Libra

red rose petals strewn
choco-covered strawberries
topped with pristine cream

Adagio Teas included this as a free sample and I’ve tried hard to like it. It seems almost disloyal to Libras everywhere to dislike it this much. But it is truly not for me. It tastes artificial and cloying to me. It reminds me of when I was 13 and ate my lip gloss because it smelled like strawberries. The lip gloss also had this strange, artificial, somewhat bitter taste.

(First off, I’m just going to say I’m not sure if the version I have is exactly the same as the one other people are reviewing since all of those reviews are from several years ago. But the picture and the description are right, so I’m going with it.)

I want to like this tea, and I don’t dislike it. It’s fine. It smells good and it looks nice, but the taste just isn’t all the way there for me. I’m getting the strawberries but there’s something else there that I just don’t like. It’s bitter and doesn’t compliment the other flavors. I have a suspicion I could make this tea more palatable with sugar and/or milk so I might try that, but it’ll probably be a while since I drink the vast majority of my tea straight.

This has black tea strawberry and cream. I see the ingredients clearly. This mainly smells like strawberry with abit of chocolate. I steeped this up a short time. This tastes like a slight chocolate taste with abit of slightly tart strawberry and a little bit of cream really as smoothness. And a basic black tea base. This is a decent tea but needs a more chocolate taste and a better tea base to make this really good.

Apparently, everyone has bad memories of this flavor, but I enjoyed it — at least, to the point where I’ve kind of been craving it lately. But perhaps absence makes the heart grow fonder, given that it’s been a steady year since I’ve consumed any of it? Too bad the blend isn’t still around or else I’d be able to tell you if my feelings are disingenuous or otherwise.

Valentines alone is too tart or something for me – I’m not a big fan. But I always like it with cream to mellow it out, so I like this. However, I brewed this a bit too strong so it is not as calming as I had hoped, since I’m freaking out about my kitty possibly having a UTI and also a little caffeine-jittery… I’ll know at 3:30 about kitty-girl and hopefully I won’t feel so over-caffeinated by then.

So I got this as a free sample from Adagio Teas quite a while ago — I don’t remember exactly how long. A year or two, maybe? I had already drunk most of it; I had just enough left for one last cup of tea.

I remember this as being much more flavorful than it tasted today. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that I woke up with a cold this morning (which I caught from my friend’s husband, who caught it from their five-year-old daughter, who I believe caught it from one of her kindergarten classmates. Thank you public school system, incubator of germs). Or it could have to do with the age of the tea. I’m not sure.

Anyway, I could barely taste the berry flavor today. In the past, the berries have been much more noticeable. This was an okay cup of tea, but not the best I’ve ever tasted.

Free single-serve sample from my order.

Honestly, not a ton to say about this one. It mostly tastes like chocolate flavoring, of which I am not a fan. I do get just a little bit of the strawberry, but it’s predominantly a chocolate black tea. Cream? Not really.

This was a bad example, but I would like to try the rest of Adagio’s zodiac teas and I wish they offered some kind of sampler… Maybe I’ll get lucky and get more cards for these teas.

I really thought I would like this one, it sounded a little bit like “The Earl’s Valentine” from DavidsTea, of which I am very fond. However, this tea was just off.

It tasted overly tart, and not sweet enough. An added splash of cream dragged it into the “dessert” category I was expecting, but it was still cloyingly artificial.

I think strawberry chocolate tea sounds great conceptually, but that the addition of artificial flavouring is really throwing off what could have been a good thing.

This is one of my favorite teas. It tastes like a nice chocolate covered strawberry without being too sweet.