FROM THE FOUNDER
It’s exhilarating to create something genuine, made completely from scratch, my own unique creation. I find it totally inspiring and exhausting. This “desire” to create can sometimes be my worst enemy, or my best friend, but this time, I have to say Earl Royale and me are now BFF.
For this tea, it just wasn’t enough for me to source a ready-made Earl Grey (as is the usual practice), I had to do it myself. In the tea industry, it doesn’t take long to realise that flavouring is a common way for tea companies to make cheap tea profitable – put enough flavouring on poor-grade tea and voila, the smell itself is enough to sell your product. You also mask those nasty flavours… at least a bit (but that aftertaste ugh!). And then there’s the “bergamot” oil. In my tea travels I have also discovered that genuine bergamot oil is rarely applied to tea due to the high cost and limited shelf-life. Usually a blend of flavours similar to bergamot oil is used instead.
So when I created this tea, at great risk, I went and ordered a whole kilogram of genuine bergamot oil, all the way from Italy, and got mixing with our signature Yunnan Province Tielka Breakfast Black Tea. A few cornflower petals and some sweet orange peel thrown into the mix and there it was – Earl Royale Black Tea.
We see an interesting pattern when people buy this tea. First purchase – one small box of Earl Royale, second purchase (a week later) – one medium pouch of Earl Royale, followed by regular monthly top-ups. There’s something about that bright smell, the first citrusy mouthful and then there’s an unexpected WOW note at the end. It’s a completely pleasant and defining aftertaste of gorgeous, full-of-depth black tea. Rare? Definitely. This one is the pride of the Tielka collection.
Happy brewing!
Rebecca Domorev
Additional Information
FROM THE FOUNDER
It’s exhilarating to create something genuine, made completely from scratch, my own unique creation. I find it totally inspiring and exhausting. This “desire” to create can sometimes be my worst enemy, or my best friend, but this time, I have to say Earl Royale and me are now BFF.
For this tea, it just wasn’t enough for me to source a ready-made Earl Grey (as is the usual practice), I had to do it myself. In the tea industry, it doesn’t take long to realise that flavouring is a common way for tea companies to make cheap tea profitable – put enough flavouring on poor-grade tea and voila, the smell itself is enough to sell your product. You also mask those nasty flavours… at least a bit (but that aftertaste ugh!). And then there’s the “bergamot” oil. In my tea travels I have also discovered that genuine bergamot oil is rarely applied to tea due to the high cost and limited shelf-life. Usually a blend of flavours similar to bergamot oil is used instead.
So when I created this tea, at great risk, I went and ordered a whole kilogram of genuine bergamot oil, all the way from Italy, and got mixing with our signature Yunnan Province Tielka Breakfast Black Tea. A few cornflower petals and some sweet orange peel thrown into the mix and there it was – Earl Royale Black Tea.
We see an interesting pattern when people buy this tea. First purchase – one small box of Earl Royale, second purchase (a week later) – one medium pouch of Earl Royale, followed by regular monthly top-ups. There’s something about that bright smell, the first citrusy mouthful and then there’s an unexpected WOW note at the end. It’s a completely pleasant and defining aftertaste of gorgeous, full-of-depth black tea. Rare? Definitely. This one is the pride of the Tielka collection.
Happy brewing!
Rebecca Domorev
