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The inky black leaves of this tea brew a beautiful pale amber cup. As I brewed it, the tea is clearly high-quality, with a faint sweet smell reminiscent of a citrus cake. The bergamot flavor is pronounced enough to mask ALL of the black tea’s bitterness without itself being overwhelming, but it fades a little too quickly. When I make this again, I may use more tea, or steep a bit longer. I think it’s got the potential to be above average.

This was acquired from a wonderful little tea shop near my home. The owner is an amazing woman—strong, calm, and knowledgeable—who runs everything by herself and does a tremendous job with all aspects of her business, most importantly selecting top-notch teas. If your travels ever find you in southeastern Michigan, please visit her! http://www.trwtea.com

This tea is like a woodland romance in a bag. It even looks like the ground after a forest wedding—a burnt brown woodchippy base speckled with festive petals. It smells like honey through and through; it’s hard to detect anything else.

I just can’t get “romance” out of my mind when trying to describe this tea. It’s single-mindedly sweet with not a bitter note in it: simple, innocent, and innocuous. It somehow manages to avoid being garish, probably due to some tempering from the rose and lavender.

This is a fairytale tea, a happy-ending tea, to be drunk when you want something uncomplicated and charming. Recommended.

I’d call this an “introductory” green tea. Just as the package suggests, it’s very smooth and mild. It’s reminiscent of buttery spinach: it has a mellow mouthfeel and then only a little bitter punch in the aftertaste. As far as everyday teas go, this one is perfectly respectable…if you’re looking for a nondescript but pleasant drink to sip during a work session or whatnot, you won’t be disappointed.

It’s not that this tea is offensive, but it’s disappointing. It has a tantalizing, very subtle fruity smell that would make an excellent perfume (!), but the taste is nearly nonexistent. It’s as though Tazo took a mild green tea and then blunted its edge by adding other, sweeter flavors—but not enough to replace the tastes they dulled. The result is bland and watery tea.

I can possibly convince myself of a hint of sweetness and tang in the tea’s aftertaste, but it really takes focus! If the package weren’t labeled, I would have no idea what flavors I should be detecting.

I actually love this tea.

You know how caramel apples seem so brilliant and appetizing, in theory? It’s the holiday season and it’s dark out but the incandescent lights of a mall are so yellow and warm, and now that you’re inside you’re actually starting to get a a little toasty in your heavy jacket. You peer into the glass display case of That Commercial Confectioner (name withheld) and see rows and rows of sleek, shiny, beautiful candied fruits. You can just imagine the complementary marriage of apple and caramel: sweet-on-tart, creamy-on-crunchy, gooey-on-firm.

Then you buy the apple and the caramel is really thick and actually hyper-sweetened with no darkness or richness and you can barely even penetrate it because it clogs your jaw. And when you finally do, you’re left with a sad, naked, hardened Granny Smith, bare of caramel and bereft of flavor. And you are so sad. So you just eat the caramel and then feel bad because you wasted the apple, and curse Corporate America and The Holidays and spend the remainder of the day grinching out, surreptitiously trying to pry caramel out of your molars whilst being accosted by holiday salespeople.

You know what I mean…right? But this tea doesn’t do that. This tea doesn’t disappoint. Being a liquid, it doesn’t suffer from the logistical plights of actual caramel apples. This tea is the caramel apple on the rack, perfect and glistening and full of holiday hope, sweet and warming and delicious. It is wonderful. Try it.

I really liked this tea when I first tried it; it was spicy, pungent, and interesting. It didn’t really remind me of the holidays per se, but at least it was nice and warming with the strong flavors of cinnamon, clove, and orange peel.

The last few times I’ve made it, though—despite steeping for quite a while—it came out a bit bland, actually…like diluted cinnamon/orange black tea. Hm…maybe I’ve inadvertently cut down on the amount of tea I’m using, or maybe I somehow managed to concentrate all of the delicious herbal/spice bits into earlier cups…?

Anyway, the tea WAS good when I made it properly, but I’m hesitant to recommend this one since if you’re ordering from Adagio and want an interesting “holiday” flavor, I’d personally go with the gingerbread for the same price per cup.

Looks like some very sophisticated and respected reviewers on this site do not really care for this tea, which makes me question the validity of my tastes. I like it so much that merely sniffing it makes me smile! xD

It smells like vanilla and tastes, if not quite like gingerbread, then at least like some type of gently spiced Christmas biscuit, full of cinnamon, spice, vanilla, caramel, and honey; even the aftertaste is sweet to my palate, because the flavors mask the black tea, so I don’t detect much bitterness (and yes, I’m drinking it straight). It actually reminds me of a tea I had a long time ago at Boston’s “Tealuxe” called “Birthday Cake” or something.

If this sounds like something you’d like, I’d say you can’t go wrong getting a sample. If you don’t like it, you can always send it my way…! =D

Drank this, as usual, without cream and sugar. It’s much thinner and zippier than some other English breakfast teas I’ve tried recently (e.g., Twinings and Bigelow), with a bright, bitter herbal finish. To me it tastes light and insubstantial; maybe I was hoping for something mellower. Still the flavor is at least interesting, so I’d recommend with reservations (try a sample if you can!)

Wow. The mint here definitely packs a wallop—a very strong, crisp, cooling mint flavor. No hint of the taste of black tea—it’s completely masked—not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. This will wake you up!