Sainsbury’s – Earl Grey
Surprisingly, I haven’t reviewed Sainsbury’s Earl Grey before. I thought I had. But, having consulted the Tea Fancier archives, I can confirm that while I have reviewed Sainsbury’s Decaf Earl Grey and Sainsbury’s Ceylon, its own-brand caff Earl Grey remains undocumented.
At one point in my life, Sainsbury’s Earl Grey was my Earl Grey of choice. At some point, I switched to Twinings Earl Grey for my daily morning review.
In order to fully appreciate Sainsbury’s Earl Grey, I did a taste test with two other Earl Grey brands – Twinings and Whittard. Before embarking on my 3-cup endeavour, I would have predicted that the teas would be ranked in the order of Whittard, Twinings, & Sainsburys.
But, shockingly, this isn’t what happened.
Oh, Whittard is still the best; make no mistake about that. The bergamot is bergamotier, the tea is teaier, and it’s altogether a higher quality brew. (It costs twice as much as Twinings and four times more than Sainsbury’s, so it should be.)
But when it came to the other two blends, I was surprised to find that I actually enjoyed the Sainsbury’s blend more than Twinings.
So, clearly, I made a misjudgment when I switched over to Twinings. Or maybe Sainsbury’s have improved their blend since then? The thing is, once we have established that Sainsbury’s Earl tastes – to my uneducated palate – a bit better than Twinings, there’s not really a lot to say on the matter.
If I were comparing different chai blends, I could compare the differences in their recipes, but Sainsbury’s and Twinings Earl Greys are much of a muchness when it comes to their ingredients. Both contain black tea and natural flavourings.
At 2.6p per teabag, Sainsbury’s Earl Grey is considerably cheaper than its Twinings equivalent, which works out at 6p per bag, based on a pack of 80. However, Twinings does score better when it comes to the environment. All Twinings teabags are now biodegradable, and you can plonk your used teabag straight in the food recycling bin. Sainsbury’s doesn’t make any such claim and, in fact, says “don’t recycle teabag paper” on the product information for their tea on the website.
Is that sufficient reason to pay more than twice as much for slightly inferior tea? It might just be, you know. The jury is still out.
(And for anybody who takes any notice of my star ratings, yes, I know that I gave Twinings Earl Grey five stars and I’ve given Sainsbury’s four stars, but that’s because, with hindsight, the Twinings ranking was massively over-generous. I have had many much better Earl Greys since then. If I could go back and change those five Twinings stars, I would*.)
(* Yes, OK, I could totally go back and change the ranking if I wanted to. It’s technologically possible to edit the page. But it seems disingenuous to do so.)
Today’s featured book is Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens. I like to pair Dickens wth Earl Grey teas because he was a contemporary of the second Earl Grey. (Or Earl Grey II: The Revenge as his mates (possibly) called him.)
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