Whole-leaf Kenyan black tea scented with cold-pressed bergamot oil, in 12 compostable pyramid bags. Aromatic and rich, with bright citrus and wildflowers. Two ingredients: Kenyan black tea and organic cold-pressed bergamot oil.
What bergamot is
The strangest fruit in the citrus family, and the one thing that makes Earl Grey Earl Grey.
Citrus bergamia is a sour, pear-shaped citrus — probably a cross between lemon and bitter orange — grown almost entirely on one narrow strip of the Calabrian coast in southern Italy. It has been tried elsewhere and it does not thrive; nobody is quite sure why.
Nobody eats it. It is grown for the oil in its peel, which is bright, floral, faintly bitter and completely unmistakable, and which is the single most important top note in classical perfumery — it opens eau de cologne and it opens Chanel No 5.
Cold-pressed, and why that matters here
The oil is cold-pressed from the peel rather than distilled or synthesised. That matters because the most volatile, most citrusy compounds do not survive distillation well, and because a great deal of commercial Earl Grey is flavoured with synthetic bergamot aroma, which smells one-dimensional next to the real thing.
It also means the scent fades faster. Real bergamot oil on tea leaf loses its brightness over months; synthetic flavouring does not. If your Earl Grey has quietly become ordinary black tea, that is what happened — keep the tin sealed and drink it within a year.
Steep it shorter than you think
Bergamot and tannin pull in opposite directions. The bergamot aromatics come out fast; the tannins keep building. Steep Earl Grey for five minutes and you get a strong, astringent tea in which the bergamot has been buried.
Three minutes. Then take the bag out.
Without milk
Milk proteins bind tea polyphenols and, in practice, flatten the bergamot. Earl Grey with milk is a British habit rather than a good idea, and if you have only ever had it that way it is worth trying black once, with a slice of lemon or nothing at all.
Two footnotes worth having
Phototoxicity. Expressed bergamot oil is phototoxic on skin — bergapten reacts with UV light and can cause burns and lasting pigmentation. It is a reason to be careful with bergamot in leave-on skincare. It has nothing whatever to do with drinking it.
Caffeine. Declared high. Roughly 40–70 mg a cup. EFSA advises staying below 200 mg a day in total during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
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