Earl Grey

The more I drink this one I must say it’s the mellowest Earl Grey I have ever had…and I was looking for strong today…meh…

So, a strong black tea and a lemon tea walk into a bar. They go to a hotel, have a great night and bask in each other’s glory. The lemon tea decides he wants to marry the black tea even though everyone knows that bergamot and black tea are actually soulmates. They have a baby together. However, they didn’t know that they were in fact, brother and sister. This tea is that mutated baby.

“It can’t be that bad” you say. Oh, but it is!

It’s got a strong lemon taste; and no, i don’t mean bergamot. This is black tea if it was garnished with a 10-day-old lemon with a zester. The brew is so pathetically bland, underbodied and unbalanced that I might have to say that the great Disney powers that be blended this with the intention of pissing people off.

Bleh. Considering a toss out to the bin.

Okay. I have to admit, on its own, this tea reminds me of dishwater. Its scent and taste reminds me of the scent of dish detergent. Which… isn’t something I particularly want to say about tea. Adding milk and honey helps, but I still can’t find it within me to recommend this tea, as I would some of the others in the Wonderland Tea brand.

Tannins and brisk blerg. This one isn’t for me, Arby, but thank you for sharing :)

A mellow bergamot flavour, but no citrus.

Tea base is a bit strong for me, but most teas made from fannings are. Slightly bitter if oversteeped. It is must better brewed with slightly cooler water (95 deg C water instead of boiling). Another alternative is to add milk, as Earl Grey takes milk very well.

I’ve gotten so used to loose leaf earl grey creams that I’d forgotten how sharp bagged earl greys can be. Adding sugar helped. Not great, but not bad, this pretty much just tastes like Bigelow’s earl grey.

Sipdown! Actually, I didn’t drink much of this one. My partner had a pretty bad cold, so I made him lots of tea with honey. I did sneak a sip before handing it over, though. This tastes like a pretty standard earl grey: slightly astringent generic black tea with a tart bergamot flavor. It does work quite nicely with the unique sweetness of manuka honey.

This came in a boxed tea gift set that I picked up when I was at Disney’s Hilton Head resort two weeks back. I didn’t have high hopes for any of the tea in the collection and bought it mainly for the novelty.

Yesterday, I found myself bleary-eyed and stumbling in the morning as I tried to make myself wake up enough to drive an hour north to meet some friends, to drive a further hour north to see a field of sunflowers in Jarrettsville, MD. The gift box was sitting on the counter and I cut through the plastic tape and grabbed this one, tossed a bag into a travel mug, and turned on the kettle.

This tea also has the distinction to be the first steeped with water brewed from my brand new kettle, which arrived on Saturday. My brand new kettle, which I had not planned or wanted to buy, because I came downstairs Thursday to find the cats had knocked my old one off the counter and the glass had shattered into pieces.

Cats, man. Cats.

But back to this tea. Which is… well, it’s drinkable. But not anything to write home about. There is only the faintest taste of bergamot, and it’s quite lost if the water is too hot. So, pretty bland Earl Grey. Which honestly, is pretty much spot on with my pretty low expectations prior to drinking.

Alright Disney, you stole my daughter’s heart and soul with Frozen, making her damn near unbearable singing on repeat the one or two lines she can remember from the song. She told me she was going to freeze my heart and make me dead all while “pretend you are a princess” mania has taken a firm grasp in my house. So screw you, but you can hold your own with tea.

This little tea bag came to me in a traveling tea box, has been beating up in my bagged tea drawer, then dragged 1/4 way over the globe before I finally tried it. The bag didn’t hold up so well and luckily I had a fine mesh steeper to pick up the slack. And to my surprise it actually wasn’t disgusting, but the fact that I have been camping recently could be influencing my perception. The tea is pretty fragrant and tastes very bright. Even through some sweetened creamer, the flavor still holds up and has a little kick or bite at the end. The aftertaste is really nice and bergamoty. I’m impressed for what it is! I wonder who makes this tea for Disney. They couldn’t possibly have a tea garden and processing plant hidden away on the magic kingdom, where the little dolls from the small world ride go to work a night shift picking tea in the moonlight after the park closes… could they?

By far one of the worst Earl Greys I’ve ever had, it’s very bitter (even though that’s how Earl Grey usually is) and I can barely swallow it, no amount of sweetener, honey, or creme helps.