Earl Grey

Where it grows

Inherited from its components Its own record calls it a recipe rather than an origin: the base can be Chinese, Indian, Sri Lankan or a blend, and the bergamot comes from Calabria. There is no single garden behind it.

How it is made, in order

Read top to bottom: the list is the production sequence, and the sequence is what makes this tea its category rather than a neighbouring one. The same leaf from the same bush becomes a green tea or a black tea depending on where the heat falls relative to the bruising, so reordering these steps would not vary the tea — it would produce a different one.

1. 1. Withering — Reduces water content, softens the leaf for later handling, and permits early enzymatic and aromatic development.
2. 2. Rolling and shaping — Ruptures cell walls to expose leaf juices, and forms the leaf into the shape it will hold through drying and storage.
3. 3. Oxidation — Allows polyphenol oxidase to act on leaf polyphenols after cell rupture, converting them into the larger coloured compounds that give oxidised tea its colour and body.
4. 4. Drying — Reduces residual moisture to a level at which enzymatic, microbial and oxidative change effectively stops, stabilising the leaf for storage.
5. 5. Applied flavouring — Deposits volatile aroma material onto and into dry finished leaf by mechanical distribution and subsequent equalisation, without any exchange with a living or fresh source material and without altering the base tea's own manufacture.
6. 6. Sorting and grading — Separates finished leaf into fractions by size, density, colour and magnetic response, removing stem and foreign matter and producing uniform, tradeable lots.

The route it is made by

The steps above are what happens; this is the named production route they belong to, with the other teas made the same way.

• Flavoured black tea — A finished black tea, blended to a house standard and then tumbled with a metered flavouring. It looks like scenting in the packet and it is a completely different operation.

  Where it is practised: Blending and flavouring houses in Europe, North America and increasingly in the producing countries themselves. The operation happens far from where the leaf grew, which is why it is essentially never discussed in origin-country tea literature.

What its chemistry turns on

Every true tea contains caffeine, catechins and amino acids, so listing them would say nothing about this one. What differs is what the processing above does to them — and that is the same list of steps, read for its chemistry instead of its craft.

• Withering
  • creates Geraniol
  • creates Linalool
  • creates Linalool oxides
  • creates Theasinensins
  • raises Methyl salicylate
  • raises Nerolidol
  • raises Soluble sugars
  • lowers cis-3-Hexenol
  • lowers Green-leaf volatiles
  • lowers Leaf lipids
• Rolling and shaping
  • converts Leaf lipids
  • creates Theaflavins
  • raises Pectins
• Oxidation
  • converts Carotenoids
  • converts Catechins
  • converts ECG (epicatechin gallate)
  • converts EGC (epigallocatechin)
  • converts EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate)
  • converts Epicatechin
  • converts Linalool
  • creates Beta-damascenone
  • creates Beta-ionone
  • creates GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid)
  • creates Linalool oxides
  • creates Tea cream
  • creates Theaflavins
  • creates Thearubigins
  • raises 2-Phenylethanol
  • raises Geraniol
  • raises Nerolidol
  • lowers Anthocyanins
  • lowers Theogallin
• Drying
  • creates Strecker aldehydes
  • raises Beta-damascenone
  • raises Thearubigins

These are statements about the leaf and the cup. What any of these compounds does in a body is a different kind of question and is not answered here or on the pages linked from it.

History

Named for the 2nd Earl Grey, British prime minister in the 1830s, on the basis of a story that has never been documented. What is certain is that the bergamot-scented style was being sold commercially in Britain by the 1830s and that no recipe was ever registered, which is why the name means so little today.

Disputed — Specialists disagree. TeaHQ does not pick a winner.

Brewing

• Western brewing (teapot or mug)

  1–1.5 g/100 ml · 95–100 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Needs: Western teapot

  Open in the brew assistant

• Mug infuser brewing

  1–1.5 g/100 ml · 95–101 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Needs: Mug infuser basket

  Open in the brew assistant

• Tea bag brewing

  1–1.5 g/100 ml · 95–100 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Open in the brew assistant

Vessels this tea suits

Recorded against the tea rather than against a brewing style, because the vessel does not always follow from the method — a whisk needs lateral room whatever the schedule says, and compressed leaf needs a pick before any method applies at all.

• Silver teapot — A non-porous surface takes up nothing, which matters more for a scented tea than for an unscented one.

Common mistakes

• Steeping longer to strengthen the citrus, which makes it soapy instead
• Assuming the base tea is a single origin

When the cup goes wrong

Written against black tea as a category rather than against this tea in particular, and worked back from the symptom to the likely causes in order. 19 apply to the category; the first 6 are shown.

• My chai catches on the pan or boils over — A scorched note runs through the finished drink, or the pan foams over the moment your back is turned.
• My chai is harsh and drying rather than rich — The drink is strong enough but unpleasant with it: a rough, drying grip on the tongue and a flat cooked note, rather than the round sweetness a good chai has.
• My chai tastes of hot spiced milk rather than tea — The drink is pleasant and sweet and the tea is nowhere in it — no colour to speak of, no briskness, and nothing that would tell you tea had been involved.
• My iced tea has gone cloudy — Tea that was clear when hot turns hazy or milky once chilled.
• My iced tea tastes watery once the ice melts — The tea is good for the first mouthful and thin by the bottom of the glass.
• My milk curdles or separates in the tea — Flecks or threads appear when the milk goes in, or the surface breaks into small islands, and the drink looks grainy rather than smooth.

Every diagnosed brewing problem

If you like this

Grouped by why they were suggested, strongest reason first. Nothing here is a blended score — a suggestion appears under the best reason that exists for it, and never under a weaker one as well.

Compare this tea with another

Written comparisons

Where TeaHQ has set this tea against another in full, rather than deriving the comparison. Each one is a written page with the points of difference argued out.

• Earl Grey vs English Breakfast — The two most recognised names in Western tea, and neither is a place. Both are recipes rather than origins, which is the single most useful thing to know about them. Put the two side by side
• Jasmine tea vs Earl Grey — The most popular scented tea and the most popular flavoured tea, and the pair that best illustrates the difference between the two processes. Put the two side by side
• Scented vs flavoured tea — Two ways to make tea taste of something else, one of which takes a week and one of which takes a spray nozzle. The difference is visible in the packet if you know what to look for. Put the two side by side
• Traditional tea vs flavoured blends — A single-origin tea and a scented blend are bought for different reasons, and judging one by the other’s standards produces bad conclusions in both directions. Put the two side by side

Botanicals this connects to

• Rose — Rose is blended into black tea across the Middle East and China, filling a role Earl Grey fills with bergamot.
• Bergamot — Bergamot oil is what makes Earl Grey Earl Grey, and most of it in commercial blends is synthetic rather than Calabrian.
• Lemon peel — Dried citrus peel is the most common addition to a bergamot blend, and the one that turns Earl Grey into a citrus tea.
• Juniper berry — Appears in modern botanical blends built on a bergamot base, where its resin plays against the citrus.

Where this tea is drunk

Documented practices that name this tea. Each page describes what is done and by whom, and separates what is recorded from what is repeated.

• Afternoon tea — A structured mid-afternoon meal of tea, sandwiches, scones and cakes — now largely a hospitality product and an occasion rather than a domestic habit, and routinely confused with high tea.
• Tea shops and tea rooms in Britain — The commercial tea room — chains that put respectable public seating within reach of women who had none, the waitresses who staffed them, and the village tea room and cream tea that are what survives of the form.
• The American tea room — A wave of small tea rooms opened across the United States in the early twentieth century — in cities, in department stores and along the new motor roads — overwhelmingly owned and run by women, and it is one of the least-remembered chapters in the history of tea as a business.

Prepared drinks built on this tea

A drink is a recipe rather than a leaf: the tea above is one ingredient in it, and the method, the additions and the ratios belong to the drink rather than to this page.

• London fog — Strong Earl Grey with steamed milk and vanilla syrup. Despite the name it is generally credited to Vancouver rather than London, and it is a café invention of the late twentieth century rather than a British tradition.

Guides covering this tea

• Scented and flavoured are two different productions, with a difference you can taste
• “Natural flavouring” and “nature-identical” are regulatory terms, not descriptions
• Why tea is blended, and what blending costs in traceability
• Storing flavoured, scented and blended teas, which behave unlike plain leaf
• Earl Grey, English Breakfast, chai: what a named blend commits a seller to
• Stone fruit, citrus, berry and tropical: the fruit families and where they come from