Another Fortnum and Mason from Gill, which again we tried together, as a small pot of tea.
When dry, it smelled very bergamot. When steeped, it smelled much more green and the bergamot was quite reduced, although still just present.
In the end, this is a green tea, and I just don’t love green tea. I drank my cup but I didn’t love it. I imagine that for someone who likes both bergamot and green, this might be quite welcome as a brew.
It’s fun when friends get into the act. When Gill sent to the UK, she went earl grey shopping. She discovered that Fortnum and Mason have a very wide range of loose leaf teas, and that you can get really quite small samples for very reasonable prices. So she got me a few, and we tried some of them together.
Firstly, we tried the Smokey. Gill and her husband don’t mind a smokey tea. Me, though: I would definitely rather not drink a bush fire. But I thought that trying it with bergamot would be worthwhile. So we made a small pot of tea – 2tsp; it was very smokey when dry, and very smokey when steeped. There was a bit of an orange scent but the smoke was overwhelming.
This was most certainly not my thing. I added 1/2tsp sugar which cut through the smoke
somewhat but it didn’t bring out any more of the bergamot. Interestingly, Gill also didn’t enjoy it.
The packets look a bit like this:
Ovvio Organics kindly sent me some samples of their tea – not just earl grey but some of their herbal tisanes, too. I don’t tend to go in for teas that are marketed with a medicinal bent, because that’s certainly not why I drink it and I’m suspicious when it comes to claims for anything food-related having massive impact on health and well-being. But anyway, someone had recommended their black teas, so I was keen to try them out.
The French Earl Grey is a very pretty tea to look at, and quite fragrant as a dry tea. What I initially thought was fennel, from appearance, is actually lavender which makes a lot more sense. I feel like there’s a higher proportion of flowers and so on to tea leaves in this concoction than one usually finds. This is not in itself a deal breaker for me.
3 min steeping, 1/2 tsp sugar. Quite fragrant when steeped, too. The lavender definitely comes through, which is something you need to be aware of – especially if you don’t like lavender! I didn’t feel like 1tsp of tea really got me enough flavour, when I made my first cup, so my next cup I used the old leaves with another tsp or so of fresh. It was certainly more flavourful that way. This is quite a nice tea, but won’t be on my shopping list.
Another tea from the Loose Lea Tea House. How could I resist a French Earl Grey that looked like this?
3 min steeping, 1/2 tsp sugar.
There wasn’t nearly as much scent to the dry tea as I had expected, and – even sadder – not a whole lot when steeped either. It’s a nice enough tea but that’s not really a winning description, is it? Fair to say I was a bit disappointed.
Acts of Kitchen 