Cupsmith Organic Lady May’s Earl Grey, Tea-Adora Eastern Earl and The Tea Keepers Apricot Breakfast Tea
Lots of excitement today at Tea Fancier Towers as Guest Poster and fellow Earl Grey fan, Hannah, brings us her thoughts on three different black teas with occasional segues into her grandparents’ tea-making, the advisability of floating about the garden like an Edwardian lady, and why if George Ezra was a tea, he wouldn’t be a very good one.
If you’re thinking “Wait, Tea Fancier does guest posts? I like tea! I write words good!” then get in touch. Guest reviewers are encouraged in the Tea Fancier family. Drop me a line at em@teafancier.com.
When you’re asked to tea taste, that’s big, right? To have an opinion about it and tell people what that is… that is BIG.
As a huge tea fan (first novelty teapot purchased at age 15, which is admittedly weird teenage behaviour), it is always a treat to try a new tea. Sometimes you get stuck in a bit of a rut and buy “safe”, don’t you? It’s an investment. You want to know that if you have spent your hard-earned cash, you’re going to get a refreshing kickback. So when a new tea comes in the POST – that… that is a real gift!
About Me
Like all children born in the 70s and raised in the 80s, tea was an integral part of everyday life. My immediate tea-drinking ancestry is “wild” on one side of the family. My paternal grandma had raised four boys through the war, making her ration card stretch and lived by a ‘waste not want not’ mantra. Her tea bags were bought in bulk, and each bag of tea dust had to make at least four cups of tea before it could retire to the compost bin. That was some seriously weak milky tea going on.
On the other side, my Irish maternal Grandad would make a pot of tea for four, using enough tea to baffle an emperor. Then – as if that abomination of bitterness wasn’t enough – into the POT, he would add sugar and milk, making the gloop that dolloped from the stained spout “time efficient and robust”. No faffing about with sugar bowls and milk jugs – just a moody mug of tea punching you in the face as you tried to hoof it down without getting a fat lip.
Both tea-making methods were far, far away from the ritual and spiritual experience tea should be. My grandparents really should have been subject to a citizen’s arrest.
It was a relief then, as a teenager, to find I was lactose intolerant. This gave me the freedom to roam through a range of milk-free teas. It became my “thing”, and because it was my thing, no one could question it. Everyone wants a teenager who spends their time trying new teas rather than getting new piercings, so everyone was happy.
(I do still add a small shot of whisky to a Lapsang Souchong – a later teenage habit I picked up by way of proving it’s not all teapots and square edges.)
I quickly worked my way through all the fruit teas and established that they are POINTLESS. Very few herbal teas stayed with me. (Although I can’t resist a nettle or camomile tea in the evenings.) Green tea is special. I still remember my first ever Whittard gunpowder tea in its blue shiny packet. However, it was a black tea blend where I found my spiritual home and everyday tea: the Earl Grey and family.
I currently have six different Earl Greys in the cupboard, and I am beside myself to try some new “related” ones, which leads me onto the box of joy that slithered through the letterbox last week!!
The Tea Tasting
On the menu for this tasting are:
- Cupsmith Organic Lady May’s Earl Grey (Smells divine, that burst of citrus and happiness that you need in a tea, I felt myself physically relax as I put my nose into this packet.)
- Tea-Adora Eastern Earl loose leaf (Has an equally refreshing scent in the packet but slightly sharper somehow – need to taste it to decide why. It has tantalising blue petals in the mix, which always means it is going to be nice)
- The Tea Keepers Apricot Breakfast Tea (Smells lush, but all fruit tea does. It’s how it draws you in – only to later crush you. The telling will be in the tasting, but the fact it is a black tea base gives it potential)
The kettle is ON. I am going to use my best cup as a reflection of the level of responsibility I am feeling at this task, and I will report back. There won’t be any real tea research happening; I will just pig out on good tea and tell you whether I like it or not. So in that respect, this is a substandard review – well below normal Fancier quality – but you will find out how I, a complete stranger, feel about these teas, and that’s something.
Cupsmith – Lady May’s Earl Grey
I like this tea, but Lady May’s Earl Grey doesn’t taste as exciting as the packet smells. It does, however, taste very satisfying. It has an impact. I sometimes feel I need to put the kettle straight back on after I have had a cup of tea, and I didn’t with this. The (plastic-free) pyramid tea bags do make a difference, in my opinion, but I think just the quality of the tea is good, and that is the important part.
It describes itself in whimsical terms (to be drunk in the garden under an apple tree), but I found it heavier than its romantic monologue implies. I think it is a good afternoon tea for when you need a bit of a shove to get those last bits of work done, when you want to have a cuppa that you can take a moment to savour – a procrastinating tea perhaps – which is incidentally how I work in the afternoon.
It’s particularly floral on the first cup, but it was softer and sweeter than just a straight black tea, and I did really enjoy it. I picked up the floral notes on the second cup, almost lavender perhaps, but it wasn’t punchy, just a glorious mellow hug. What I can tell you, two cups in, is that it is DELICIOUS. Very, very tasty. Not an all-day, everyday tea for me, on account of that depth and weight it has, but one I will enjoy again and treat myself to here and there.
Cupsmith Lady May’s Earl Grey is on at a discount at Ocado but doesn’t seem to be part of the current product range directly with Cupsmith. The ingredients are the same as the Organic Earl Grey. However, they aren’t as specific about which tree you should be sitting under to drink that one. I wonder whether it hasn’t had the impact on the market that they were hoping for. Possibly because they have marketed it as a sunny day tea or because we are not Edwardian maids taking tea on the lawn these days. Or I’m sipping a limited edition / seasonal blend, and I should be feeling more fancy about it.
Tea-Adora – Eastern Earl
OK, for me, this is a 9/10 tea. It is (although it doesn’t describe itself as such) floral and light. Eastern Earl is not overly lemony, which I thought it might be – what with the lemongrass – but it’s fragrant and has a slight hint of joss stick in a really good way. None of the flavours jostles the other, nothing leaps out and shouts about its presence, but you can taste each element (perhaps made easier because one of the ingredients is simply “flavour”).
Unlike the Cupsmith blend, it doesn’t have that “thud” – the weight that I am really struggling to articulate. It’s slightly more zingy.
If I were to compare these to each other and then – to complicate it – translate that into music, I would say that the Cupsmith is very much a George Ezra: You are singing along, but it is a bit of a blunt instrument and once is enough in any given day. Tea Adora is more of a Taylor Swift: lyrically more interesting and easier to get through. I could take an interest in the Tea-Adora back catalogue. (Sorry, George, but I think your back catalogue might be just Shotgun over and over again). I am definitely going to look at what other teas they have in their range. In fact, I will do that right now. Hang on…
… and bosh! Just like that, I am about to buy their Oolong because it looks so good! As well as the regular black and green teas you would expect to see, they have a seasonal range and sell white teas (which I like but am always making just slightly too strong, and it gets bitter).
Here’s what I like about this tea: it looks good (you can add cornflower petals to any tea, and I am interested), it smells good (sharp and interesting), and it tastes really good.
I did put it through my grandma’s tea test (by which I mean I added more water to the pot after I had guzzled it to see if it would make a second cup with the same leaves), and it kinda failed that, but no one should pass that test really so you can disregard that particular piece of science. The piece of science you should NOT disregard is that my son (who I am delighted to say is a proper tea snob aged 16 and three quarters) LOVED this tea and will 100% be scoffing it all.
The Tea Keepers – Apricot Breakfast Tea
OK – full disclosure: it was mid-afternoon – not breakfast time – when I tasted Apricot Breakfast Tea for the first.
Despite it not being relevant in any way, I need to tell you where it took me when I did the packet sniff test. It took me to the Cinema at Lakeside Essex back in 1997, where the smell of the pick ‘n’ mix clung to your clothes as you waded through the film and for some time after. There was a particular stick-to-your-teeth kind of jelly that I think was designed to be peachy but tasted exactly like this tea smells, and I am totally here for it. I might actually watch Jurassic Park later in celebration of this little memory burst.
So I mithered on about fruit teas and how the smell of the tea is all LIES, and the tea itself is just hot water.
Well, this is NOT the case with this one. The fact that the base is a black tea is a super starting point. It gives the drink substance and purpose. Apricot Breakfast Tea tastes exactly as it smells – it’s fruity and fresh, it’s sweet in the best sort of way, and it’s refreshing. But you know what would make this tea better? That table under the apple tree that Cupsmiths suggested.
This tea would be lovely brewed slightly stronger, then chilled and served over ice on a hot summer day. Perhaps later in the day, as a cocktail mixer with some vodka and fruit zest to sharpen that sweetness back up. (I expect a gin would work with this too, but I don’t really like gin, and my preferred spirit, rum, would almost certainly be too sweet for it. I am no mixologist. We will just have to do some trial-and-error capers over the summer)
Personally, I need something more robust for breakfast. Not quite the fat lip that Irish Grandad would have delivered first thing, but something that means business on the waking-me-up front. This is a good “discussion point” tea, and the thing I don’t want with my breakfast is chit-chat. This is the tea that I am drinking after 4pm and telling myself, “It’s fine. I will definitely get to sleep after a cuppa this late”, and refusing to back down even as I lay in bed wondering why I am still awake.
The Tea Keepers have a really good range of products. (I tutted and pulled a face at the idea of Vanilla Earl Grey, but I bet I’ll buy some to try later). They aren’t too specific about the ingredients for Apricot Breakfast Tea, but then, it’s tea and apricots. They are, however, dead right in their description. As soon as you open the pouch, you are transported to summer. It may have helped that I opened it today, and the sky is as blue and heavenly as it possibly can be. The scent fills your space, and I was immediately ready – eager, even – to drink it. From first sip to the bottom of the cup.
Conclusion
Of these three tea brands, Tea-Adora is the place my next tea parcel will come from. I am genuinely keen to try some of their other blends. I think across the summer, I will probably buy from all three of these brands. They do all offer something completely different.
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Awesome review.