Earl Grey tea - looking for recommendations

[vrdiver]

I tend to drink Earl Grey during the day and have tried various brands, settling on Twinings as the best supermarket-available brand, but I'd be interested to hear if anybody has a recommendation for a better flavour.

[Urbandreamer]

Well to be honest it's got to be a personal opinion, but we use to enjoy Morrisons own brand Earl Grey.

We have since moved on to Asam, but from the same source. I suspect that to a degee the different seems wrong. In the case of Earl Grey perfumed enough to adversly effect the taste, or of course the converse.

I do have to confess that it is now a special trip to buy our tea so you shouldn't read too much into the own brand bit.

[midnightcatprowl]

I also drink Earl Grey during the day and it is my tea of choice for that first all important cup of tea after getting up in the morning. I've tried a lot of different Earl Grey's over the years but have never found anything I like better than Clipper Teas Earl Grey. As well as more specialist shops it can be found in some larger supermarket branches, I recently bought some in a large Sainsbury's supermarket.

As I like experimenting I did recently try a Pukka Tea Earl Grey (Pukka Teas are currently fashionable in both Sainsbury's and Tesco supermarkets and very likely elsewhere but that's where I've seen them), which is called "Pukka Gorgeous Earl Grey Tea" it has an unusual recipe

is an inspiring infusion of organic whole leaf tea, bergamot & lavender

and I couldn't resist trying it. All I can say is 'not for me' but it was snapped up when I offered the rest of the opened packet on the OIio Food Sharing App.

Taste buds differ but I regard Twinings Tea, despite the nice packaging, as really low grade stuff and avoid ordering tea in any cafe where I spot that it is going to be Twinings. It is also not Fair Trade which in today's day and age I find unacceptable.

Certainly Clipper (and Pukka) is more expensive than Twinings. Sadly too many people have to watch every single penny but you don't it is worth reflecting that tea is the cheapest drink after water and good tea is a great pleasure so if you really love tea rather than regarding it as just a hot drink it can be well worth paying that bit more.

[vrdiver]

I've tried Asda and Aldi Earl Grey recently and found them, well, insipid. Mrs VRD bought some Jing teas, which I did think were nice, but I'm lazy and tend to use teabags in the pot, rather than loose leaf, but I'm beginning to think it might be worth the hassle if the tea brewed is better.

Twinings Tea... is also not Fair Trade which in today's day and age I find unacceptable.

I hadn't twigged that. I shall do a little research into how they source their tea to see if it is "equivalent" to Fair Trade standards, but if not, I shall drop them. As you say, there's really no excuse.

Sadly too many people have to watch every single penny but you don't it is worth reflecting that tea is the cheapest drink after water and good tea is a great pleasure so if you really love tea rather than regarding it as just a hot drink it can be well worth paying that bit more.

Agreed. Twinings, when on offer (hat tip to LBYM) is £3 for 100 tea bags, so 3p a cup or, if you make it like I do, three mugs from a pot with two teabags, so 2p a mug for the tea component. Compared to Mrs VRD's diet coke (the real thing, mind you!) it doesn't register on the grocery bill!

[Geebert]

Twinings gets my vote.

I do like some of the Kusmi teas as well.

[dionaeamuscipula]

Twinings Tea... is also not Fair Trade which in today's day and age I find unacceptable.

I hadn't twigged that. I shall do a little research into how they source their tea to see if it is "equivalent" to Fair Trade standards, but if not, I shall drop them. As you say, there's really no excuse.
!

There is a certain amount of controversy about fair trade, not least of which is that only 2% to 18% of the extra paid by the consumer actually gets to the farmer.

DM

[bionichamster]

Well to be honest it's got to be a personal opinion, but we use to enjoy Morrisons own brand Earl Grey.

So did we, but for the last six months or more it has had virtually no flavour at all so we recently switched back to the considerably pricier Twinings, out of interest did you notice a change in the Morrisons EG?

BH

[Urbandreamer]

So did we, but for the last six months or more it has had virtually no flavour at all so we recently switched back to the considerably pricier Twinings, out of interest did you notice a change in the Morrisons EG?

BH

We stopped drinking EG before the recent change so I can't comment. Somewhat ammusingly when the re-branded their own tea into black boxes they reduced the price to 50p to clear the shelves. What we bought kept us in tea for 6 months for about 1/2p per cup.

[paulnumbers]

I tend to drink Earl Grey during the day and have tried various brands, settling on Twinings as the best supermarket-available brand, but I'd be interested to hear if anybody has a recommendation for a better flavour.

I use the "tesco finest" verson. IIRC it's considerably cheaper than Twinnings, and I can't tell the difference.