Earl Grey Martini

Audrey Saunders, Pegu Club, New York City, 2003. Saunders, one of the founders of the 21st-century craft cocktail movement, created the Earl Grey Mar-TEA-ni as an exploration of tea as a cocktail ingredient. The punning name (tea/tini) became one of the most quoted cocktail names in bar history. Pegu Club, which operated from 2005 to 2020, was one of the most influential cocktail bars in American history.

The Earl Grey Martini (also called the Earl Grey Mar-TEA-ni) is Audrey Saunders's contribution to the tea-cocktail canon — gin infused with Earl Grey tea, combined with fresh lemon juice, simple syrup, and egg white, creating a drink where bergamot (the citrus oil that gives Earl Grey its distinctive floral-perfumed character) amplifies gin's botanical complexity into something uniquely English-aristocratic-and-bar-progressive simultaneously. Created at Pegu Club in New York City in 2003, it established tea as a serious cocktail ingredient and inspired a generation of bartenders to explore the enormous flavour range of tea as a spirit-infusion base.

FOOD PAIRING: The Earl Grey Martini's bergamot-gin-citrus florality pairs with afternoon tea fare and light British preparations. Provenance 1000 pairings: cucumber finger sandwiches (the quintessential tea bridge), lemon drizzle cake (lemon-bergamot amplification), shortbread with bergamot cream, smoked salmon on rye with crème fraîche, and Earl Grey tea-smoked duck.