Adagio Teas

Adagio sent me a tea mail with 4 samples and suggesting a place an order. I will say their little sample sizes do travel well. This wuyi was pretty tasty, but the third steep has lost its punch. Floral, sweet, and a tad smoky, certainly not a bad example of an oolong, but I’m not inspired to place an order until I sip down some of the rest of my tea. Though I am in Texas, and I did buy a box of cinnamon chamomile from HEB yesterday, so I guess I’m not on a buying hiatus?!?

The lavender is soothing and subtle, you can taste it without the tea reminding you of soap. The creme flavor adds a touch of creaminess while letting the Earl Gray flavor shine. Smooth and flavorful, a great tea to calm the nerves while keeping you alert.

1/19/22
Another tea I’ve been hanging onto for almost a year without trying. Loved it! Was unsure if I would like it at all because of the heavy chamomile ratio to other ingredients, but it was a delightful drink during a zoom meeting. The green tea was one of the drier ones, but overall I loved the levels of flavor. Chamomile hid in the background as rose and some sort of delicate fruit flavoring took over (maybe pear?)… I wish I knew all the ingredients to look for something similar, as this was a limited edition tea and I find myself enjoying it immensely.

Sipdown

I was gaming and drinking this tea. I noted to my friend online that it reminded me of raspberry cheesecake. That’s all I have in mind about this tea. I’m bad at remembering notes whenever I’m multitasking.

Backlog & Sipdown

Notes (1/5/22): I didn’t really like the tea base. The vanilla in the tea and creamer added was the only thing keeping me from dumping out the cup.

Backlog & Sipdown

It’s fun that one of the tinsel teas is decaf! I didn’t include any marshmallows in the cup. The flavor is desserty, though I don’t really get chocolate. It’s closer to coconut? It tastes better as it cools, but it’s nothing super remarkable. The flavoring is too mild, but with milk, it’s an okay cup. Surprisingly, I’m pretty into the resteep. I made it with almond milk and sugar free vanilla syrup, and that really pepped it up.

With a name like this, you might expect something super spicy or bold. The black tea is decently dominant, and it is slightly spicy. Otherwise, though, there’s not much that stands out about it. It’s mostly just a masala chai. The balance of spices is pretty good, but I don’t taste any of the apple or pumpkin flavors that are supposed to be there.

White tea isn’t really my thing. It just tastes sort of boring and fluffy and weird. The blueberry flavoring is mild and okay, but this tea overall is just sort of meh.

Smelled amazing but was just an ok beverage. I was expecting something like liquid red hots (H&S Hot Cinnamon Spice is like that, and what I prefer) but it was mostly black tea with cinnamon aftertaste. These was also a great amount of cinnamon dust in the bottom of the cup that somehow made it through my filter… I accidentally drank it, and let me tell you, it was super bitter and disgusting. lol, don’t do that! Overall, Adagio has much better cinnamon teas than this (there’s an excellent cinnamon rooibos or honeybush I believe).

Adagio is great at green rooibos teas! I only have this partially used sample from the tea box, but I’ll have to order a larger amount. The green rooibos is marshmallowy and delicious cold. The first time I had this, I tasted a lovely banana. This time I’m getting some nice strawberry. Everything combines really well and makes such a light, tasty treat to drink cold.

The flavoring here is way milder than I had hoped. It barely tastes like anything at all. If I’m really paying attention, I get some light ginger and maybe something cookie-ish. I wish they’d gone way bolder though. The second time I had this, it tasted like even less. I added some powdered ginger, but it still was very weak and sad.

I liked this best of the berry black Adagio teas from the TTB. The raspberry is slightly unclear, but nice, and the black tea is mild. This is a great smelling tea, but still not great enough to order. I think I might prefer this one without milk so you can taste more berry flavor.

The black tea randomly was a little harsh for me, and the blueberry wasn’t as strong as it could have been. I had a Cuppa Geek blueberry black tea recently that was much better, so I can pretty directly compare. Fun to try a cup from the last tea box though!

Cinnamon chai would be more accurate. Cinnamon is the dominate flavor once brewed with all the other spices and vanilla providing back up to it. Still very good and warm. The spices cover up the medical flavor roobios can have. Overall a good blend to add for a cinnamon spice.

Brewed two steepings combined into one mug from a single serve sample pack.

This is a very potent tea. The orange is more or a vitamin C orange with lots of tang and floral from the hibiscus. It actually reminds me a lot of Teavanas old orange blossom blend. I’ve had it in blends and added more water after the brew and it tasted less harsh. Overall good, but I can see why someone wouldn’t like it.

This is lightly fruity with a mild black base. No complaints, but also not crazy exciting. The mango tastes fairly accurate and realistic.

This was from the Adagio CommuniTEA December box. I fell behind on sipping the teas daily due to a schedule change to midnights for two weeks. My motivation was lacking and I numbly sipped on everything else. I decided to stop going through the list until I had enough time to take proper notes with each cup.

I made one 8oz cup with the sample. I threw 205F water in the cup and let it steep for 6 minutes. I typically increase the steep time for Rooibos blends because I think it helps extract the flavors more. I wouldn’t put this on my list of teas to restock. It was slightly boring and the flavor profile weaker than I expected. I assumed that since this was heavy with ingredients, there’d be a lot of depth to the flavor profile. I found that the main flavor was the rooibos and maybe a hint of cinnamon. Heck, I’d give it a better rating if the honeybush was more present, but it wasn’t. It was a pretty basic and boring tea.

I read another note here that it’s reminiscent of cleaning products and I GET it. The dry leaf reminds of Goo Gone + Windex. Shrug

The flavor isn’t as harsh though. It’s mildly sweet and has a spice that I can’t quite place. The brew is kind of weak, so I’ll make sure to add more to the next cup. The color of the liquor is pretty, so there’s that.

Shae Advent Day 22

Another tea from my wish list – thank you!! The base of this tea is quite bold. It works really well. There’s also some smoke and a bit of a tang from the bourbon. This is a really well thought out blend. It’s not something I’d want all the time, but it’s really fun and accurate.

Advent tea
First steep is very balanced with a sweet banana and nut combination. The second steep is more nutty and I’m hard pressed to pick which one I like better. A nice change from the minty/camomile evening blends. I’ll certainly remember this one on my next Adiago order.

OK definitely repurchasing this one. very smooth comforting blend. will see how i feel after finishing the sample.

These Tinsel Teas aren’t ending up very flavorful for me. I don’t even taste mint. I just taste generic, light flavoring on black tea with no real character. It tastes like almost nothing. These samples are from a tea box, and they were stored in regular Ziploc bags for an unknown amount of time, so perhaps they were once more strongly flavored.

This is similar to Harney’s hot cinnamon spice, but much milder. Spicy cinnamon is the primary flavor. It doesn’t need milk. It’s all spicy cinnamon, which is pleasant hot, but not at all special. The flavors could be stronger and more interesting.