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Followers of the Tea Fancier Tea Cup Championships, please note that the tournament will resume on Monday.
I have been recommended T2’s French Earl Grey by fellow tea fanciers a few times now so it seemed like a good time to give it a go. As a fan of the regular English-type Earl Grey, it makes sense that I should check out what our French cousins are doing with the blend. Or, rather, given that T2 is a Melbourne-based company, how our Australian cousins think our French cousins like their Earl Grey. (Apparently, everyone is my cuz right now. Even after a disappointing Eurovision this year.)
So what makes this Earl Grey ‘French’, I wonder? Are the French in the habit of sticking a bunch of flowers in their Earl Grey mixes? Well, my not-very-extensive research of French teamongers seems to show that some of them do and some of them don’t. Generally, it seems, your speciality teamongers sur le continent will stock ‘Earl Grey’ in the straight-up tea and bergamot format we all recognise and then also carry blends called something like Earl Grey Fleurs.
T2’s French Earl Grey is pretty lovely as it goes. Alongside the usual black tea and bergamot flavouring, it contains hibiscus, sunflower petals, rose petals and mallow flowers. The rose petals are apparent from the first sip and I’m pretty sure I know what hibiscus tastes like (because it tastes like Whittard’s Piccadilly Blend). When it comes to mallow and sunflower petals, I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. I quite like the idea of buying a bunch of dried flowers for tasting purposes some time. I could steep them all separately and work out what the individual tastes are. That way, when I review a tea like this, I could confidently state that the mallow flowers, for example are bringing their traditional [insert thing I’ve discovered about mallow flowers] to the mix.
It doesn’t really matter of course. I don’t need to pick out the individual flavours, I just need to appreciate the harmonies they produce when they’re all playing together and in the case of T2’s French Earl Grey, it’s a melodious tune indeed.
Today’s featured book is A Guide to Elegance: For Every Woman Who Wants to Be Well and Properly Dressed on All Occasions by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux. So that you can ensure that you are stylishly and French-ly dressed when you sip this tea.
