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Manufacturer: Twinings

Lowest Price: $9.95
Buy Now: Twinings Earl Grey Loose Leaf Tea – 7.05oz

Twinings Earl Grey Loose Leaf Tea – 7.05oz

Twinings Earl Grey Loose Leaf Tea – 7.05oz Features:

• This black tea, scented with the oil of Bergamot, gives a most refreshing sensation.
• 7.05(200g) loose leaf tea

Twinings Earl Grey Loose Leaf Tea – 7.05oz Reviews

The drink of Captains.
“Earl Grey, hot.” says Captain Jean-Luc Picard. It’s a better deal to get it at your local grocery store with shipping and all but if you can’t get this in your area this loose tea will give you a bang for your buck. 100 g of hot dark pleasure that my favorite Next Generation Captain enjoys on his inter-stellar adventures. Best served without cream/milk or sugar. I am guilty of putting honey in it to keep a sweet tooth at bay.

The Original.
Earl Grey is my favorite blend of tea by far – no competition there. The biggest secret with this tea once given to Earl Grey of Hoswick Hall (British Prime Minister in 1830 – 1834) by a Chinese manadarin, reportedly in gratitude after the earl saved his life, is to get just the right doseage of bergamot oil, a rather intense, tangy scent derived from the bergamot orange (which in turn is a cross between the pear lemon and the sour orange; the latter is native to South Vietnam, and its oil was probably the recipe’s original ingredient). Using too much bergamot oil can easily obscure the black tea’s natural flavor – but with Twinings you just can’t go wrong, because the original Earl Grey turned to this very company for a match to the quickly dwindling supply he had received from his Chinese friend.

(From the Twinings website: “When the mandarin’s tasty gift began to run out, Earl Grey asked his tea merchants, Twinings, to match it for him. Twinings unique blend was the Grey family’s long-standing favourite. When guests inquired about it, they were directed to Twinings on the Strand, where they would ask for Earl Grey’s tea by name.”)

Unless you insist on having *all* your tea with cream or milk, I recommend having this one without any kind of milk products: not only does the original recipe not call for such an addition; in my mind it just plain ruins the blend’s particular flavor. (But that’s just me, of course.) Whichever way you have it, though, if scented teas are your kind of thing, Twinings Earl Grey should be right up your alley. Just be careful not to oversteep it: only an exceptionally forgiving tea like, for example, Yunnan, will not turn flat and bitter that way; and with any decent Earl Grey, 2 – 3 minutes should be plenty of steeping time (with Twinings it certainly is).

An excellent tea
I wonder if the first reviewer oversteeped his tea, as the second reviewer implied. After switching from coffee to tea as my primary hot morning beverage, I found there is a certain art to making the perfect cup of tea (using loose tea leaves), and part of the art is proper steeping. The recommendation is three to five minutes, and even as a fan of strong things in general (coffee, beer, hot sauce, ), I lean toward three minutes for a good cup of Earl Grey. It’s easy to be overzealous, especially if you’re accustomed to drinking bagged teas.

In any case, I haven’t found a Twinings tea where the flavors were not deep and distinctive. And by the way, as the previous reviewer noted, Twinings really is an old British company, unlike some outfits that attach “of London” to their names.

A wonderful smelling and tasting black tea
Twinings was founded in London, England in 1706, and has a long and respected tradition of producing only the finest of teas. Earl Grey tea was named after Charles Grey, Second Earl Grey (1764-1845), and is a mixture of black tea and oil of bergamot (a small acidic orange). It is said that Earl Grey learned the recipe of this delicious tea from a Chinese Mandarin and brought it home to England, where it has been a favorite ever since.

OK, let’s get down to brass tacks – this is a great tea, produced by a great company, and is my all-time favorite. The tea produced has a wonderful aroma, and an excellent taste. But, a couple of words of warning – don’t over-steep the tea, or it will quickly become bitter and unpalatable. Also, while sugar goes well with this tea, I have found that milk dilutes the bergamot too much, and lemon completely hides the bergamot which is the reason for drinking it!

That’s my review. If you want a wonderful smelling and tasting black tea, then Earl Grey is for you. If you want tea from a great tea producer, them Twinings is for you. If you want a nectareous drink, then buy Twinings’ Earl Grey tea!

Not my favorite Earl Grey
I’m a great fan of Earl Grey tea and have enjoyed starting my morning with a cup o’ the grand stuff for nearly fifteen years. As it happens I am in very good company in this practice along with the likes of Captain Picard and the eponymous Earl Charles Grey himself. Earl Grey is one of the more popular and well-known kinds of tea in the world and deservedly so. Despite general belief, Earl Grey is not a tea varietal at all, but simply ordinary black tea infused with bergamot, a citrus flavor from the rind of the fruit. Try your cup with a few drops of fresh lemon juice for some occasional, yet delicious, variety. It is also pretty neat to watch the lemon juice lighten the tea from dark brown to yellow as the citric acid reacts with the blend!

Now all that being said, I can’t really say I like the Twinings version of Earl Grey very much. It was very strong black tea with a bitter edge, an almost dusty palate, a little sense of bergamot. It was better after I put some lemon in it, but really good Earl Grey doesn’t need it nor does it have the heavy handed feel of this tea. Twinings is an appealing sort of name but I suspect they may be the British verion of Liptons. This will do in a pinch but I highly recommend you seek out Tazo or The Minister of Tea for a truly delightful Earl Grey experience.

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