Tregothnan – Cornish Smoked Manuka Earl Grey
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This is the last of the Tregothnan teas that I brought back from holiday. It is almost certainly not the last of the Tregothnan teas forever on TeaFancier.com. I am genuinely excited about the idea of British-grown tea. I’ll be keeping an eye on any new developments from the Tregothnan Tea Estate. (In fact, I’ve already spotted that they have a Christmas tea on their website, which I have a feeling is going to make its way into my shopping basket very soon.)
Today’s tea is Cornish Smoked Manuka Earl Grey. According to the tea tin blurb:
Tregothnan have created this delicate infusion with Raymond Blanc OBE for Eurostar Business Premier. We have blended hand-picked Cornish leaves with Assam smoked over manuka woodchips and added natural oil of bergamia and manuka flowers.
That’s a lot to unpack right there. So I’m going to break it down and address this tea’s features one by one:
Smoked
This is a smoked tea, which makes it a bit of an odd purchasing choice for an avowed Lapsang Souchong hatah such as myself. It’s not very smoky; there isn’t the full-on Aroma d’Ashtray that you get with some Lapsang Souchongs but there is still a burnt-milk-at-the-bottom-of-the-saucepan vibe, undercutting the tea flavours.
It’s not clear from the description whether both tea types have been smoked or whether unsmoked Cornish tea has been added to smoked Assam. And to be honest, it doesn’t really matter. I suspect that any smoked tea which is subtle enough for me to cheerfully drink a couple of cups of the stuff is possibly going to be a bit disappointing to those who enjoy the tastes-like-a-bonfire-smells experience of smoked tea.
Manuka
Manuka (Leptospermum scoparium) gets a double credit on this tea. It is both the basis of the tea smoke and a natural flavouring. Tregothnan grow their own manuka plants and even produce their own manuka honey onsite. I saw the hives but didn’t purchase the honey, largely because it costs 45 quid a jar and I’d already blown my monthly food budget on loose leaf tea.
I’m not entirely sure what manuka was bringing to the party here. There’s a slight rooibos-y taste to the whole enterprise, and I’m going to assume that the manuka had something to do with that.
Earl Grey
This tea styles itself as an Earl Grey. It contains bergamot oil (or ‘natural oil of bergamia’ as it styles itself here, presumably because using the Latin names for things makes it sound fancier to business class people). It’s not terribly bergamotty though. This might be due to all the other things going on here, but I’ve tried Tregothnan’s straight-up Earl Grey and that’s not very bergamotty either. I think this is due to using actual bergamot oil, rather than Bergamot flavour e5318008 or whatever it is that gives more commercial Earl Grey blends their flavour.
I’m like someone who’s only known the smell of lemon from lemon washing-up liquid. Confronted with a real lemon, I’d think “It’s not all that lemony, is it?”
The whole Raymond Blanc (OBE!) Eurostar Association
I’ve only been on Eurostar once and that was on a trip to Disneyland Paris fifteen years ago. This was back in the day when Eurostar ran from Waterloo Station, which meant the Happiest Place On Earth (European Division) was only a hop, skip and a jump away from my home town. I have no recollection of what – if any – tea I drank during this journey. In fact, I have no tea-based memories of the whole holiday. There must have been tea, of course. Otherwise my primary experience of the trip would have been a painful tea withdrawal where I would have been confused, shaking and probably shouting obscenities at Disney princesses.
We didn’t travel business class of course. And it’s there, apparently, that the really good top chef-endorsed tea stuff happens. Tregothnan Cornish Smoked Manuka Earl Grey is presented in pyramid tea bags. At the tea masterclass, Jonathan-the-Tregothnan-Tea-Yoda said that they were looking at ways to promote loose leaf tea drinking on Eurostar journeys.
The primary appeal of tea bags over loose leaf is time. Most British tea drinkers are just too gosh darn busy to spend more thirty seconds on tea preparation. Hot water plus tea bag, plus bash it about with a spoon and you’re good to go! Tregothnan’s very sound reasoning is that on a lengthy train journey, the one thing you do have is time. It is the ideal opportunity to embrace the longer, more satisfying process of steeping a pot of larger, nicer, real tea leaves.
I am all for this. “More proper tea! More everywhere!” I say. (Because apparently I forget how to form proper sentences when I’m excited.) If I were travelling by train Posh Class to France, I would love to be presented with proper loose leaf tea.
Although preferably not Cornish Smoked Manuka Earl Grey. I’m still not sure how I feel about this one. But literally any of the other wonderful Tregothnan teas that I’ve tried would be very welcome indeed. I have spent the last few weeks steeped in Cornish tea, and it’s all been rather marvellous.
Today’s featured book is England, England by Julian Barnes.
