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While the story may be apocryphal, there is a legend about how this tea got its name. As the story goes, this flavored tea received its name from Charles Earl Grey, a man who served as Prime Minister during the 1830s under King William IV. The tea was given to Earl Grey as a gift from a Chinese Mandarin man in response to Grey’s men saving the man’s drowning son.

Flavored with bergamot oil, a pear-shaped citrus that is grown near the Mediterranean, Earl Grey tea is a blended black tea that has an exotic complexity and aroma that is both distinctive and delightful.

No matter the tea’s origins, I always think of two very different things when I drink it. The initial thought is usually of my first visit to London and how I tried my best to avoid “being a tourist” and failed. Secondly, as an avid science fiction fan, I think of Star Trek’s Jean-Luc Picard asking the food replicator for “Tea. Earl Grea. Hot.”