Bergamot grows on a strip of coast about a hundred kilometres long at the toe of Italy, between Villa San Giovanni and Gioiosa Jonica. Calabria makes about ninety percent of the world’s bergamot oil, and the fruit is a symbol of the city of Reggio.
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, was Prime Minister from 1830 to 1834; his government passed the Reform Act of 1832 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which ended slavery in the British Empire. Legend has it a Chinese mandarin blended the tea for him, with bergamot to offset the lime in the spring water at Howick Hall, his Northumberland seat, and that Lady Grey served it in London until Twinings was asked to sell it; the family, by its own account, never registered the name and never saw a penny in royalties. Grey never went to China. The record shows bergamot-flavoured tea from 1824, used, it seems, to make cheap tea taste finer, and the first published Earl Grey tea in 1880s advertisements from Jermyn Street.
The cornflower in the leaf was once a weed of Europe’s grain fields; the story goes that Queen Louise of Prussia hid her children in a field of them from Napoleon’s soldiers. In Canada the cup became the London Fog, first poured, so the lore runs, in a Vancouver café in the 1990s.
Earl Grey, Organic is the classic, Ceylon black tea and bergamot. Earl Grey Blue Flower, Organic and Cream of Earl Grey carry the cornflowers, and the Cream is the London Fog cup at home. Earl Grey, Green takes the bergamot onto green tea, and Earl Grey, Rooibos makes it caffeine-free.
