Given the ingredients list, here was a tea that caught both my eye and a few bucks of my credit-card balance, while stocking up at a Dallas Trader Joe's on some things I don't get in nearby Oklahoma markets.

Overall, it's not quite as high-quality as the other Earl Grey Creme tea I've tried (the bagged version from Murchie's), but still a good chug, especially for the characteristically low price for which TJ's sells teas. The dry-leaf aroma was a good deal more astringent than the flavor, but still quite pleasing. The vanilla and bergamot are almost perfectly balanced in both dry-leaf aroma and taste, while the wet-leaf aroma retains a good deal more of the vanilla. Perhaps the vanilla bean ingredient doesn't leach its essence as well as the bergamot flavor added to the tea leaves. One word of caution (actually 34 words plus two numerals): the leaves unfurl nicely and get fairly large in the strainer, so please use one with enough room to hold about 3-4 times the volume of the dry leaves, at least, or thy strainer shall overfloweth.

The flavor requires a little patience, but grew on me. At first I found it uncomfortably bitter, but that annoyance subsided below nuisance level as I took each successive sip from the cup. If stepping away and coming back, the bitterness returns, but if taking lots of consecutive sips, it dies back to let more of the flavors through. This is a fairly rich, full-bodied, robust tea that I suspect is pretty strong on caffeine for a flavored Earl Grey blend. I don't know what base tea(s) TJ's uses for this, and they're not telling us onsite or on-label, but it does yield a satisfyingly strong taste and dense in-cup color.

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