Elevenses / Fancy Tea: Afternoon Tea

So I got a small sample of this when the maker Aun Juli offered ‘sampler sets’ of her own. And I adore this tea. I’ve actually made it twice but just realized that I never put up a tasting note.
Unsweetened you can definitely taste the blueberry and kinda the vanilla. But with a bit of sweetener the blueberry becomes way more pronounced and the vanilla comes up a bit better. The cream just kinda adds a smoothness to the entire tea.
No astringency or bitterness. I might try this at a lower temp like Andie did, just to see.

I was completely bummed when Adagio pulled this one along with all of the Tolkien related teas due to a copyright violation with the SCZ company. (Who, if anyone’s interested, has nothing to do with the Tolkien estate. They just made those silly Hobbit cartoon movies ages ago.)

Thankfully this blend is available once more. Aun-Juli rereleased this tea under her own brand of teas ‘Fancy Narwhal’s Fancy Tea for Fancy Folks’ with a blueberry inclusion. You can find it here – http://www.adagio.com/signature_blend/blend.html?blend=46837&SID=2dbb8a5f7bd02cff20c7c97ba3dd08e1

I also just found out that Adagio teas is letting her reopen/repost her Tolkien teas with some revision to the names/labels/etc. so they’re not Tolkien specific. (Which makes sense to me since Tolkien didn’t make up terms like Shieldmaiden or Elevenses). So this blend, along with many of her others, is up again in its originality under the same name, just a different fandom heading ‘Tales and Tea Leaves’ – http://www.adagio.com/signature_blend/group.html?group=2721&SID=1eb52eaf15a99636447ab339f63f7203

i know i don’t have to say it every time, but i had so much fun planning the adagio buy & swap i did with moraiwe that i just feel compelled to mention it yet again.
LOOK at ALL THE TEA i get to try! looook!
and i get to share it with my sister too! double fun all around. and my sis is the reason i even read The Hobbit in the first place.** so totally awesome.

not a bad tea at all! but, ….yes but, ….i’m gonna blame the white tea for why i don’t mega love this blend. i like oolongs lots, but sometimes i just need my white in a very specific context to really enjoy it in the best way. so it’s a very yummy tea, but it just doesn’t warm my veins the way some other similarly flavored teas do.
it’s cool though, more for oddree!!

**(being an english major and an ex-english teacher and a general overall power reader, she has read LOTR and The Hobbit numerous times.) (also, with that bio under her belt, she seriously makes the BEST fic recs. and she sent me a brilliant fic that i started reading but had to stop because i hadn’t actually read The Hobbit yet. so i saw the first movie, paused the fic, read The Hobbit, then resumed the fic. all thanks to her nudges.)

edit
(in hindsight, i hope oddree doesn’t mind that this post is like all about her?? haha, i just had the stuff to say about the stuff and stuff. xo)

Backlog!

One of the first loose leaf teas I bought (in January of this year!), and along with Foxtrot it quickly became my favorite in those days of only knowing Adagio and David’s for whimsical/modern flavored blends (I’d known of Upton for years but that’s not really their thing). It was funny a week or two ago, serving this to my husband…brought back a lot of memories and made me realize how far I’ve come this year with tea, 99% thanks to Steepster.

Got the Tolkien Teas sampler set!! I tried to add the Wizard’s Grey that I drank while at work, but steepster won’t let me add teas :( it crashes every time.

Anyway, when I got home from work and showed this sampler set to my fiance, he HAD to try this one. So I made some for myself (hot), and made it iced for him. This tea looks beautiful in the tin. Wasn’t sure what to go with for steep time and temp since it is a blend of three different types of tea, but decided to go with 165° for 3 minutes so I wouldn’t bring out the black too much. Turned out to be a very smooth tea, a good blend of the vanilla and creme, and it reminds me of eating a blueberry scone. Well great, now I want an actual blueberry scone. Next time I make this I’m going to try a hotter water temp and see how that changes the flavor.

Whew, back at work again and there’s snow on the ground and I’m exhausted and congested and depressed but… it’s the 11th hour of the day and I’m drinking Elevenses (that paragraph in the Hobbit about multiple meals always makes me laugh) and it’s a lovely enough tea for sure, but with these Lorna Doone shortbreads I’m nomming on in true Hobbit style, it’s DIVINE. Blueberry tea and shortbread cookies – yes, please.

Home – 3:30 PM

It’s been a while since I’ve tried a blend from my Tales and Tea Leaves sampler, mostly because it’s new to my cupboard and I’ve been trying to drink mostly older teas.

This one is rather disappointing to me. I was hoping for more blueberry, but I’m not really getting any at all. Mostly this just tastes like a rather bland vanilla-cream tea with some hay notes.

Meh.

Backlog from last week.

My tea drinking has gone down lately between work being busy and the weather getting hot and muggy. I had this with breakfask thinking blueberries and cream would make for a nice, light tea.

It’s not bad. I definitely get a creamy flavor. Seems like the blueberries got lost in the shuffle. Maybe it needs some sugar?

So I decided to get a sample tin of this in my last Adagio order and to be honest its pretty good, not reorder good, but still I’ve enjoyed drinking through this tin. This tea tastes of vanilla, cream, and blueberry and is pretty tasty with a touch of milk but it seems a little too bland for my liking.