. Scented and flavored teas are uniquely Chinese. Early Chinese tea masters constantly experimented with ways to make their teas more exotic, not only to capture the attention of the reigning emperors of the time but also the business of worldwide trade merchants looking to return home with the unique flavors of the Far East.

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One history of the origins of Earl Grey explains that a Chinese mandarin tea master blended the first Earl Grey tea as a gift for Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl of Grey and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1830 to 1834. According to the Grey family, the tea master used bergamot as a flavoring to offset the lime flavor in the well water on Earl Grey’s estate, Howick Hall, near Newcastle, England. Earl Grey’s wife, Lady Grey, loved the tea so much that she entertained with it exclusively. It proved so popular with London society, she asked tea merchants in London to recreate it. Exactly which English tea merchant marketed the first Earl Grey tea blend is somewhat of a debate in the world of tea. But one thing is for sure: While the 2nd Earl of Grey abolished slavery and reformed child labor laws in England during his political leadership, he will be most famously remembered for the beloved tea he helped introduce to the world.

How Earl Grey is made

Some of the most significant variables in how Earl Grey tea is made include:

Black Tea Processing: Withering → Rolling → Oxidation → Firing Our black tea is rolled immediately after withering to help get the oxidation processes started quickly. The leaves are then fully oxidized before they are dried, which is how they get their dark color and rich flavor.

For more information about tea processing, visit our How is Tea Made? page.

Tasting Earl Grey

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There is something about the sweet, floral, sour, and bitter flavor profile of bergamot that blends perfectly with a bold, full-bodied, and malty black tea. For some, a flavored black tea is more palatable to sip, hiding some of the astringent or bitter notes that may come through in the steeped tea leaves. For others, a flavored tea is simply a more interesting, exotic, and fun way to explore a range of tea flavor profiles.

The unique flavor of Earl Grey is so beloved that it has lately leapt out of the teacup and into all kinds of culinary treats, from marshmallows to chocolate to cookies. One of our favorite tea-inspired treats are our Earl of Bengal Cookies, made with Teatulia’s Earl Grey tea. Click here for the recipe.

Caffeine content in Earl Grey

The caffeine content in an Earl Grey made with a black tea base will be similar to any other cup of black tea. Like any beverage brewed from a caffeinated plant, however, there are a lot of factors that can determine caffeine levels in your cup of Earl Grey black tea, including how the plant was processed and how the beverage was brewed. Between coffee, black tea, and green tea, coffee generally has the most caffeine content per 8 oz. cup (95 to 200 mg), then black tea (14 to 61 mg), followed by green tea (24 to 40 mg).

Buying and storing Earl Grey

For more information about how to best care for your tea, visit our How to Store Tea page.

Preparing Earl Grey

Always ask your tea vendor for brewing instructions specific to the tea you purchased, because flavored teas can have different ideal brewing temperatures and steeping times. Here are a few general Earl Grey tea brewing tips to keep in mind:

• Use fresh, pure, cold filtered water. Spring water is the best.
• If your Earl Grey has a black tea base, it can typically be brewed for longer periods of time and in hotter temperatures than flavored teas with a green tea base. Generally, this is somewhere between 200 and 212 degrees. We steep our Teatulia Earl Grey tea for 2 to 3 minutes.
• If you don’t have an electric kettle with temperature control, just remember that at sea level water simmers at 190 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. The boiling temperature drops about a degree for every 1,000 feet in altitude increase. So, generally, somewhere just off a rolling boil should be perfect for brewing a flavored black tea.
• If your Earl Grey tea came with specific recommendations for brewing, use those. But using about 2 grams of loose leaf tea per 8 oz. cup of water is a safe bet.
• Cover your Earl Grey tea while it steeps to keep all the heat in the steeping vessel.
• Avoid oversteeping your flavored tea. The longer your tea steeps, the stronger the added flavor becomes and the more quickly the tea leaves will release any of their bitterness and astringency. Taste your tea after the recommended steeping time and then decide if you’d like it to steep a little longer.
• Many high-quality, loose leaf Earl Grey teas can be steeped multiple times to yield several cups of tea.
• Most Earl Grey teas are meant to stand up to milk and sugar per the popular English teatime traditions. But for a true education in the flavor differences between the many varieties of Earl Grey, try sipping it plain with no additives.

Sources:

• How is Tea Flavored via TeaClass?
• Bergamot orange via Wikipedia
• Earl Grey tea via Wikipedia
• The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide by Mary Lou Heiss and Robert J. Heiss
• Howick Hall Gardens.org