Earl Grey Ceylon Select (TE17)

Since it is broken leaf, I went straight for the additives here. Ironically though, there is no bitter aftertaste here like what I ran into with a few other Upton blends in the past couple of days. (The husband even commented on the nutty-bitter of River Shannon and he didn’t even try it without sugar and milk.) Actually, there’s not a whole lot of anything really. I taste milky and I taste sweet. Which, yeah, from the sugar and half & half I added. And I didn’t add that much – less than 1tsp of sugar and 2tsp of half & half for a 12oz cup. There is a mild hint of flavoring that I assume is Earl Grey and an even milder hint of tea flavor but only really as a hint of boring cardboard. Yes, not even the fancy, tasty cardboard.

Definitely not what I was expecting from anything with any kind of BOP in the description.

Oh dear too much leaf! Bitter, bitter, bitter! Let’s try this again shall we? I need to drink down my Upton samples anyway and what better day to do so than the day of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in London? There performance is to be called “Isles of Wonder”, that Anglophile in me is very excited and I may have to find some sort of live streaming source online in four hours, because 7:30 pm (EST) on NBC seems too far away ;)

Okay rebrewed with a pinch of rock sugar, a level teaspoon and I shaved off 5 degrees and 30 sec. Much better, though admittedly a tad light. It gets astringent very quickly in the cup though, perhaps because of the amount of sediment from the fine cut leaves that got through my best strainer. Cannot recommend this, but will drink it. I have another Upton Earl Grey but I think I may just switch over to Bergamot Rose Laoshan Black, that is until the husband comes home and we have some of his British blends.

High quality Ceylon base, but the Earl appears to not be at home