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I thought I’d posted a note for this tea already, but I guess not.

Full disclosure, I can’t give this tea an honest review and you can take what I say with a grain of salt, because this is the first blend I created from the ground up and released through Murchie’s. So I’m a little biased and pretty proud of it.

I like earl greys, but personally, am not a fan of Murchie’s earl grey. It uses a lot of bright, light and brisk teas—Darjeeling, Nepal and Ceylons—with a very heavy dose of bergamot. I find it a tad too acidic, so I set out to make an earl grey I’d drink.

This’ what I ended up coming up with. Going the complete opposite direction, this uses Assam, Yunnan and Keemun teas. The result is a very deep, malty brew, with a bit of smoke, a bit of nut, a faint natural sweetness, and overall just very smooth. I opted for tippy Assam and Yunnan teas, hence the name. The amount of bergamot used is medium-light; I was hitting for a ratio that complimented but didn’t dominate it.

It does use artificial and natural bergamot, because the sad reality is natural bergamot oil lasts a whole month on tea before dissipating completely, in every test I tried.

We’ve been extremely busy at work so I’ve been spending a lot of long hours and guzzling Earl’s Gold a lot. I’ve also been bringing a lot of my work home (namely samples that need tasting), so I had this on-hand. I reach for it often enough.

Bergamot in the right context smells a bit like Fruit Loops to me, and this is one of them.