Brandon Turbeville and Heather CallaghanNatural Blaze
August 16, 2016
You may know bergamot best from the tea flavor Earl Grey; but bergamot essential oil offers so much more!
Bergamot fruit is a time-honored, exquisitely fragranced orange that now comes mainly from Italy and the Ivory Coast of Africa. The word bergamot may have meant “the prince of pears,” or the “prince’s pear,” a label originating from the Turkish labels beg-armudi or beg armut.
The small fruit growing from small trees resembles either a round lime or small orange and it is sour and very bitter. It is the fragrance and flavor that have been used extensively throughout history in trade.
You may know the familiar flavor of bergamot from drinking Earl Grey tea. It is rumored that Britain allowed the use of bergamot as a way to mask cheap tea in order to imitate high quality Chinese teas. What a shame bergamot wasn’t instead embraced for all its real power.
