Ginger

It’s been a while, Steepster. Many things have changed and time has past, but here I am. Back again and this time with an Adagio Teas staple. I admit to having never tried this before. I will admit to not liking Tazo’s ginger tea much at all. But this is a black tea, which already distinguishes it from that failure. The aroma from the sample tin is already promising. In fact, if the tea turns out to be undrinkable, I’ll keep the tin around just to open and sniff on occasion.

Let me update you with my setting before I take sips of this and review. I’m sequestered in the third story of my Residence Hall at Western Kentucky University. Outside is a good 4-5 inches of snow. It’s finals week and I just recieved a care package loaded with tea. Here we go, I need something soothing and warm, let’s see if Adagio delivers…

Liquor is a dark brown. The smell is, of course, ginger and strong ginger too. Hanging my face over the mug is therapeutic itself.

Wow… That’s… Hang on, I need a few more sips. This is a character study of ginger. It has the base notes of a normal black tea. But taking point, are the strong peppery notes of ginger. It’s hard to convert ginger’s citrus and sweetness to tea and I understand that. And although it lacks those, we can’t fault it for that and it’s perhaps best it doesn’t have them anyway. The aftertaste has what I’m forced to call a cooling mint flavor.

All things considered, I like it. Not as a tea to be drank daily, but perhaps as a seasonal tea?

The dry leaf smells like the plastic packet the sample came in.
The wet leaf smells like . . . I’m not sure what. It rings a bell somewhat but I just can’t seem to identify it. Nothing like tea or ginger however.

In the cup there is a faint scent that you might call ginger if you knew to expect this to be ginger. The taste is a little ginger like, but again, if I didn’t know it was supposed to be ginger, I might not actually identify it as ginger.

Honestly the cinnamon I tried was pretty similar, but it was more pleasant while this not so much. Its not bad, but feels underwhelming. I was hoping for a little more punch from the ginger. Its also not as smooth like maybe its conflicting with the base maybe?

This one was kind of a flop for me. I love ginger! I love the burn!

…But this does not burn. There’s no bright, almost citrus-like flavor of some ginger teas I’ve had. It’s mellow, more like an everyday ginger ale. Not to say it’s bad or anything, I was just hoping for more of a fresh ginger kick. This tastes like powdered ginger.

That said, this will still be good to mix with stuff or enjoy iced. I can add a layer of ginger to pretty much anything in my cupboard and it will be good, so I don’t mind that this isn’t stellar.

I love ginger, and a tea with just that is hard to come by. Usually it’s ginger with some kind of fruit, like ginger peach or ginger pear, or a holiday tea like gingerbread. Not that I don’t like those, but sometimes I just want ginger and nothing else.

This tea suits my needs quite nicely. It’s got a strong ginger taste that works well with the black tea base. I can take it either with sugar or without, but I really wouldn’t recommend any milk.

Trying out all the samples from Adagio I haven’t gotten to yet. I’ve never had a ginger Tea before, so was curious.

It has a bite. But unfortunately I can’t distinguish the ginger bite from the black tea’s bitterness. They play off each other and make this rather unpleasant for me. I may have over-steeped this? Next round I’ll try under-steeping and see if the flavor profile changes at all.

As the tea cooled down, the ginger became more obvious and the bitterness less. But it wasn’t very pleasant to drink straight. Perhaps if cut with cream and sugar? But then that’s just sort of sad.

This is a really nice strong ginger flavor, especially if you oversteep it. The black tea base provides a boldness to it. This tea is perfect to soothe an upset stomach!

Very nice.. with a strong ginger flavour.