London Fog vs Earl Grey: The Difference, Explained
If you've seen both "Earl Grey" and "London Fog" on a café menu and assumed they were two names for the same thing, you're not alone. They sound related, they show up next to each other in the same drink category, and the line between them is genuinely fuzzy if no one ever explained it to you.
So here it is, plain: Earl Grey is the tea. London Fog is the drink made with it. They're not interchangeable - one is an ingredient, the other is a preparation. You can drink Earl Grey on its own, with no milk and no sweetener, the same way you'd drink any other black tea. A London Fog, by definition, requires milk. Without the steamed milk and vanilla, it isn't a London Fog. It's just Earl Grey.
This post unpacks the two, walks through what makes Earl Grey distinctive, tells the surprisingly Canadian story of how the London Fog came to be, and explains how the two fit together in your cup.
The Short Answer
Earl Grey is a type of black tea, flavoured with bergamot oil. It's been around since the 1800s. You make it by steeping the leaves in hot water, the way you make any other tea.
London Fog is a hot drink made with Earl Grey tea, steamed milk, and vanilla (usually as a syrup, sometimes as extract, occasionally as vanilla sugar). It's a tea latte - sometimes called an Earl Grey latte or, depending on where you are, a Vancouver Fog. It was invented in the 1990s in British Columbia.
The relationship is straightforward once you see it: every London Fog contains Earl Grey, but not every Earl Grey is a London Fog. The drink is a specific preparation of the tea.
What Is Earl Grey?
Earl Grey is a black tea flavoured with bergamot oil. The black tea base typically comes from China, India, or Sri Lanka, and the bergamot is what gives Earl Grey its distinctive perfumed, citrusy aroma. Without the bergamot, you'd just have a cup of plain black tea.
The tea is named after Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey, who served as British Prime Minister in the early 1830s. The origin story of the blend itself is a bit murky - several versions exist, most involving the bergamot flavour being a gift to him - but the name stuck, and Earl Grey has been one of the world's most recognisable tea blends for nearly two centuries.
The flavour is bold and aromatic. The black tea base provides the body and the caffeine, while the bergamot adds a bright, almost floral citrus quality that's instantly recognisable. Some Earl Grey blends are heavier on the bergamot than others, and some add extras like lavender, lemon zest, or cornflowers to play up the floral character. But the defining duo is always black tea plus bergamot.
What Is Bergamot?
Bergamot is a citrus fruit, grown primarily in Calabria in southern Italy. It looks like a slightly knobbly lime or yellow-green orange, and it isn't really eaten on its own - it's far too bitter. What makes it valuable is the oil pressed from its rind, which has a complex, perfumed aroma somewhere between lemon, orange blossom, and grapefruit. That oil is what gets sprayed onto or blended with the black tea leaves to create Earl Grey.
The bergamot character is the entire reason Earl Grey is different from other black teas. It's also the reason a London Fog tastes the way it does - the bergamot's bright, floral citrus quality plays beautifully against vanilla and warm milk.
[Internal link note: once the dedicated bergamot explainer post is published, add a link here pointing readers to that piece for the deeper dive on bergamot's flavour, history, and uses.]
What Is a London Fog?
A London Fog is a tea latte built on Earl Grey. The classic preparation: brewed Earl Grey tea, steamed milk, vanilla syrup (or extract), and sometimes a touch of additional sweetener like honey or maple syrup. The result is creamy, lightly sweet, and gently aromatic - the bergamot from the Earl Grey holds up against the milk and vanilla without disappearing.
Despite the name, the drink has nothing to do with London. It was invented in Vancouver in the mid-to-late 1990s by a pregnant café customer named Mary Loria, at the now-closed Buckwheat Cafe on 4th Avenue. Loria, looking for a comforting alternative to coffee during her pregnancy, ordered Earl Grey tea with steamed milk and went over to the toppings station to sprinkle in vanilla sugar herself. The barista was reportedly sceptical. Loria continued ordering the same drink at other cafés, recommended it to friends, and within a few years it had spread through the Vancouver food scene and then across Canada.
By the early 2000s the drink had reached Calgary - largely thanks to Loria's family visits to the city - and shortly after, it was picked up by Starbucks, Second Cup, and other major chains, which sent it international. Loria herself didn't come up with the name. The "London Fog" label appeared somewhere along the way, possibly coined by another café trying to give the drink a more evocative identity. The "fog" most likely refers to the cloudy effect when steamed milk pours into dark Earl Grey - the same visual that earned it the name "Vancouver Fog" in Scotland, where the Canadian origin is acknowledged in the name itself.
One small footnote worth knowing: Loria herself eventually moved on from London Fogs and went back to drinking Earl Grey plain. Her kids, though, drink them all the time.
For a fuller breakdown of the drink itself - the exact ratios, the milk options, the caffeine content - our companion post on what's in a London Fog covers the practical side in detail.
London Fog vs Earl Grey: Side by Side
| Category | Earl Grey | London Fog |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A type of tea (an ingredient) | A drink made with that tea (a preparation) |
| Origin | Britain, early 1800s | Vancouver, Canada, mid-to-late 1990s |
| Core ingredients | Black tea + bergamot oil | Earl Grey + steamed milk + vanilla (+ optional sweetener) |
| Milk required? | No - drunk plain, or with milk and sweetener to taste | Yes - milk is what makes it a London Fog |
| Flavour profile | Bold, citrusy, aromatic, slightly bitter | Creamy, lightly sweet, aromatic, mellow |
| Caffeine | Moderate (black tea base) | Moderate (same base, slightly diluted by milk) |
| Typical preparation | Steep loose leaves or a tea bag in hot water | Brew the tea, steam the milk, combine, sweeten |
| Also known as | Earl Grey tea, Earl Grey blend | Earl Grey latte, Vanilla Tea Misto, Vancouver Fog |
Why the Confusion Exists
The two names get tangled up for a few reasons. First, the London Fog never really had a clean rollout - it spread organically through cafés before settling on a name, and "London Fog," "Earl Grey latte," and "Vanilla Tea Misto" all describe the same drink depending on which café you walk into. Second, when someone orders an Earl Grey latte at a café, what arrives is essentially a London Fog. Third, the bergamot in Earl Grey is so distinctive that a lot of people associate the flavour with the drink itself, blurring the line between the ingredient and the preparation.
The cleanest way to think about it is the same way you'd think about coffee and a latte. Coffee is the ingredient. A latte is a specific drink built on it. You can drink coffee plain, or you can use it as the base for a dozen different milky drinks. Same logic applies here: Earl Grey is the tea. London Fog is one specific way to drink it.
How Old Growth Beverages' London Fog Works
The traditional way to make a London Fog at home is fiddly. You brew the tea (timing the steep carefully so it doesn't get bitter), strain it, steam the milk separately, add vanilla syrup or extract, and combine. The drink itself is straightforward, but pulling all the pieces together adds up to a real production for what's supposed to be a comforting cup.
Old Growth Beverages' London Fog consolidates the steps. It's a microground tea powder that combines organic Earl Grey, organic vanilla, organic bergamot, and a small amount of organic cane sugar in a single highly dissolvable blend. You add a tablespoon to a small amount of hot water, stir or whisk until smooth, then top up with hot milk (or cold milk and ice, for the iced version). The whole process takes under two minutes and produces a drink that holds up against the café version.
The microground format also means you're consuming the whole tea leaf rather than steeping an infusion and throwing away the leaves. That gives you more of what the tea has to offer, with none of the tea bag waste. There's no straining, no timing the steep, no separate vanilla syrup to track down. Everything is in the powder.
If you want to read more about the ingredients, the caffeine content, and the full preparation, our post on what's in a London Fog covers it thoroughly. For a summer-friendly version, our iced London Fog latte recipe walks through the cold preparation step by step.
Ready to try the simpler version? Old Growth Beverages' London Fog ships across Canada.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a London Fog the same as an Earl Grey latte?
Yes, essentially. "London Fog" and "Earl Grey latte" are two names for the same drink: Earl Grey tea with steamed milk and vanilla. Some cafés use one name, some use the other, and a few use "Vanilla Tea Misto" or "Vancouver Fog." The recipes are functionally identical with small variations in how much vanilla or sweetener is added.
Why is it called London Fog if it was invented in Vancouver?
That's the joke, frankly. The drink was created by a pregnant Vancouver café customer named Mary Loria, and she didn't name it - someone else attached the "London Fog" label later, likely because of Earl Grey's British associations and the cloudy "fog" effect of steamed milk meeting dark tea. The drink has no historical connection to London. In Scotland, it's actually called a "Vancouver Fog," which gives credit where it's due.
Does a London Fog have caffeine?
Yes. The Earl Grey base is a black tea, which contains caffeine - typically around 40–70 mg per cup, depending on how strongly the tea is brewed. The milk dilutes it slightly, but a London Fog still has roughly the caffeine content of a regular cup of black tea. That's less than most coffees and more than green tea.
Can you drink Earl Grey without milk?
Of course. Earl Grey is a complete tea on its own and is traditionally drunk plain, with hot water and nothing else, or with a small splash of milk and a touch of sweetener. Adding steamed milk and vanilla turns it into a London Fog, but that's a preparation choice, not a requirement. Plenty of long-time Earl Grey drinkers never touch a London Fog.
Can you make a London Fog with regular black tea instead of Earl Grey?
You can make a similar drink with plain black tea, vanilla, and steamed milk - it's a perfectly nice tea latte - but it isn't really a London Fog without the bergamot. The bergamot is what gives the drink its signature aromatic, citrusy quality and is the reason it doesn't taste like every other tea latte. If you skip the Earl Grey, you skip what makes the drink distinctive.
What does bergamot taste like in Earl Grey?
Bergamot has a bright, slightly floral, perfumed citrus quality - more complex than lemon, with notes that can read as orange blossom, grapefruit rind, or even a faint hint of lavender. It's what makes Earl Grey instantly recognisable and what carries the London Fog's flavour even after the milk and vanilla are added. If you've had Earl Grey, you've tasted bergamot.
Is Old Growth Beverages' London Fog made with Earl Grey?
Yes. The blend uses organic Earl Grey black tea as its base, with organic bergamot and organic vanilla added, plus a small amount of organic cane sugar to give the drink its café-style sweetness. Everything is microground so it dissolves into hot or cold liquid without bags, steeping, or straining.