Blood Orange

I love blood oranges. I love tea. Teavana’s Tarocco Ruby Orange is one of their only teas that doesn’t disappoint me. I prefer that one to this one, hands down, in an herbal blood orange tea battle.

This just tastes sour. Nothing else. It smells so good, but it just doesn’t deliver. Oh and when it was first brewed it REALLY smelled like cereal, which creeped me out. I might give it another try and steep it a minute or so longer, or maybe use a bit more. I used a half tablespoon, knowing that Adagio recommends just one, which to me is not enough for a big chunky herbal.

My friend has not led me astray in all the other teas she gave me to try, so I hope I can work something out with this one, especially since it’s my favorite citrus fruit involved!

Now this one I really forgot I had. It was unopened in the back of my cupboard. It was one of my first loose teas… it came with the Adagio IngenuiTEA herbal sampler gift set that was my introduction to the world of loose leaf tea. I bought another packet for iced tea for the summer… and promptly forgot about it.

I’m not a big fan of hot fruity teas, but I was in the mood for something different tonight. It tastes like… warm orange juice. Which isn’t great. This rating is mostly for the iced version.

I clearly see all of the ingredients and they are colorful. And look like dried fruit. This kind of smells like orange. I steeped for a couple of minutes or so. I’t brewed up to a light orange color. I will be experimenting with times. But this tastes like orange with a bite. And I think It’s good.

Was a really ruby red after the full 7 recommended mins, but too tart for my personal preferences…little grenadine and a sugar cube took the edge off. I can see this iced with ginger ale come summer.

I had this tea as part of the ThinkGeek’s/Adagio’s Tea Sampler… Awful. At best it was bitter, you can however save your investment and make it as iced tea. Most tea that has too much of one flavor can be ‘saved’ and then enjoyed as iced tea, perhaps because we cant taste cold things as well.

Backlogging.

I got this a few years ago, in the tea of the month thing hubs got for me one Christmas. I liked it the first couple times I made it, but then I kind of forgot it in the cupboard. By the time I rediscovered it, I think it was too old – I didn’t like it after that. I always drank it iced.

So this last weekend, I dumped it all in a pan and simmered it on the stove for awhile to scent the house. It smelled awesome :D

I got this tea as a bonus extra in a swap from KittyLovesTea. I’m so glad she put it in, because it’s probably not one I would have ordered myself, but it was really rather lovely.

The colour was very striking, a really deep red colour. It was sweet without being sickly, and the aroma was lovely. I polished off the pot pretty quickly.

2nd steep of ten minutes, the colour had faded to a pinky colour now, but it still had a very pleasant aroma and enough taste to make it a worthwhile drink.

I LOVE this tea, hot or iced – I make it double strength, and then dilute to taste – I will buy this again and again!

Another arrived this its Blood Orange on to take the pulpit or the chopping block…honestly its quite on the chopping block:( I really expected a much fuller and vibrant flavor, the tartness of fruits, smell of citrus and roses that can rival Teavana’s herbal blends. Its quite to mute, near to a gummy vitamins than kid’s aspirin , I can notice a chalkiness yet still be able to drink quite well provided it has cooled a little. Despite its shortcomings, I can say with a bit of ingenuity like an addition of a little fruit juice or some sugar can make this blend quite drinkable. I say enjoy this tea but certainly it needs a bit of work to rough out the edges!

I finished my sample from Adagio today and I can’t say I’ll be getting more. It’s not bad- just rather unremarkable. I prefer other fruit tisanes to this one. I can’t review how it tastes warm because I only did iced, but I purposely avoided it hot. It definitely has this orange kool-aid, high c orange, or other sugary artificial orange drink aspect going on. Warm orange kool-aid just doesn’t appeal to me, so I opted for all iced.

It works rather well iced- very refreshing and citrus-y with a little bit of tartness from hibiscus (you know, the thing that just has to show up everywhere!). I blended this one a couple of times with honeybush vanilla from Adagio and it worked quite well to create a liquid creamsicle like flavor.