‘Like lemon soap with hints of swimming pool water' – the best and worst Earl Grey tea bags

Telegraph

06-03-2025

Milk, black or with lemon? The first time I took my now husband to meet my mother, she offered us tea. Taking a cup, I looked for the milk jug. 'But darling,' said my mother aghast, 'it's Earl Grey.' Turning to my beloved for support, I noted that he was already drinking his milkless, and looking smug. He, at least, had passed the test.
With milk or without, Earl Grey tea is the most elegant of British brews. Flavoured with bergamot, a bitter, headily perfumed citrus fruit grown mostly in Italy, it may be classically sipped from a bone china tea cup with a slice of lemon, but I'm just as likely to drink it from a mug with a slosh of milk.
The tea itself is black, rather than green, and it can be Indian Assam or Sri Lankan or even Chinese. It's the bergamot flavouring that is the most important – and contentious – part. Bergamot oil is expensive and highly volatile, meaning that many of the manufacturers choose a cheaper, more stable option. In other words, flavouring – natural or otherwise.
According to the UK Flavour Association: 'If reference is also given to the source, e.g. 'natural lemon flavouring', then 95 per cent of the flavouring must be derived from lemons.' So natural bergamot flavouring should be made mostly from bergamot. Of course it might not be the most fragrant part of the bergamot, or the best part. Not all flavourings are created equal.
If the label says simply 'natural flavouring' it could be derived from anything: in the case of Earl Grey tea, lemons are likely to feature. But don't imagine 'natural flavouring' means it's something recognisable to the average tea drinker. It just means the source is natural, but it may well have been heavily processed. For example, a vanilla-scented cake which includes 'natural flavouring' on the ingredients list, might contain 2-hydroxy-4-methoxybenzaldehyde, a yellowish powder extracted from the root of the Periploca sepium plant, aka Chinese silk vine, generally using a combination of steam and solvents. It counts as a natural flavouring.
It's hard tasting Earl Grey because of the powerful lingering flavour, which means taking plenty of breaks. I enlisted the help of food writer Hattie Ellis, whose books include Spoonfuls of Honey (Harper Collins) and The One Pot Cook (Bloomsbury). We favoured products where we could still taste the actual tea, rather than just a palate-stripping mouthful of citrus.
As for the milk question, I turned to revered fine tea experts Postcard Teas who sell Hattie's preferred loose leaf Earl Grey, where it is their bestselling line. It can, they say, 'be taken with or without milk'.