Blog/article - Lidl's Own Earl Grey

       When grasping for the remaining teabags in the depths of my emptying box of Lidl's own-brand earl grey this morning, I couldn't help but get carried away in a spiral of thoughts of recent times I had quite defiantly defended my purchases of shop-brand teabags to zealots of the known brands. The arduous task of recovering the teabags from behind a cityscape of mug towers and rival hot-drinks choices gave me much time to think. The assailants, who are admittedly my friends and family, justified their brand loyalties with faith-based anecdotes like: 'at least it's real tea leaves in my tea bags!', or the more diplomatic: 'I'd just rather spend a bit more and get the proper thing...'. None of this would trouble me, were it not for the fact that so often, in the many involuntary discussions on society and the world order I am engaged in, I am employed as the defender of capitalism amidst their vague and incoherent socialist claims.

        You may think that my proclivity for shops-own is based on saving money, but you are only partly correct. In truth, the biggest motivator for my grocery choices has nothing to do with shops-own products at all, but in fact my lack of faith in branded food products. I was once a believer, however.

        The past 4 years of my life can partly be characterised by my attempts to streamline everything I buy, cook and eat down to raw and transparent ingredients and products, so that as much as what's practically possible in what I cook is from scratch and easy to list in ingredients. I despise wasting food, but the biggest logistical challenge of converting to cooking from scratch from the convenience, freezer food upbringing I had, was the deeply austere approach I had to take when considering the purchasing of ingredients. No can of chopped tomatoes or bell peppers would grace the bottom of the trolley without my contemplating first; the dishes that could use it. 3 peppers is too much for one batch of pasta, so I must expect then, to be cooking a chilli con carne as well that week, or a curry, so that the excess pepper(s) may be expended somewhere else. Reversely, chopped tomatoes 'with added basil' might suffice for the preparation of spaghetti bolognese or pasta bake, which both utilize that added herb, but I would find the product useless in my curry and stew recipes that deliberately evade the use of basil.

         This obviously meant that I also had to own my own herbs and spices, so that I could avoid any products that had conveniently pre-added seasonings, but more importantly, it instilled in me a need to constantly prowl the information on the backs of products for any hidden extras added to my food without my choosing. 

         This is where my earl grey comes in. I was once a loyal partisan of Twinings' famous Earl Grey blend, for its taste, history, acclaim, aesthetics and everything inbetween. Earl grey, if you are interested (or just did not know), is a mixture of ordinary black tea leaves and the oil pressed from bergamot oranges, which is a citrus fruit not well-known to typical British fruit isles (if you were not interested, I'm sorry). The ingredients are straightforward and transparent; 95% black tea with the somewhat pricey bergamot oil making up roughly 4% of the final product (1% is lemon and other minor flavourings). Earl grey therefore, is understandably more expensive than standard black tea products like PG Tips. Twinings branded Earl Grey however, is considerably more expensive than the other branded attempts at the same tea blend, but is this price premium justified?

        I am not possessed by a desire to save money, but at the very least, I must know what I'm buying is worth the money I'm trading for it. In my search for answers, I discovered that most shops-own earl grey like that of Lidl's blend had roughly 3% bergamot flavouring, a percentile down from Twinings' boastful 4. Admittedly, the citrus taste in Twinings' brew was slightly noticeable in strength difference to the Lidl product; there is after all a third more bergamot in the Twinings teabag. But with overall differences in the blend mixtures between 3 and 4% being realized, I felt the cost of Twinings, at over 4 times the cost of Lidl's, was no longer worth it.

          I enjoy early grey, often daily, but only a bergamot addict could truly justify those prices, OR an individual completely blind and unthinking in their faith in the known brands. I find it bizarre then, that so many of my peers, despite their outwardly leftward leanings appear to have more of a religious belief in the market's biggest names than I. 

         There appears to be a false transmission in the mind of the unconscious consumer now, whereby they no longer honestly consider the value of the food product they buy and consume, but instead chase the marginally superior flavour or convenience quality as justification for the considerable price premiums, and the price premium are considerable. Cathedral city cheese comes in at over 3 times the cost of Aldi's equivalent cheddar, and while it certainly may go through more scrutiny by quality control before it leaves the dairy-crest factory, both final products are ultimately fermented milk. I perhaps eat cheeseboards once a year at Christmas, which is the only context I could imagine the differences in quality of cheddar might be noticed, but I mostly use cheese for topping pasta and in sandwiches, both cases in which I can see no good reason in taste to justify my cheese costing three times as much.

            So after I submerged that precious teabag this morning, in the broth of near boiling point water and whole milk that I believe it should be enjoyed with, I did not pause to think of what that percentile of difference would have made to the bergamot oil in my brew. Instead, I drank in consolation and understood, that I was drinking black tea, bergamot oil, hot water and a splash of cow's milk, in a ratio that I deemed quite pleasant.