The local supermarket is finally carrying Twinings tea and, wanting to try actual English tea, I decided to buy some Earl Grey. First, my sense of smell isn’t that good. So, when I take the plastic wrap off the box, the smell just hits me. I open the box, grab a packet and I can smell the tea. The tea that’s in an enclosed packet. So, either the tea itself has a** very ** strong scent, the package is permeable to scents or Twinnings is adding something. Which is it?
I find Bergamot to be a very strong and vaguely unpleasant flavor/scent, and the packets are not impermeable.
It’s simply the nature of Earl Grey to have that strong, perfume-like smell. Like SeaDragonTattoo says, you’re smelling the bergamot in the tea itself.
Try ‘English Breakfast’ for a lighter, or ‘Assam’ or ‘Ceylon’ for a stronger tea. Earl Grey I find as unspeakable as the old bastard it was named for.
Irish Breakfast is real smooth no matter how you drink it.
Mmmmmmmm. . .grey tea.
Loves me some Earl Grey - hot or cold. Tea in general, really, but I’ve gotten out of the habit. Wish I did better with caffeine, so I didn’t have to go with the decaf. Used to like Twinings quite a bit, but I seem to recall a fuss some time back where they changed the bergamot in the Earl Grey. Don’t know what it’s like now. Might have to pick some up soon.
Twinings Lady Grey is more subtle than the Earl Grey, and the smell won’t hit you when you open the box. It stays inside the packets.
The type I bought was the “Classic” version, apparently sort of like Classic Coke, after their disaster with adding twice the bergamont. My store only had this version, so I don’t’ know if the new Coke version is available in the U.S.
Oh good GOD! If they really, literally, added twice the bergamot, anyone involved with that decision needs their smell/taste/head examined. I LIKE the old Earl Grey a lot, but subtle it wasn’t. Doubling it is questionable at best; insane is closer to the truth of it. Fancy a spot of tea with your bergamot?
So far as I can tell, you’ve smelled it, not tasted it. Have you tried it yet? I like it sweet, no milk.
Twinings Earl Grey is my favorite. I never ran into the “improved” version – perhaps because I buy a couple of months’ worth at a time from the website?
I second the suggestion of Lady Grey.
I don’t find Twinning to be particularly strong or perfumy. Which is why I like it. Bigelow tastes and smells like potpourri.
I finally had a cup. I like it. Most Earl Greys either have too much bergamot (the store has Stash’s Double Bergamot Earl Grey) or too little. This one is balanced. I might stock up the next time I at the store lest they stop stocking it.
I also prefer Lady Grey.
I hate hate hate Earl Grey. It tastes weird, and the ‘aftersmell’ - what you can smell/taste on the palate after the swallow - reminds me of dishwashing liquid.
My wife and I are great fans of Twining Prince of Wales - a longer, tightly-curled leaf with a smoky flavour. There is only one supermarket brand in Australia that sells it as leaf tea (even Twinings tea-bags are full of dust!), and we couldn’t buy it in Europe - even England [The historic Twinings shop on The Strand doesn’t sell to the public, and Harrods didn’t stock it - we realised afterwards Dodi Fayed’s father still owned it, and still had it in for the PoW].
We were so desperate, that in a French teashop we ordered 100g of “your smokiest blend, s’il vous plaît”.
We got what we asked for. It tasted like campfire ashes.