Bergamot is a citrus fruit grown almost exclusively in the Calabria region of southern Italy. It looks like a yellow-green orange, smells like nothing else, and is too bitter and sour to eat. Its only commercial use is the oil pressed from its rind.
The bergamot in supermarket Earl Grey is usually synthetic — a lab-made compound that approximates the real oil at a fraction of the cost. You can taste the difference: synthetic bergamot reads like floor cleaner; the real thing reads like the smell of a Mediterranean garden in summer.
Real bergamot oil is cold-pressed from the rind of fresh fruit. The yield is tiny — a kilogram of fruit produces about 2g of oil. That's why real bergamot tea is more expensive: the input is rarer.
Our Earl Grey Supreme uses cold-pressed Calabrian bergamot oil from a co-op that's been pressing it for four generations. The base is a single-estate Ceylon black tea — chosen because it's bright enough to let the bergamot breathe rather than bury it.
How to spot a quality Earl Grey: smell the dry leaves. Real bergamot smells fresh, citrus-floral, and slightly bitter. Synthetic bergamot smells perfumey and one-dimensional. The difference is more obvious dry than brewed.
