How did Earl Grey get its name?

Earl Grey tea is named for a prime minister who apparently never wrote a word about it.

The usual candidate is Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey, prime minister from 1830 to 1834. Two stories explain how the tea reached him. In one, he was rewarded after his men rescued a Chinese mandarin's son, a tale Wikipedia calls apocryphal because Grey never went to China. In the other, a Chinese diplomat gave him the recipe during his premiership. Howick Hall, the Grey family home, offers a third detail: the tea was blended to counter the lime taste of the local well water, and Lady Grey served it in London.

The firm of Jacksons of Piccadilly tells a more specific tale. Its account, repeated on the Grace's Guide history site, is that Lord Grey gave the recipe to George Charlton, a partner at Robert Jackson and Co., in 1830. A Jacksons advertisement from around 1928 instead says the tea was introduced at Earl Grey's request in 1836. Neither version comes with independent evidence. The claim rests on the company's own account.

The documents are harder to square with those stories. According to World Wide Words, a Morning Post advertisement of 1884 names Charlton and Co. of Piccadilly as sole proprietors of Earl Grey tea. An earlier Charlton advertisement of 1867 mentions only a "celebrated Grey mixture" and says nothing of an aristocrat. The Oxford English Dictionary's first record of "Earl Grey's mixture" is from 1891, and of "Earl Grey tea" from 1929.

There is also a second possible namesake. William Grey and Co. of Morpeth advertised tea in 1852, and the name "Grey mixture" may owe nothing to the earl.

Other details sit badly with the legend. Bergamot oil was already in use in the 1820s and 1830s to pass off cheap tea as finer blends, so scented tea was an ordinary trade product. The tale that Grey introduced the tea to Queen Victoria is doubtful, since she became queen in 1837 and he had left office by then.

World Wide Words concludes that no contemporary evidence links the earl to the tea. Even so, the identity of the brand is not in dispute. Britannica names the 2nd Earl as the namesake, and describes the tea as a black tea flavored with bergamot oil from the peel of an Italian citrus fruit.

So the name is fixed, the reason is not. The stories were all told after the fact, and the paper trail leads to Piccadilly tea merchants, not to Downing Street.