Mighty Leaf’s Orange Dulce is part of my daily rotation of teas. While my fellow Earl Grey lovers might find the orange essence a mere echo of the bite of bergamot, I find it a refreshing change, going for the subtle over brass. The vanilla turns this drink into a sort of instant London Fog, perhaps a sweeter springtime one.
Mind you, I still drink Smith’s Lord Bergamot in the mornings, but Orange Dulce is quite right at any time of the day. Even during 6 hour meetings.
Maker: Queen Mary
Type: Earl Grey black tea
Brew: 1 tsp / cup, boiling, 3 min
While Earl Grey’s brisk citrus flavor is quite welcome, it can sometimes pack a punch—hence why it’s often a favorite tea to mix with milk, especially if it’s a black Earl Grey. Such a milk and black Earl Grey drink is popular enough to have a name: the London Fog.
For the dairy-intolerant among us, or for those without easy access to milk, there’s still a way to have a London Fog kind of experience: by softening the taste of the bergamot oil with another ingredient. While such blends normally use cream and/or vanilla flavoring to do this, Creamy Earl Grey instead uses malva flowers.
Malva is otherwise known as marsh mallow, which sounds familiar to you if you’ve ever had S’mores. Marshmallow confections these days have no actual marsh mallow ingredients, but they used to use the roots of the mallow.
The malva/mallow flowers are quite effective softening taste—they can be used as a thickening agent after all—and do so without adding what may to some be too much of a milk flavor. In contrast, some Earl Grey blends use corn flowers, which look pretty but seem not to do much for taste. Lavender softens taste in another way, by adding floral notes, but for flowers in Earl Grey, nothing beats malva for me.
Rating: 4/5—an excellent everyday tea for a more subtle afternoon Earl Grey
Maker: Harney & Sons
Type: black earl grey tea
Brew: 1 sachet / 12 oz, 5 min at boiling
It’s not a tea bag, it’s a sachet. I make this distinction only because the first one contains tea dust, while the second one contains actual tea leaves. The first, for black teas at least, tends to make a quick, brisk (or often bitter) brew, while the second needs a longer steep time but ultimately has a more full taste. It’s the difference between Bigelow’s Earl Grey tea packets and Mighty Leaf’s Organic Earl Grey sachets, but I digress from this post’s star, Harney & Sons’ Earl Grey Supreme.
And it truly deserves the name “supreme”. Not because it adds extra bergamot, but because this tea uses higher quality tea leaves—very high quality, and so it doesn’t need the extra bergamot to enhance this endearing taste of any Earl Grey tea. There’s no bitterness to overcome, nothing to block the scrumptious melting of Ceylon and bergamot.
However.
I’ve discovered my new supreme Earl Grey, and it isn’t this one. Still, Earl Grey Supreme still gets my nod for best tea naming itself Earl Grey.
Rating: 4/5—one of the best Earl Greys around.
Maker: Harney & Sons
Type: flavored black tea
Brew: 1 tsp / cup, boiling, 5 min
Paris is the sublime vanilla tea I mentioned back in my review of another of Harney & Sons’ “Famous Cities” series of teas. While H&S does feature a pure black vanilla tea (creatively named “Vanilla”) as well as a welcome decaffeinated version (Vanilla Comoro), this vanilla tea is additionally adorned with floral and fruit flavorings.
I’m usually not a fan of floral tea blends, but the vanilla makes a charming host even to one of my more disliked tea ingredients. This is rather an impressive blend that way. That such a delicate-seeming blend can withstand a full 5 minutes brew is astounding in a tea world where lightly flavored black teas often need to be babied to 3 minutes. The longer brew time allows for the full high-quality black tea background taste to develop.
Of the cities line, Paris is the best black tea; and amongst blender-specific teas, Paris is one of the best flavored black tea blends period.
Next time we’ll look at another tea in the same line, a green tea named Bangkok.
Rating: 5/5—Harney & Sons’ unique masterpiece.
Maker: Sir Robert’s Tea
Type: flavored black tea
Brew: 1 tsp / cup, boiling, 3 min
Some tropical fruit tea blends are stronger than others; this one is much more moderate, partly because the fine black tea overlays the fruits. This blend actually contains a non-tropical fruit, apples, which means this tea doesn’t taste too exotic. This may be a bonus for some, and does lend an individual air to the taste so kudos to Sir Roberts.
Still, I prefer my tropical teas to be straight-up tropical fruits. My preference when it comes to tropical fruit teas still lies with Mighty Leaf’s Green Tea Tropical, even though it’s not a black tea.
Rating: 3/5—a unique blend of the exotic (to the northern hemisphere) with the familiar is still a bit too familiar for me.
Maker: Queen Mary
Type: flavored black tea
Brew: 1 tsp / cup, boiling, 3-4 min
When I sipped French Vanilla this morning, I was surprised. I’ve drunk this tea in the past, of course, but it’s only been lately that I’ve really expanded and start to analyze the taste of a tea. Compared to Queen Mary’s Coconut and Strawberry Pepper, there was a distinct smoothness about the cup.
So for the first time I examined, rather than glanced at, the ingredients.
China black tea. Whereas Coconut and Strawberry only specified “black tea”. I looked at the rest of my Queen Maty teas, and discovered that my favorites—Creamy Earl Grey and Lady Grey—were also China black teas.
What’s the difference? you may ask. There are actually two main branches of the tea family that are commonly used to make black tea: a Chinese variety, and the so-called Assamese variety. They actually do differ on taste, but one isn’t naturally better than the other. However, the smaller leaves of China black are much less prone to breaking, whereas the larger leaves of Assamese are. I think the result is that China black teas will more often taste better than the often more broken Assamese.
This is all a long way of saying: French Vanilla is great. The vanilla is more subtle than that of Harney & Sons’ Vanilla, as well as Mighty Leaf’s Vanilla Bean, but that quality befits a French vanilla taste. And the background of smooth China black tea means the taste is nice and full.
Rating: 4/5—a more subtle yet working vanilla tea is always welcome in the cabinet.
Maker: Harney & Sons [product link]
Type: Flavored black
Brew: 1 rounded tsp / cup, boiling water, 5 min
Notes: Also known as their Chocolate Hazelnut tea
The best thing about Harney & Sons tea is that they have a great tea base for any of their teas. The leaves are nice and big, even when dry and furled up. If they have any fault with most of their flavored black teas, it’s that they prefer flavor infusion over including real ingredients nestled in the tea. It’s not much different with Florence, which relies on chocolate and hazelnut flavor infusion.
Sometimes this method works, as for many of their black teas (including the sublime Paris), but sometimes it’s a bit less successful. The only reason this isn’t a 5-star tea to me is that the chocolate and hazelnut flavors are weaker than they should be, so they’re felt mostly on the aftertaste rather than during the tea drinking itself. Compare this tea to their Chocolate Mint, which includes real mint leaves alongside chocolate-infused tea; the combination works quite well. For some reason, Florence’s chocolate/hazelnut combined infusion doesn’t bring out the best in either.
At least Florence’s base tea is of high quality, so waiting around for the aftertaste to kick in isn’t a bad affair. But there’s a reason this is less popular than Paris.
Rating: 3/5—More than adequate, but could be much more.
Maker: Queen Mary [product link]
Type: flavored black
Brew: 1 tsp per cup, boiling water for 3-4 min
Notes: only available loose
You know, photographing tea isn’t too hard. I wish more review sites did it instead of co-opting pictures from the tea distributors’ and/or tea blenders’ sites, but that’s just me. This isn’t the best of quality; simply my iPhone underneath near-natural lighting.
Anyways: Strawberry Pepper. This may seem like a rather strange combination, but it works. The sweet slight tartness of strawberries (real pieces, dried, as well as flavoring infusing the tea leaves) combined with the slight bite of pink peppercorns—which aren’t anything like, or even related to, most peppercorns—brings out the best in each flavor. Why? It seems magical to me; perhaps it’s like melody and counter-melody in music.
However, and most unfortunately, this is counterbalanced by an unfortunately bland harmony. I must be developing either a tea palette or a tea snobbery, because I can now taste the differences between the base of a black tea, and it’s only a bit above mediocre in this otherwise fine tea blend.
Curiously, a similar strawberry blend has popped up elsewhere, and I may partake of it to see if the tea is fine, or if it’s traditionally such that less fine teas are popped in for a flavored tea. Harney & Sons don’t seem to skimp in this manner, but perhaps it’s just par for the course in the tea blending world.
Rating: 3/5—we may part, but it’ll be on amicable terms.
Maker: Queen Mary
Type: Flavored black tea
Brew: 1 tsp to 6 oz boiling water, 3 min
Notes: Loose leaf only
As coconut-flavored teas go, Queen Mary’s Coconut isn’t a bad tea; it’s just middle-of-the-road, although this still puts it above the likes of a large number of more commercial teas.
Coconut isn’t the most delicate flavor in the world of cooking and baking, but it seems to be so here; despite being a black tea, QM Coconut needs a 3-minute brew time. Any more and the bitterness of a semi-good black tea base takes over.
However, of my coconut teas, this is a welcome tea in the mornings. The others are a green tea, an oolong, a rooibos, and a traditionalish tisane. Hmmm. Rather a nice theme, that.
Rating: 3/5 — enjoyable when a necessity
Maker: Harney & Sons
Type: Flavored black tea
Brew: 1 tsp to 8oz or 1 sachet to 12 oz boiling water, 5 minutes
Notes: comes both loose and in convenient sachets
The black tea base of Chocolate Mint is high quality, which is essential for a good flavored black tea—well, essential for any tea, really, as flavoring doesn’t give a tea maker an excuse to use low-grade tea. For those of us who dislike the bite in most black teas, the chocolate extract and the addition of peppermint create one of the smoothest black tea experiences around. I’ve tried the plain Chocolate version; it’s the refreshing taste of the peppermint that makes the blend work.
This tea is one of my favorite pick-me-up teas. I wish there was a decaf or herbal version for the evenings, but that’s what Mighty Leaf’s Chocolate Mint Truffle is for.
Rating: 5/5 — a staple in the tea pantry
