Mastress Alita Send Message

This is the last Adagio white tea in my cupboard, and I’m finishing off the sample with another liter of iced tea and one hot cuppa. It’s from a very old order (2017 sometime) but the sampler was still sealed, so at least there was that.

My warm cup is smelling quite floral (but confession, the last thing I brewed was straight lavender to make some scented mists I like to use around Chiya’s kitty boxes) and I also smell mandarin, melon, cucumber, honey, and warm hay. I’m… definitely getting some lavender contamination coming through in the flavor, but honestly? It’s not a bad thing! It’s not a strong oomph of it (I could go deep clean the infuser but probably another use and it’ll be gone, or simply letting it dry overnight… I think it was only using it so soon after steeping my flowers that probably caused the issue) and it’s not at all a bad flavor on this white tea… daresay, maybe I should be adding a pinch of lavender to some of my whites in the future? I do realize that isn’t how it was supposed to be though, and does little for a proper review though. Oops.

Tasting around the lavender, I am getting a hay vegetal flavor, as well as cucumber and melon notes. It seems quite sweet to me, but that may just be the floral contamination. My iced tea, however, has no such issue. It has been in the fridge a little longer than I should’ve kept it, but that aside, I am getting a grassy/hay vegetal flavor, the cucumber note seems a little more pronounced, and there is a subtle watery melon note. It’s very crisp and tastes a lot like a clean green tea iced.

This was one of the teas provided to me for sample by Plum Deluxe, thank you so much Plum Deluxe! I selected two of the three flavors offered and just chose “blender’s choice” for my last flavor, and this was the tea Plum Deluxe selected. I’m home with a migraine today and feeling like some hot tea, so it seemed like a good time to brew it up.

The dry leaf smells very nice; I’m not extremely familiar with elderberries, but the aroma reminds me of plums and apricot, which is is a very pleasant fragrance. Steeped, the smell of those fruits is much stronger, and I’m also getting a peppery note on my nose. The apricot is very forward in the flavor, with that plummy flavor coming out toward the end of the sip, and a touch of a spice note. There is a slight berry tang, but not much, the honeybush mellows the tea out a lot. It’s really nice, and I’m enjoying it a lot on a day where I’m feeling very under the weather.

Another Adagio tea from Meowster’s cupboard destash, thanks Meowster! I took this out and stuck it in my sipdown spot last month, but only now am getting to it… ah well. The tea has a nice chocolately-rose aroma, which is one of my favorite flavor combinations, but it also smells a hint musty… I think age has taken it’s toll on this one (I got it in summer of 2018, but I really have no idea how old it already was at that point in time…)

The flavor honestly isn’t too bad considering it may be an older tea, the chocolate is pretty fudgy, if not a touch artificial. The rose is coming through, and I’ve always really liked the rose flavor that Adagio uses (one of the few flavorings, along with their cream flavor, that always hits the mark with me). I do taste a hint of berry, but it is more subtle… the mix of flavors is a good one, the problem I’m really having is the base tea is coming off a bit too astringent for what should be a sweeter, more desserty type of tea. I’ve been drinking the tea straight the last few days but decided to make it a latte this morning (3 parts tea to 1 part vanilla almond milk) as I thought the sweet milk would cut through that astringency and it would work well with that chocolately floral flavor… but my plan failed and even with a sweet milk added, it still had that sort of sour note. It also didn’t taste as chocolately, and I thought the creamy milk would have brought out even more of a chocolately feel, but the latte was just a fail on the whole.

I think this tea could really work for me… it’s hard to tell if age has done it dirty, or if the base tea Adagio uses on this one just sours what would otherwise be a combination of flavors that would work well for me. I’m happy to have had the chance to try it!

This is the last of the Adagio white teas I got from Meowster’s cupboard clearout a couple summer’s ago (thanks Meowster!). I made the one warm cuppa and then used the rest on a quart of cold brew, like the others.

The base tea of this tastes exactly like the White Pear tea… a bit vegetal, with heavy autumn leaf and wood notes, just without the pear flavor. But I don’t taste any cucumber. I don’t even taste the melon that I get as a natural note out of white tea often, which I find often accompanies cucumber teas. So basically it just tastes like a typical low-quality unflavored Bai Mu Dan. It isn’t bad, but if you are going to drink Bai Mu Dan without the novelty of the flavoring, you may as well drink a nice one, right?

At least with the White Grapefruit tea, I could taste the grapefruit flavor (it just isn’t a flavor that I particularly enjoy), but since I can’t taste this flavor at all, I actually have to rank it lower than the White Grapefruit. (And I see that Adagio currently has this on their “soon to be discontinued” list… I’m honestly not surprised.)

Thanks for the sample, Meowster! I’ve enjoyed having the chance to try these! I only have one more Adagio white in my stash, and it’s a plain white that I purchased ages ago. I wonder how that has held up after all these years…?

This is another of the Adagio white teas I got from Meowster’s cupboard clearout a couple summer’s ago (thanks Meowster!). So far this has been my favorite of all that I have tried; it was the most pleasant of the different flavored whites I’ve tried as a warm cuppa, and right now I’m drinking it as a cold brew, which I prefer even more.

The berry taste isn’t syrupy or candy-like, which can be the case in a lot of strawberry teas; but it isn’t really a strong, in-your-face sort of distinct strawberry flavor, either. I get a more gentle sort of berry sweetness, and a subtle tanginess as well, that I think compliments the refreshing white tea. This white tea isn’t coming off quite as leafy either, which probably helps (or maybe the flavorings are just covering it up more this time around). It tastes more like damn earth rather than autumn leaves, slightly vegetal, and a bit of melon rind, which comes in more at the front of the sip, but the close is a sweet-tart sort of berry taste; not distinctly strawberry, but an indistinct yet pleasant red berry sort of note. It’s a refreshing iced tea, and actually brewed a nice warm cup, too, while the other flavored whites I tried I really preferred as iced beverages to their warm cuppa counterparts.

Thanks for the sample, Meowster! Just one more flavored white from the cupboard clearout to go!

This is another of the Adagio white teas I got from Meowster’s cupboard clearout a couple summer’s ago (thanks Meowster!). I had enough leaf for one warm cuppa that I made a few nights ago to sip on while I read graphic novels, and then I used the majority to make a quart of cold brewed iced tea, my preferred way to drink flavored white tea.

I definitely prefer this one iced to the warm cuppa (not that the warm cup was bad), but I just find the fruity pear on the white base comes out very refreshing as an iced brew. The base on this white is strongly autumn leaf in flavor, and that strong earthy/vegetal flavor may be why it presents a little nicer to me iced, perhaps. The pear flavor is actually pretty nice — it’s no 52Teas pear flavor, but it’s decent enough. It tastes like pear and isn’t coming off oddly artificial, it just doesn’t taste as particularly juicy as other pear flavorings I have tasted on other teas. I sort of wish the base white tasted more like the hay/melon notes I got from the White Tangerine tea as I think that would go better with the pear flavor than the autumn leaf/wood notes I’m getting from this base… and the more strange thing is I wouldn’t be surprised if Adagio is using the same base and only changing the flavorings/additives.

Thanks for the sample, Meowster!

Ever had a morning where all your tea plans fall apart? First, I couldn’t find this tea anywhere. I have my teas “catalogued” and organized in a very specific way, and it just wasn’t where it should be. As a librarian, this was very frustrating. As a librarian, I also know it is entirely possible for an item to get miscatalogued and be “on the shelf” in the wrong place, so I basically had to go through my entire tea shelf digging through each section until I could find it (finally found it in the “white teas” section… ugh!) I moved house last year and am not entirely surprised that when unpacking over 500 teas a few mishaps happened along that way, but that put me short on time racing against the clock to get a cup of tea brewed before work… and then when I dumped the hot water into my gravity well infuser, it didn’t hold the water like it always has, and I had boiling water all over my counter! That was fun to clean up.

So, then I had to get my spare infuser out and start a fresh cup (I thankfully had just enough in my sample from teasipper’s cupboard sale to make another cup — thanks, teasipper!) and steeping another cup made me late for work. I don’t know if the other infuser is dead or if a really thorough cleaning will bring life back into it, but I cleaned it just a few months ago, so it may just be time to lay it out to pasture… I do make an awful lot of tea with it…

Anyway, the tea is quite a fudgy flavor. I do recall it brewed pink originally in my infuser, but I’m drinking it in a closed thermos here at work, so I can’t really enjoy that “novelty” of it now, and don’t really taste any difference from the beetroot to the flavor. It does taste a little fruity, though; it reminds me of the subtle fruity notes from a good dark chocolate, like a hint of berry that I can’t quite place (I’m leaning raspberry, but not quite).

It’s a nice chocolately tea, I just wish it hadn’t been such an utter mishap to make it! Thanks for the sample, tea-sipper!

It’s been hard to coordinate teatime over two different timezones virtually with Todd so I just went ahead on my own this Sunday and tried another from my mystery box set; this green tea sounded nice to go with my eggrolls and white rice I was having with dinner. I was very curious about it; gunpowder green tea usually isn’t my favorite (because of the smokiness of it) and jasmine can be hit or miss for me depending on how strong the flavor/aroma of it is, but I absolultely love lemon myrtle (easily my favorite of all the lemony herbals) and rose so I was curious how the flavors would end up playing out.

The lemon comes out as the main flavor note, and it’s that nice strong, slightly tart, rich lemon that I just love, smooth and fresh and clean, the lemon myrtle really shining. There is a nice floral flavor to the tea as well, though I mainly taste the rose. Rose with lemon has always been one of my favorite flavor combinations so it is very nice. There is a strong vegetal taste from the gunpowder tea (almost a slight spinachy taste toward the back of my tongue) but I’m not getting that smoky hint that I usually taste from gunpowder, probably from the strong citrus and floral notes dominating.

It’s a nice, relaxing, floral lemon tea. I’m enjoying my warm pot of this, but would like to also try an iced brew of this at some point, too.

This is my last white tea from a teabox; it came from the Discovery Teabox, so thank you to Skysamurai for hosting the teabox and all contributors for sharing their teas! I had a small amount of leaf so I decided to use my mini gaiwan, which holds about 40ml of water comfortably, for the session.

1.65g / 40ml (mini gaiwan) / 185F / 20s|30s|40s|50s|60s|70s|80s

The wet leaf both looks and smells like autumn leafs on the ground after a rain shower. The brew in the cup is a light tawny yellow and has a somewhat sweet, floral aroma; the first infusion tasted delicate, sweet, floral, and a little fruity, with the main notes presenting as honeysuckle and rose. The second infusion was slightly darker and a little more metallic on the nose, with a strong rose and berry aroma, and a more present fruit flavor (strawberry?) came out on the tongue. The back of my tongue picked up an autumn leaf vegetal taste toward the end of the sip. The third infusion was stronger in the autumn leaf notes still, with some woody notes as well, in both aroma and taste. The fourth infusion brought out mellower notes of melon and pear. The strong rose, honeysuckle, and pear surfaced during later infusions. I let the session go until I spilt the tea dangerously close to my laptop and took that as a divine sign, though to be fair the water in my thermos was starting to lose some warmth and the tea was fading by then anyway.

It was a pleasant session and I’m glad I got to sample the tea, thanks!

This is one of the few Adagio white teas that wasn’t from the Meowster cupboard de-stash that I snatched up… I think I got it from my very first Adagio order, making it a very old tea. It is an opened packet, so I must have tried it at some point, but I haven’t recorded it here yet… I used the remainder of the sample to make a quart of cold-brewed iced tea.

Honestly, this reminds me of TeaSource’s Green Tea with Mandarin Orange, having that brisk though somewhat artificial-tasting orange flavor. This is the sort of tea I actually prefer iced, and it is pretty refreshing that way… the flavoring just presents better that way to my palate that way. Since this is on a white tea base rather than a green tea base like the other tea I’m familiar with, rather than grassy it has more of a hay flavor, and a very subtle note of melon. The orange itself isn’t too strong/overbearing, but that could be just the age of my sample now… personally I prefer it that way. It’s more subtle/less citrusy and the white tea is allowed to shine through a little more. I have a feeling that probably isn’t how it usually is, though.