My friend Abi and I were rather
confused about
Lady Grey. Being enormous fans of
Earl Grey, we wondered: was Lady Grey his
wife? Did she decide to infuse his
bergamot-scented brew with
citrus fruits? In an attempt at
solving the mystery, we called the
Twinings hotline.
Abi spoke to
Pete from Twinings and, after
a long conversation about the Earl, asked him about Lady Grey. It transpired that Lady Grey was neither
wife nor
daughter - in actuality, she
did not exist! Lady Grey
tea, he told us, is simply an Earl Grey with added
fruity flavour - a
feminised, more
ladylike Earl. Abi thanked him and put down the telephone.
After some discussion, we reached the (perhaps rather spurious!)
conclusion that Lady Grey is (or was) the Earl
in drag. (A feminised Earl!) Perhaps we should have guessed that Lady Grey was not a real person, given that the Twinings
packaging features
a picture of some fruit, rather than a
portrait similar to that found on boxes of Earl Grey.
Although Lady Grey tea is not named after a specific Lady Grey, we do know of other Lady Greys. The most famous of these was
Lady Jane Grey, who was
Queen of England for nine days before being ousted (and eventually
beheaded) by
Mary. Whilst visiting
Gloucester a few months ago, I stood upon the very spot where, on
10 July 1553, Jane was crowned. In an interesting twist, there is a rather ancient
tearoom on the site, named Grey's Coffee House.