After trying the triple bergamot yesterday, I thought I’d see if I could taste a difference between it and this.
I will say that sniffing the two packets together, there’s an obvious difference in bergamot level between the two. The triple gives off much more citrus/perfume. I didn’t smell that metallic note in the double.
I don’t have good enough olfactory memory to remember the steeped aroma of the triple while smelling the aroma of the double at the same time (it seems almost like trying to remember the tune to a song when other music is playing) but this has the same malty note as the triple and a mellow citrus as well. I called the color of the triple’s liquor reddish amber—this looks like cherry wood red (which makes me want to look at the triple’s color again).
The flavor strikes me as quite similar to the triple bergamot, but with perhaps less of that mineral note I found in the triple, which earns it a couple of additional rating points. What I like most about this blend as well as the triple is that the bergamot seems well-integrated into the flavor instead of sitting on the top.
As with the triple, there are other Earl Greys I like better, but that’s not because of the level of bergamot. I don’t find the level here overly strong compared to some I’ve tasted—perhaps that’s as a result of the integration factor I mentioned.
My preference has more to do with the tea base. There’s something that is, for lack of a better word, warmer in the base of the Earl Greys by Samovar and American Tea Room as examples, even those that don’t have a Yunnan base. I don’t know what the base of this tea is, but I believe it is the same as the triple bergamot, and from what I can find on the internet, it appears to be a blend. It has a bit of a bite, which makes me think there is Assam in the blend, and which could account for my preference as I tend to gravitate toward Ceylon and Yunnan based Earl Greys.
