Aged Earl Grey

A nice cup of earl grey to chase away the desire for hot cocoa. My last cup of tea I had at my fiancee’s house. It might be my last cup of tea for a little bit because mom and dad are re-modeling the kitchen. I might be able to sneak in some green tea or white tea later tonight if I can get to the hot water kettle safely.

I’m backtracking to Friday evening.
My birthday was almost a month ago, & Tony & I take each other out for dinner for our birthdays. His was in Dec (sag) & he chose Nobu’s, which is obviously a Japanese restaurant. Tony doesn’t really like sushi, but he’ll eat spider roll & calif roll. I DO like some sushi, & we both like tempura, miso soup, & of course, Matcha!

So for my Bday dinner (almost a month late, we’ve both been really busy!), we had a gift certificate from his 2 kids for $50 off at The Sidney Street Cafe, which is considered one of the top restaurants in St Louis. http://www.sidneystreetcafe.com
It’s not the kind of place we usually eat, but they use a lot of locally raised products & the pictures are awesome! Once I explained my food allergies/sensitivies (dairy, gluten, preservatives, etc) to the waiter we settled on filet béarnaise, except I got roasted root veggies instead of mashed potatoes (which contained cream). There was butter in the sauce, but I can get away with that once in awhile. Tony had the Steak Wasabi.

What irritates me about places like this is you pay high dollar for the food, you’re picturing a surf & turf plate, & then reality strikes: a large plate, with a steak that is 2" wide in each direction & 2" tall. It was split across the center & there was a thin layer of lobster sandwiched in there. There was 1/2 cup or so of roasted brussells & a tureen with about the same amount of roasted root veggies. The sauce was drizzled artfully. It was a beautiful plate, but I think my exact words to Tony were, “I’m gonna be hungrier when we leave than I was when I got here.” We both laughed :)

Needless to say, it was awesome! Every bite was pure heaven. That steak may have been small, but it was the tenderest, most perfectly cooked, most flavorful steak ever (well…I can think of 3 exceptions to that, actually). In spite of the fact that I would have liked to have doubled the amount on my plate, the food was wonderful!
When it came to dessert, the only dairy & gluten free offerings were sorbets. I had a choice of peach, or a scoop each of passion fruit & coconut. I had all 3 (little Terri insisted). They were wonderful, not too sweet, & contrasted with one another beautifully. I don’t eat sweets often, but it was a worthy exception. Tony had “snicker bar”.
With dessert we had tea: Numi Aged Earl Grey, which went nicely with the sorbets. The tea base is an Assam & the bergamot is there, but not too potent. A perfect ending to the meal.

I’m soooo sleepy but there’s still a couple hours left in the workday. I need a cuppa! I grabbed a free tea bag of this at work several months ago, and it’s sat in my office desk drawer ever since. Time to drink it down!

I let it steep for about 4 minutes, give or take a little. The resultant brew is a lovely reddish brown with a divine earl grey aroma! I’m actually looking forward to this now! (Earl Grey is not one of my all time favorites, but beggars can’t be choosers).

Hmm, not bad! This stuff actually tastes halfway decent. I can feel a bergamot-induced headache coming on though. Ugh. From sleepy to headache-y. Why don’t I just bring my good teas in to work? Oh yeah, ‘cause they’re a pain in the behind to brew. I just can’t win.

Oof, where did this pessimism come from? I need another cup of 52teas’ Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecake to turn this day back around. Really, this tea is okay though. I think I’m just feeling overly sensitive to bergamot today.

My favourite Earl Grey, ever. The presence of bits of bergamot, versus ‘bergamot flavouring,’ with a decent black tea, makes an enormous difference.

Sadly, this tea is very hard to find in my part of Canada, and Numi doesn’t ship outside the US.

My new tea goal is to get through the big box of teabags that I have in our pantry. This one was on the top, and one that I’ve been meaning to try for a while. I believe this is from Serenity – thank you! The teabag smells nicely of bergamot, and the tea itself has more of a malty scent. The flavor is very robust and malty with a lemony finish and a soft bergamot aftertaste. It’s a very lightly flavored bergamot, rather than those EGs that are all in-your-face strong bergamot. Milk and sugar almost overwhelms the delicate flavor, but I added the tiniest bit of both. Overall, a very nice and relaxing cup.

-Standard teabag with a tag.
-Teabag smells strongly of bergamot. Tea liquor aroma is malty with a hint of citrusy bergamot.
-Tea liquor is a cloudy medium orange brown color.
-Robust and malty flavor with a citrusy lemon finish. Soft bergamot aftertaste.
-Best with the smallest amount of milk and sweetener.
-Good tea. A malty and delicately flavored bergamot cup.

It turns out, I thought I’d finished my stash of this but I totally forgot I had a couple of bags still at work. So this time I REALLY DID drink the last of this. Exciting, because it makes way for more Earl experiments to come. I have a whole Upton sampler to start on in the coming days, not to mention assorted other samples!

Made up a cup of this at school this morning, and it’s surprisingly tasty! Brisk with just a hint of bergamot and no noticeable astringency. I just had the one bag, so this is a sipdown as well.

Not actually bad for a cafeteria bagged black. A little light on flavor, which I like in an EG. Tealuxe is one of my favorite local tea shops, and they have a ton of EG variations… but their “Extra Bergamot Earl Grey” always terrifies me. This one is solid!

It’s evening and I haven’t had any tea yet, so while I was trekking over to the cafeteria, I thought to myself, “I need tea and I don’t care if it’s Red Rose.” Instead, they have a decent selection of Numi, so I’ll take it! I was also craving a black tea with cream and sugar, and that I did with this.

The bergamot is a lot lighter than I had hoped. Maybe the cream is drowning it out but you’d still think it could match up to that. As always, I appreciate the maltiness of an Assam, although I wish this were maltier. So in other words, overall, I wish this had more flavour.

I also left my teabag in the water for like ten minutes, even after adding the cream. I was hoping it would get stronger, but at least it doesn’t get bitter.

Now to get myself a kettle so I can just make tea in my own room. My tea stash is making sad faces at me.

I really, really, really want to like Earl Grey because so many of you out there have such lovely EG experiences. (Hello, my name is __ and I am a people pleaser :) However, what happens most of the time is that I am enchanted by the lovely bergamot scent, then deeply disappointed that what I’m drinking tastes like floor cleaner.

So this is a landmark occasion—-I like this one! The bergamot tastes natural, not chemical, and isn’t so annoyingly cloying you can’t taste the black tea.

Nicely done, Numi.