Growing up in Singapore, I never knew about Mariage Frères. If you mentioned local tea brands, when I was young, I probably wouldn’t have known any. By the time I left for university, the only brands I knew would be The 1872 Clipper Tea Co. and TWG. But when I moved overseas, I learnt about Mariage Frères, the brand that inspired TWG. The Mariage Frères I have now was a gift (from Japan) and since I’m cleaning out my tea cabinets, I decided that it was time to start drinking them.

If you’re wondering how I’m managed to keep my hands off these, it’s because they were in a box and the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” applies to me.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but Earl Grey is a pretty tricky blend for me because I don’t like blends with too much bergamot oil. It doesn’t help that a lot of blends will use bergamot flavouring, which I am not a fan of. So a lot depends on what they use to flavour the tea and how much they put in it.

The tea did not give me a good first impression because the dry leaves had a very strong bergamot scent. I’ve read that this blend uses real bergamot oil, so that was one hurdle passed. The only thing left to do was to see how strong the scent and flavour of bergamot was in the brewed tea.

The tea liquor is a light reddish brown and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the scent had mellowed out. That said, the taste of bergamot was still a bit too strong for me. It wasn’t overpowering (I could finish the cup and I can probably finish the can if I have guests over), but I won’t be looking to buy more of this. I would, however, recommend this to people who prefer a stronger Earl Grey.

I’ve got one more Mariage Frères to try so I’m pretty excited to see how that goes!