Adagio Teas - Discontinued

I’m pretty inexperienced when it comes to pu erh, but now that I’ve tasted this once before, I’m starting to understand why it’s highly rated.

Though the description says that it is leathery, I don’t get leathery, but I think that is because as I mentioned before, what others taste as fishy I often taste as leathery. Which, if I connect the dots, means that this is not a fishy pu erh (despite the smell of the dry leaf). Which, from what I’ve read, means that it is a higher quality one.

(But now I have to figure out why I’m not getting leather when I should get leather according to the description.)

What I get instead is a very smooth, mellow tea. I said in my last note that it tastes deeper than the Dante, but on an absolute scale it doesn’t strike me as overly deep in flavor. By which I mean it isn’t as richly flavored as some of the better non-pu-erh teas I’ve had, which is interesting because the liquor is very dark, like almost espresso dark, but with a reddish tinge. Sort of cabernet colored. I would never expect that color from the dry leaf, which is a medium brown (though the leaves becomes dark chocolate/coffee ground colored after steeping).

There is a definite earthiness to the flavor. I said tree bark/moss before. This time around, having an idea what to expect, I’m getting more mushroom flavor. Not so much raw mushroom as cooked, but without a flavoring agent like butter or wine. Wood flavor? Eh, maybe. Perhaps that’s what I’m getting as the tree bark/moss flavor. Like being in a dense, deciduous forest after a cool rain.

I’m on my third steep as I write this. I’ll be putting it through more as I work on my writing assignment due in (gulp) about two hours. (I hope I won’t regret drinking it this late at night.) Next time I’ll try it in the Yixing pot.

Rating it higher than the Dante, but not prepared to rate it exceptionally high until I know my way around pu erh a bit better.

I decided to try this first in the gaiwan so that I could get to know it before trying it in the Yixing, in the hopes of seeing whether and to what extent the Yixing changes the flavor.

I get a leathery, fish oil smell from the dry leaf, which is smoothed out some after rinsing and steeping but is still a bit fishier than the other Adagio shu I’ve had, the Dante. The steeped leaves smell like raw white mushrooms.

I was doing homework with no. 2 while sipping this and he sniffed it and said “smells like salmon.” A few seconds later he said, “I don’t like salmon.”

I do like salmon as it happens, but I am not sure what I think about this tea. Those with far more sophisticated palates when it comes to pu-erh than I, with respect to which I freely admit to being a novice compared to some other tea types, have pretty much unanimously liked this one judging by the notes. But to me it doesn’t have as much flavor as the Dante. It’s smoother, for sure, and earthier where the Dante is more leathery. (This doesn’t taste like salmon, regardless of aroma.)

Perhaps the problem is I expected it to taste more like the Dante than it does, or more like the Emperor’s Pu-erh from Numi, both of which have the more leathery flavor.

This is a deeper flavor, more like mossy tree bark than leather. I put it through about seven steeps starting at 15 seconds and working up to around 50.

I think I need to try it again in the gaiwan now that I’m prepared for it to be different than the others I’ve had and see how it tastes before I graduate to the Yixing with it.

Not rating for now.

This tea brewed up surprisingly pink . . . like almost clear with one little curl of pink right in the centre of the cup. Very odd.

But mmmmmm I really enjoy this! It was a very mellow cuppa, with bits of sweetness and just a hint of something tart. The green didn’t get bitter and wasn’t overpowering. Don’t know if I’d restock, but I’ll definitely be drinking more.

So I finally got my Adagio order today (yay!) but I have to say I’m not terribly impressed (boo!). The tins are in no way airtight and every last one of them leaked. I am covered in tea from opening the boxes. A few of the blends don’t even look blended and I have to practically shove my nose in the tea to smell any kind of scent. However, I purchased these knowing full well I’m not a huge fan of Adagio teas and I basically purchased them for the tins, so in that aspect I am very happy. I’m now just kind of looking at it as I purchased some sweet tins that just happened to come with free tea. But I don’t think I’ll be ordering again.

We picked this one out because, well, my wife is my sugar daddy XD. Also, this blend is right up her alley, a green blend with orange and ginseng? She’s gonna love it.

It’s fairly good. It tastes healthy in a good way. I don’t quite know how to describe it, but it is good. If you like ginseng, give it a whirl.

Super backlog! I finished this one off yesterday. I’ll honestly miss it but I don’t think I will order it for a really long time. I still like the flavors and how they blend together :)

This one is nice. It has a nice citrus aroma and a nice citrus taste. I like this one because the green tea is still very present and not over powered :)

This tea is pretty simple but has nice flavor. The orange flavors are light but crisp and present. I love that I can still catch the green base. This would be a tea that I ordered in the bags to take with me on the go. Kind of a nice pick me up tea.

This is seriously so good. I think I may have a favorite tea, you guys. The dry leaf smells so coconut-ty but then it brews up and smells all floral but not overpowering. Then you drink it and it’s so smooth and nuanced and just delicious! Oh, so good!!!

Cold brewed this in the teensy fridge that probably isn’t coming with me when my office moves down a floor next month. OH MY GOD RAISINS. There was so much raisin in this one in a cold brew. Just, like, a festival of raisins on a bed of dry autumn leaves. It was really good today. I think this is the way to drink it.

Today’s mildly more exciting than yesterday, at least inasmuch as I bought office-appropriate linen trousers from M&S and I’ve decided to phase out wheat and processed sweeties in order to try and get my inflammation in check a bit, given that my ankles now hurt to stand on. Tomorrow, I’ll invest in some pineapple. Pineapple’s an anti-inflammatory.

So something moved me today, before dashing to submit a few job applications before their noon o’clock deadlines, to do a few steeps of this oolong. It’s not the most remarkable tea in the world, and it’s not something I crave very often if at all, but sometimes it’s a good, simple I-don’t-know-what-I-feel-like-drinking-so-I’ll-just-have-this choice, and it fulfilled it well. Still as autumn-leafy as ever, at once light and wholesome, with toasty granola notes and traces of dry earth. Ho hum.

I forgot I owned this one again.

I’m glad I remembered. There are serious high winds out there, and it’s cozy and has that nice leafiness. I’m having one of those days where I’m trying really hard not to nap and I should really be doing art and finishing job applications. Blech.

Oh hey guys, which Doctor Who character should I paint first?

I got this as a sample ages ago, tried it, and apparently totally forgot subsequently, so I really didn’t know what kind of an oolong I was in for when I decided to give it another go today. And then I oversteeped it by about 3 minutes, as I got distracted watching Doctor Who and applying for jobs. But then when I jumped up, said a few words I shan’t repeat in polite company, and finally prepared my tea (with lashings of milk and sugar, naturally) it was still good! It’s got that sort of leafy granola flavour one associates with oolongs, and a nice, smooth body with a bit of gentle astringency. Not too shabby, considering I could conceivably have ruined it in my scatterbrained neglect of it. Yay!

I…. just got a bonavita electric kettle, and this tea is the first tea I made using my perfectly heated water. No more thermometers in my microwaved water as I scowl at uneven water temperature.

This tea was light, flavorful, gently sweet, not bitter or grassy. A fairly perfect green tea. I LOVE rhubarb like a crazy person. But there wasn’t an overabundance of that rhubarb-pie mouth-watering love I hoped for.

Very lovely tea though. I’ll likely try out other Adagio blends that use this. :)

I’m totally having on of those days where I really just don’t want to be an adult. I want to make a blanket fort, draw pictures and watch Disney. I just kind of hurt all over today.

I popped a fresh set of leaves into the fridge last night after dinner, so this probably about 14 hours. It’s very green tasting with nutty accents, and a bit of pepper. It’s a little like brown butter green beans. It’s quite good this way, and would be nice in the summer.

This came my way from momo. So thank you!

Steep One (185F/3:00)

It starts out a little nutty, a little earthy, and ever so mildly floral. The mouthfeel is a little thin, and has a nice clean aftertaste.

Steep Two (185F/3:30)

This steep is more vegetal with floral notes on the forefront. The floral comes across as a bit orchidy. the cup is a bit creamier with a fuller body than the previous steep. There’s still nuttiness, though it doesn’t show up till midway in the sip, and then lingers becoming the flavor that hangs in your mouth.

Steep Three (195F/4:00)

Mmm. There really isn’t much roastiness left to the flavor. The veggie notes, which remind me a little of steamed/wilted spinach step up and dominate, then linger well after the sip is down. The floral is more subtle, but seems to wind through everything and brighten up the cup just a little bit.

Steep Four (Boiling/5:00)

Vegetal and a little sweet, but not nearly as flavorful as before. I think it’s exhausted and won’t be going for a fifth.

It tasted… okay. The artichoke flavor is barely there. The green tea it’s paired with is good, though.

I was skeptical at first because rhubarb? Seriously? But this tea was quite tasty. The rhubarb was detectable and not overpowering (barely there, in fact!), but the strawberry addition made this tea a winner and a good reminder of strawberry rhubarb pie.

Sipdown no. 43 for the year 2014.

This is embarrassing.

I’ve concluded that my recent Adagio white tea sampler tastings may have all been fundamentally flawed by significant underleafing. I should know better. But somehow I let the convenience of the Breville take over when my brain should have been making the decisions.

I was reading the thread about volume vs. weight and what Dinosaura said about weight in relation to white tea made me go “oh crap.”

So for this one, I got out the scale. Turns out if I’d used a spoon instead I’d still be one pot away from a sipdown. I had just under two cups worth of tea by weight so I steeped this in 500ml of water.

The good news, such that it is, is that the underleafing in this case may not have made a lot of difference. The flavor of this one is so light that using a lot more tea doesn’t seem to have much impact. (It may still have affected some of the others though. Bah!)

Lesson learned.

Hoookay. This is the 400th tea I’ve written a note about!

Four years ago I wouldn’t have thought there were that many tea options in the world. Now I know I’ve merely scratched the surface. It’s a humbling experience.

This is another in the Adagio white sampler. Pretty sure I tasted the Silver Needle a while ago and thought I’d drunk it all because I misplaced the tin (I’ve now found it). And there was a jasmine silver needle as well-but I now can’t locate that one, which is a shame because it seems to be the one everyone on Steepster likes most of this group. I hope it will turn up. The perils of having too much tea.

I am starting with the Adagio preferred speed and feed… I mean time and temp. But because I skimmed through a few of the other notes before trying this, I’m going heavy on the leaf, as that seems to be the consensus for max flavor.

Pretty, silvery green leaves. A lighter aroma in the sample tin than the White Symphony, but with some of the same characteristics. A sweet, not quite green, not quite oolongy fragrance but with a slight sharpness that does remind me of oolong.

I got a very very light green tint to the water after steeping. The aroma is very subtle, almost like the aroma of a very very light black tea. A sort of blunted sharp edge to it.

The flavor isn’t coming through very noticeably for me. It’s far lighter than the other Adagio whites. It’s almost like a very, very dilute sweet melon flavor over the surface. Though if I try really hard, I think I can make out the woody note others have described. It is very very mild, though, just a suggestion under the surface flavor.

I’m rating it the same as the White Symphony, which had a louder, more accessible flavor, but which lacks the subtlety of this one. This is a bit like eating a very clean snowball; it would be the kind of thing I’d enjoy drinking after a massage.

This is a very fast-brew tea and I find that if it’s steeped too long it can have a bitter astringency that detracts from the lovely mossy flavor. In addition to the earthy mossiness, it has chocolate notes. One of my favorite every day drinking kinds of teas.

A nice white tea with a shuttle taste. Great if you just want a single cup. My mother said its some of the best she’s had.

Very subtle but tasty green tea that reminds me a bit more of white tea in flavor. I personally like my tea flavors a hair stronger, or this would be rated higher!

Very standard green tea. Mild but still has lots of flavor, though not particularly special. I think it is best hot.

This is an odd one, and I am not sure it is really for me. It is a bit salty, which makes sense, and has a bit of a sweet aftertaste. I love artichoke…but perhaps not in tea.