a question on earl grey

[margauxmorgan]

what type of tea is earl grey?
is it black tea?
coz i don't see any grey tea in the categories teehee

thanks!
sorry
newbie on tea here!

[teaisme]

its a black with bergamot oil

Don't forget the search bar on this forum is pretty useful to figure out stuff , so is google

[sencha]

Although it usually is, it doesn't have to be a black tea. Adagio, for example, makes a green tea scented with bergamot... and Teavana makes an earl grey white tea, as well.

I think Adagio even has an earl grey version of Rooibos. It's traditionally a black tea though.

References:
http://www.adagio.com/green/earl_grey_green.html
http://www.teavana.com/the-teas/white-t ... -white-tea

[mbanu]

Traditionally, Earl Grey is made with Keemun black tea from China. (http://www.tea.co.uk/news-article/a-gre ... -earl-grey) However, this is only since 1875 when Keemun was developed; before then it was some other Chinese tea. The original "Earl Grey's Mixture" is supposed to have been developed by the tea-maker George Charlton of Charing Cross in 1836. His blend was purchased by Jackson's of Picadilly, who offered it until they were bought out by their long-time competitors Twinings in 1990.

However, adding bergamot oil to tea was a trick used with many types of tea to make low-grade varieties taste like their premium cousins:

To render Tea at 5s. a pound equal to Tea at 12s. -

The cheapest and most expensive teas are all the leaves of the same tree, at least they should be so, and if there were no sloe-leaves nor privet-leaves, they would be so. The high flavour, therefore, of some of the sorts of tea, and the want of flavour in others, must arise from the manner of preparing them, and must be in some measure artificial. It follows, that if we can discover any fine flavoured substance, and add it to the tea in a proper manner, so as to make it agree and harmonise with the original flavour, we shall be able to improve low-priced and flavourless tea, into a high priced article of fine flavour. The flavouring substance found to agree best with the original flavour of tea, is the oil of bergamot; by the proper management of which you may produce from the cheapest teas the finest flavoured bloom, hyson, gunpowder, and cowslip. There are two ways of managing the bergamot. Purchase at the perfumers some of the perfumed pieces of wood, which they call bergamot fruit. Keep one such piece in your canister, and it will flavour the tea in the same way as a Tonquin bean flavours snuff. If the canister be a small one, the flavour perhaps would be too strong; in that case you may chip the bergamot fruit in pieces, and put only a little bit among your tea. Or procure a small phial of the oil of bergamot; take some of the smallest of your tea and add it to a few drops of the oil, till you form a sort of paste, which is to be carefully mixed with the whole tea, in proportion to its quantity and the degree of flavour you like best. If you make the flavour too strong, you have always on easy remedy, namely, by adding more unfavoured tea. When it is thus improved, it is often sold at 18s. and a guinea, a pound. Cowslip tea has been as high as 32s.

Over time, the bergamot flavor developed a fanbase of its own, and was no longer seen as a way of doctoring inexpensive tea. It is now a British classic in its own right.