As promised in the title of this article I will now attempt to regale, thrill and enlighten you with some tidbits and trivia about Earl Grey tea. But first a few basic facts. Earl Grey is named for a real person – an actual English Earl who lived in the nineteenth century. The other key fact about Earl Grey tea is that it is most often made with a base of black tea and is flavored with the oil of a citrus fruit called bergamot.

That’s the Reader’s Digest version, of course, but you can read more about this type of tea here. Perhaps a measure of Earl Grey’s popularity and influence is the fact that so many musicians and bands have used it in song titles. If you don’t believe it go to your favorite online music vendor and do a search.

There are even a number of musicians who have co-opted the name for themselves. I have to admit that I’m not familiar with them but they include The Earl Grey, which is apparently the alter ego of one Alex Teg. Earl Grey And Croquet are a band of rockers from South Africa and Earl Grey Policy hail from Melbourne, Australia. In keeping with that international flavor is Earl Grey and the Loose Leaves, who operate from a home base in Edinburgh, Scotland.

I won’t even go into all of the many book titles that somehow incorporate Earl Grey, though I will say that Fifty Shames of Earl Grey: A Parody is a rather clever one. It features a main character named Earl Grey and a well-dressed man on the cover dunking a tea bag. Or, if you prefer the cinema to fine literature, you could try My Earl Grey, a romantic comedy that rolled out in 2012.

In a slightly different vein, let’s assume that Earl Grey is a pretty popular type of tea. And that there are those who like it quite a bit. I’m not one of them but you if you want to get a load of someone who’s truly a fan then head on over to The Earl Grey Addict. Whose proprietor is chronicling “A man’s journey to taste and review every Earl Grey on the planet.”

See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.

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