My dear Steepsterites.
Let it be known to those who have not worked it out already that Earl Grey is really not among my favourite types and that the ones that I have actually appreciated rather than just drunk are few and far between. I just don’t really care that much for bergamot, it’s such a dark and dusty flavour. It tastes so old.
This however is Monday’s Sample Week tea, and I’m sharing it with the boyfriend who has returned home from the wild abroads and brought with him our new kettle. No more messing about with saucepans, yay! It has little blue lights, five different settings, a keep warm function and temperatures and amounts written on it in two different units. And it goes beep when the water is boiling.
Anyway, the tea. It’s the first tea we’re having with the new kettle, and it was the first sample that I found in the basket which fit the criteria for Sample Week and the size of the pot needed for two people.
It has a surprisingly sweet aroma after brewing. It smells like some kind of lemon-y pudding. Creamy and sweet and not at all like an EG. Oh you won’t see me complaining here! It actually makes me really very hopeful about it.
Upon tasting my hopes are not dashed. On the contrary I discover to my surprise that for an EG this is not half bad. It’s pretty good actually!
In the flavour I can identify the bergamot, but there are other flavours going on as well, so I don’t really get that grey and old feeling from it. It’s like Earl Grey in his earliest youth, galloping about the gardens on a stick pony with his pockets full of frogs and bits of string. Maybe a scraped knee as well.
The creamy sweetness noticed in the aroma is there, tasting sort of pudding-y or slightly cake-y, and then there’s a strong note of some kind of citrus fruit. I can see PattiM suggested pink grapefruits when posting about it, and I agree with that. I eat a lot of pink grapefruits, and tasting this tea seems very similar to the flavour of a good, juicy grapefruit.
This is summerly and fresh, not so heavy and lumbering as your average regular Earl Grey. This one, I like.
