This is another tea from Alison, who also gave me The Tea Centre’s French Earl Grey.
The Tea Centre describes this as similar to Lady Grey: the ingredients include lemon peel, cornflowers, lemongrass, safflowers, calendula, and jasmine. And it’s a very pretty pile of leaves and flowers, in its dried form. Thanks to the petals, it smells quite flowery – perhaps even more so than the French Earl Grey, which I think is interesting. I didn’t pick up on particularly lemony notes, so it didn’t strike me as a very close relative to Lady Grey.
Steeped for three minutes, with a little sugar. The flowers were the dominant note here; as with the scent, it didn’t have much of a citrus tone for me, either of bergamot or of lemon, and therefore doesn’t quite hit the Earl Grey spot for me. It’s quite nice and drinkable, but it’s not going to be a favourite.
Tansy and I continue our discussion, this time moving on to food in books (both childhood classics and Tansy’s own stories), food in space, and food in history…
I was tagged on Twitter in a discussion about a chocolate mousse recipe that included Earl Grey tea, because unsurprisingly this is something I’m getting known for. The recipe itself is 
Another delightful example of friends getting into the swing of my Year of the Earl. This time, Liz of 
The tin itself recommends 4-6 minutes steeping, which I thought was a bit much, so I started with 3 minutes and a touch of sugar. The taste is, well, very Earl Grey. It’s not sweet – definitely more on the savoury side – and it’s actually not an overwhelming citrus taste either. The scent is more powerful than the taste, I think. It’s wonderfully drinkable and I’m super pleased to have some of this.
In which Tansy and I discuss children’s birthday cakes and Tansy’s penchant for ignoring recipes. We went on to discuss other things, too, which you’ll hear in the sequel interview next week!
Another in the 
was brewed either. The taste is not hugely citrus-y, although it’s quite a nice tea – as apparently I should expect, it being real darjeeling. One of these days I guess I should learn about the tastes of different black teas. But probably not this year.
As with 
isn’t as strong as Mary Grey, and it’s certainly less citrus-y and a bit more flowery. Again, I initially tried with sugar, and preferred it with just a little bit of sugar to take a bit of bitterness off.
When I was in London last year, I took the opportunity to ask some English tea companies to send me samples. And, delightfully, some of them did! The first one I want to talk about is 
They describe it as the ‘delicate’ version of Earl Grey. I thought I could see bits of orange peel in it, but I may have been wrong about that according to the ingredients list which says it has marigold flowers (so maybe that’s what I saw) and essential citrus oils.
It has a very citrus-y scent, which is unsurprising given the oils listed in the ingredients. The taste is also quite citrus-y – but not too much. It was slightly improved, to my taste, by the addition of sugar; I did decide to try this unsugared at first because of the citrus. I think the sugar took the edge off the slight bitterness which I don’t love.
Acts of Kitchen 