Earl Grey tea

Earl Grey tea (bergamot tea) is a black tea blend flavoured with natural oil of bergamot, a citrus fruit with a perfumed scent. UKTIA, the British tea trade body, files Earl Grey under flavoured teas and says the classic version is made from China black teas. The name belongs to a blend, not to a variety or a region.

The leaf is Camellia sinensis, as in any black tea. The aroma comes from Citrus bergamia Risso. In Calabria, cold-pressed oil from Femminello, Castagnaro and Fantastico fruit is protected in the EU as a PDO under the name Bergamotto di Reggio Calabria – Olio essenziale (eAmbrosia EUGI00000013315).

The starting point is ordinary Black tea, made as that page describes; only the finished, dried leaf meets the bergamot oil.

The history of the name is subtler than it looks. In 1824 the Lancaster Gazette wrote about bergamot oil used to improve cheap tea, and in 1837 a London grocer went to court for selling tea artificially flavoured with bergamot. A Charlton & Co. advertisement mentions Earl Grey's mixture in 1884, the Oxford English Dictionary records that name from 1891, and Earl Grey tea itself from 1929. Jacksons of Piccadilly claims that Lord Grey passed the recipe to its partner George Charlton in 1830. Stories of a Chinese mandarin giving the recipe as a gift, or of the tea being presented to Queen Victoria, are legends: Victoria only became queen in 1837. Lexicographer Michael Quinion (World Wide Words) concludes that the origin of the name is not established.

It tastes of black tea with a citrus, perfumed aroma. Nobody has measured Earl Grey on its own, so count it as black tea: about 48 mg of caffeine per 240 ml mug, estimated from the USDA value of 20 mg per 100 g.

Its neighbour English Breakfast tea mixes Assam with Ceylon and adds nothing to the leaf. Masala chai takes its aroma from spices and Jasmine tea from flowers. The whole family is gathered under Flavoured teas and blends.

In the EU the label follows Regulation 1334/2008, Article 16: natural bergamot flavouring means at least 95 % of the flavouring part comes from bergamot. Dry Earl Grey, like any tea, may carry at most 150 µg/kg of pyrrolizidine alkaloids.

Give it 3–4 minutes in water at 90–98 °C, a bag or a heaped spoonful for each cup, as UKTIA advises. Milk is optional; if you take it, pour it in after the tea.

Why this matters to you: the flavouring line on the pack shows whether your tea really smells of bergamot.