Category: Tea Ingredients

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Cardamom and Tea: Why This Spice Has Been in Indian Chai for Four Hundred Years

Cardamom And Tea — Cardamom and Tea: Why This Spice Has Been in Indian Chai for Four Hundred Years — is one of the topics we explore on The Tea Story blog, drawing on our direct experience growing, processing, and tasting tea from our own garden in West Garo Hills, Meghalaya.

The green cardamom pod — Elettaria cardamomum — is native to the moist forests of the Western Ghats in India, and has been in continuous cultivation there for at least two thousand years. It travelled early along the spice trade routes: it appears in ancient Greek texts, in Roman records, and in the earliest Arab spice markets. By the time the Mughal court in Delhi had established its full culinary ambition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, cardamom was a fixture in both sweet and savoury preparations.

Its arrival in tea is probably no earlier than the eighteenth century, when tea itself was becoming more widely available in India. But the combination — green tea or black tea, milk, cardamom, and sometimes ginger, cinnamon, and black pepper — developed quickly into the masala chai template that has remained essentially stable for two hundred years.

What Cardamom Smells Like and Why It Works in Tea

Green cardamom’s aroma is dominated by 1,8-cineole (also present in eucalyptus and rosemary) and several terpene compounds, including alpha-terpinyl acetate and linalool. The combination produces something that is sweet, vaguely floral, slightly camphor-adjacent, and recognisable from across a room. It is one of the most complex single-spice aromatics in the kitchen.

In tea, cardamom does two things. It adds its own fragrance, obviously. But it also seems to lift and clarify the tea aroma in a way that neither element alone achieves — a synergistic effect where the cardamom’s volatiles interact with the tea’s own aromatic compounds to produce something more interesting than either in isolation. This is why chai brewed with cardamom smells better than plain tea and smells different from cardamom in water.

Cardamom in chai is not flavouring added to tea. It is a conversation between two aromatic systems, and the conversation is more interesting than either participant alone.

Green vs Black Cardamom

Green cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) and black cardamom (Amomum subulatum) are different plants with different aromatic profiles. Black cardamom — larger, smoky, with a camphor intensity that green cardamom lacks — is used in savoury cooking, biryani and dal, but is rarely used in tea. In masala chai, always green cardamom. The subtle distinction matters if you are buying cardamom for a tea blend and find yourself looking at both options.

Our Cardamom Tea

Our Cardamom Tea from West Garo Hills uses green cardamom pods paired with our CTC tea base — the combination that produces a classic chai-adjacent cup with the cardamom’s sweetness complementing the robustness of the CTC without either overwhelming the other. It brews well with milk in the traditional preparation, but also works surprisingly well without milk for those who prefer a clear, spiced tea with a lighter body. The cardamom’s warmth makes it a particularly good cold-season tea.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Earl Grey Tea: The Bergamot Story and What It Actually Tells You About Flavoured Teas

The legend attached to Earl Grey tea — that it was blended by a Chinese mandarin as a diplomatic gift to the second Earl Grey, British Prime Minister in the 1830s — is almost certainly apocryphal. There is no documented evidence for it, and the combination of black tea with bergamot appears in European records independently of any Chinese connection. The story persists because it sounds good, which is precisely the kind of provenance that tea marketing has always preferred to documented fact.

What is certain is that the combination — black orthodox tea scented with bergamot, the distinctive citrus-floral aromatic compound from the rind of the bergamot orange — became one of the most widely consumed flavoured teas in the English-speaking world, and has remained so for nearly two centuries.

What Bergamot Actually Is

Bergamot is not a variety of any common citrus. It is a specific hybrid fruit — Citrus bergamia — cultivated almost exclusively in the Calabria region of southern Italy. The fruit is inedible as a food but produces an exceptionally aromatic peel oil through cold-pressing. This oil — bergamot essential oil — is the ingredient that gives Earl Grey its distinctive floral, citrus, slightly medicinal character. It is also used extensively in perfumery (it is a major component of classic colognes) and as a flavouring in various foods.

The distinction between genuine cold-pressed bergamot oil and synthetic bergamot flavouring is significant in Earl Grey tea. Real bergamot oil has a complexity — multiple aromatic compounds in a specific ratio — that synthetic approximations do not replicate. The synthetic version tends toward a one-note floral-citrus smell that is recognisable as “Earl Grey” but lacks the depth and nuance of the natural oil. Most mass-market Earl Grey uses synthetic flavouring. Premium versions use genuine bergamot oil.

The difference between real bergamot and synthetic bergamot in tea is the same as the difference between fresh lemon zest and lemon-flavoured candy. Both smell like what they are meant to be. One of them is more interesting.

The Base Tea Matters as Much as the Flavouring

Earl Grey is a flavoured tea, which means the quality of the base tea is frequently obscured by the flavouring — a feature that some producers exploit deliberately. A mediocre, broken-leaf black tea with strong bergamot is not a good Earl Grey. It is an acceptable substitute if you are primarily interested in the bergamot note. But the best Earl Grey is built on a quality orthodox black tea base, where the flavouring enhances rather than compensates.

Our Meghalaya Earl Grey — which we call English Breakfast Style, Meghalaya Edition — uses our own black orthodox tea as the base, which has a natural smoothness that carries the bergamot note without the tannin sharpness that can make cheaper base teas feel harsh under flavouring. The combination produces a cup that is recognisably Earl Grey in character but with a cleaner, rounder base than most versions in the market.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Hibiscus (Roselle) Tea: Benefits, Taste, and How to Brew It

Hibiscus Roselle Tea Benefits Brewing — Hibiscus roselle tea benefits, flavour profile, and brewing guide. The deep-red herbal infusion from Meghalaya that is caffeine-free, tart, and rich in anthocyanins.

Hibiscus Roselle Tea Benefits Brewing: What You Need to Know

For further reading, see Hibiscus sabdariffa health effects (PubMed).

Hibiscus Roselle Tea Benefits — Everything about hibiscus roselle tea — blood pressure research, anthocyanin content, taste profile, and step-by-step brewing guide.

For further research, see hibiscus blood pressure clinical evidence.

Roselle — more commonly known internationally as hibiscus tea — is a tart, deep-red infusion that’s become popular well beyond its traditional growing regions, and for reasons that hold up reasonably well under scrutiny.

What Roselle Actually Is

Roselle (*Hibiscus sabdariffa*) is a different plant from the ornamental hibiscus flowers you might see in a garden — it’s grown specifically for its calyces (the fleshy part surrounding the seed pod), which are dried and steeped to make the tea most people know as “hibiscus tea.” Our Roselle Tea blends dried roselle calyces with an orthodox black tea base from our own garden, rather than being a pure herbal infusion.

What’s Genuinely Supported About Its Benefits

Roselle has one of the better-evidenced reputations among “wellness” teas, specifically around blood pressure. Multiple studies have looked at hibiscus tea’s effect on blood pressure, with a reasonably consistent finding of a modest reduction with regular consumption. This is a meaningfully stronger evidence base than many other herbal tea claims.

Roselle is also notably high in Vitamin C and anthocyanins (the same antioxidant pigment family found in our Blue Tea) — both genuinely present in the plant, not marketing additions.

A necessary caveat: if you have existing blood pressure concerns or are on blood pressure medication, talk to a doctor before treating hibiscus tea as a regular intervention rather than an occasional drink. A tea that modestly affects blood pressure is exactly the kind of thing worth discussing with a doctor if you’re already managing that condition medically.

What It Tastes Like

Roselle has a distinctly tart, almost cranberry-like sourness — closer to a fruit infusion than a typical tea. Blended onto our orthodox black base, the result is a tea with real body and depth rather than a thin herbal taste, with the roselle’s tartness balancing the malty character of the black tea underneath.

How to Brew It

  • Water temperature: 90–95°C
  • Steep time: 5 minutes (slightly longer than our other orthodox blends, to let the roselle calyces release their colour and tartness fully)
  • Re-brewable: yes, as with our other orthodox-based teas — though the second steep will be notably milder in tartness
  • Many people add a small amount of honey to balance the tartness, rather than milk

Try It

Roselle Tea sits alongside our other orthodox blends — Rose, Jasmine Orthodox, and Vanilla — all built on the same single-garden black tea base. Explore our Black Orthodox Tea range.