McConnell's - Earl Grey Tea & Shortbread Cookies

Earl Grey Tea & Shortbread Cookies - Bergamot Oil-Infused Black Tea Ice Cream with Shortbread Cookies

We're back to store-bought ice cream with this review.  McConnell's has a few new flavors for this year and I was able to find one of them at a local butcher shop.  This is Earl Grey Tea & Shortbread Cookies.  Eart Grey tea is interesting.  Earl Grey is not a grey tea, it is a black tea which is flavored with orange. But the orange used is a bergamot orange which is not an orange orange -- the bergamot orange is green.  It turns out the tea is named of the 2nd Earl Grey, Charles Grey, son of the first earl Charles Grey and his wife Elizabeth Grey (nee Grey).  So that's where the Grey comes from.  The Greys were a family Northumberland knights that were promoted into the peerage in the 18th century.  It is likely that the first of these knights had grey hair.  This 2nd Earl is the most famous of the Greys.  He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Great Reform Act of 1832.  Many people consider him the first modern Prime Minister.  Today, we remember him as the Grey who liked to flavor his black tea with a green orange.  Shortbread cookies have been added as a mix-in to give this flavor an extra British appeal.

Removing the lid, the base ice cream is beige.  I guess it is the color that you could expect of a milky tea.  With the first spoonful, I taste a bit of the orange oil right away and then the tea.  The orange flavoring fades a bit as you get used to it. The base ice cream is not very sweet.  It is like tea.  To make up for the lack of sweetness, the shortbread cookies are quite sweet.  They are not soft or crunchy, but somewhere in between.  They are sort of like soaked cookies.  The sweetness of the cookies complements the non-sweetness of the tea quite well.

I did enjoy this pint.  I am not a tea drinker, though, so this was just a fun experimental flavor for me.  If you do like tea, this is a good one to try.  It might be a good pint to split with someone as well done as this mixture is, I think it is probably better in a smaller serving.