TE01: Season's Pick Earl Grey Creme Vanilla

Smells and tastes like an orange creamsicle. Thats all I can really say about this tea. My girlfriend loves it, and it tastes as good as it smells.

If you know anyone who likes orange creamsicles, I would recommend this tea without question.

That is all.

It’s pretty rare in my experience for a vanilla-flavored tea to taste as good as it smells. I’m glad I gave this tea a chance because I’m usually disappointed by vanilla-flavored teas. Maybe it’s the combination with bergamot that makes the vanilla flavor pop out. I got this as part of a sampler pack but I will most likely be ordering a full packet of it!

I really enjoy this tea as a breakfast tea with a bit of sugar. I also take it to class with me in a thermal mug and the vanilla and cream elements really help make it feel like there’s more to the tea to keep me going when the class seems to be dragging on and on without a break. (Many of my classes are 3 hours long and fall over lunch.) It would also be a very relaxing evening cup on a cold night – sweet and rich.

This is a wonderful dessert tea, nice with some sugar cookies or other simple pastry.

The creamy vanilla scent is lovely. There is a good cream and bergamot flavour. While the citrus notes are a bit lighter, it is still a nice cozy blend.

(Earl Grey is the unofficial tea of winter.)

This is my go-to Earl Grey but it’s not my favorite. I find that it’s really bitter, almost oily, and it doesn’t have that mild floral flavor that some Earl Greys have. It needs a copious amount of milk to make it something palatable, and somehow adding sugar just makes it more bitter, but it brings out some of the vanilla.

The upside to this tea is that it’s cheap.

I have enjoyed Earl Grey for years. For ages, I would take it ‘british’, with ample sugar and cream. Once I started traveling more often, I started seeking a way to keep the soft creme notes in the tea without having to actually keep dairy around since it was getting very wasteful.

This tea is, by far, the best way to enjoy that same sort of flavor without needing creamer of any type.

I just got a sample of this and I’m glad I did. Dry, this tea smells like bergamotty cookies!
The taste is pleasantly strong if you steep it for half the time recommended on the package. The flavor reminded me of lemon biscotti with vanilla icing on it, and was improved by a dot of sugar. It’s not a zesty or tart lemon, much more like lemon that has been baked in a cookie. The vanilla became more evident with sugar and when the tea had cooled.
Overall it is a pleasant experience, but it is so flavorful/robust that I have a hard time drinking it without milk, and I’m not a fan of milk in my tea!

I could have sworn that I’ve drank this tea before, long ago, but I don’t want to blame Steepster for eating my note because it is entirely possible that I haven’t and just thought I had.

Anyway, my work tea buddy Equusfell got a sample of this in a recent Upton order, found it to be very bergamotty and thought of me, the bergamot lover. :) She described the scent of the dry leaf as bergamot and cookies, and I can agree with that. The vanilla in this really brings out the cookie-ish notes that I can sometimes find in Earl Greys.

This is both heavy on the vanilla and heavy on the bergamot. Whatever base they put on this can’t really stand up to it. It has a slight tendancy to go almost bitter on the aftertaste, like the pith of a lemon, and the sweet vanilla cream can’t quite cover it up. But overall a pretty tasty tea.

Whoa! I was not expecting this tea to have such a distinct lime scent. To me, it smells exactly like key lime pie, both the dry leaf and after it’s steeped. I’ve had Earl Greys with vanilla before, but I don’t remember them smelling quite like this. (I went and sniffed my sample of Adagio’s Earl Grey Moonlight, just to be sure… Yup, that one smells more like a traditional Earl Grey, with a very faint note of vanilla.) Maybe it’s an effect of the “cream flavor” Upton mentions on their site? It’s a delicious smell, though, so I’m not complaining!

Taste-wise, this is more what I expected… A bright black tea with mild astringency (Ceylon?), coupled with the crisp citrus of bergamot, and softened by cream/vanilla. I don’t find the cream flavor dominant, but it’s certainly present. It smooths out the citrus, and gives this tea a sweet aftertaste. (I also detect a bit of that “key lime” note in the aftertaste. Interesting!) Not my favorite Earl Grey with vanilla, but a pleasant blend worth sampling. If you like both Earl Grey and key lime pie, I would definitely recommend it!