Adagio Teas Custom Blends

Coldbrew sipdown! (320/302)

Ugh. Liquid floral soap. I am not sorry to see this go.

Poor, poor Knives. I’ve been that girl. I’ve been in looooooooooooooooooooooooove. My seventeen year old self strongly identifies with her…luckily I’m twenty-eight now and know better.

Cherry vanilla? I hope it’s good, because my wife will be very happy. Cherry is her thing.

It smells kinda good, but…mostly fake.

It tastes kinda good but…mostly fake XD.

I like the vanilla, but the cherry…ugh. So artificial.

Not the greatest.

Edit: I avoided this until it cooled, and cold you can taste the green a bit more, but it’s still not great.

I have distressing news. (“Is the news that we suck, because I really don’t think I can take it.”) (Scott Pilgrim is my life, hush)

No, I had to take a tea break! It was upsetting my stomach. Damn you, Gideon! shakes fist

I am very excited to try Kim because her voice is my inner voice. It’s sarcastic and dry and makes me chuckle. I really hope her tea lives up to it.

And it does! It’s fiery but creamy and soothing. Like that sassy friend who is always on your side, except for when you are clearly in the wrong. Yeah, this tea absolutely says Kim Pine to me. Gingery and spicy with a sweet undercurrent.

Edited to add: As time moved on and the tea cooled, it grew incredibly bitter and the ginger took over in a bad way…kind of like Kim XD. But not something I care to drink. It might be good as a latte?

Coldbrew sipdown (319/301)

My migraine is finally starting ease so I’ve moved on to my next coldbrewed tea. This tastes vaguely familiar. Like I’ve had it a million times before. Because it is. There’s really nothing special about this.

I’m falling out of love with rooibos teas, because they’re all muddling together for me. Sad.

I am excited for this lemon-blueberry tea, though I’m a little iffy about the almond. Hopefully it will come together to make a yummy blueberry muffin-ness.

I love Gideon because he is so unapologetically evil and utterly annoying. I liked him more in the novels than the movie, but movie Gideon holds a special place in my heart too.

If anything, I’ll enjoy these teas for the happy feelings they give due to loving this series so, so much.

So onto the tea, it’s…okay. More rooibos than anything, but I do get a hint of lemon and blueberry, but it’s more like a generic berry. But yeah this is rooibos with just a bit of other flavors. Maybe the cold steep will be better.

We ordered the Scott Pilgrim sampler set and the Town We Do Not Speak Of Or Acknowledge sampler set. I’m going to go through each of them alphabetically.

Oh Scott Pilgrim, I love you. I fell in love with the graphic novels and then when the movie came out, we saw it three times in theaters. I loved seeing places around Toronto that I know well. Hell, we were at Honest Ed’s just this weekend! It kills me to think of it being closed down soon.

Anyway, on to Envy, one of my favorite characters.

I like her! I love roasted mate and the sweet orange and cinnamon…yummy. I love a good mate blend and this is one I will definitely enjoy drinking down.

I realized that we are going to the US in a month….which means we can get US shipping on things. Which means I can get a tin of Ramona without paying an arm and a leg for shipping to Canada.

Life is gooooood.

This cup tonight is to make sure I still love it as much as I did when I first had it…and I do. Oh, I do. It’s just so yummy and blackberry-y and guh. I love it.

This is my hot toddy of the night and it’s blackberry heaven.

Definitely getting a tin.

Love this tea. Love, love, love this tea. Damn you, Adagio, for your insane shipping prices. Ah well, there are other teas for me to love.

I ran out of cold brewed teas and didn’t quite know what to do with myself. So I sorted the Adagio samplers into “drink hot” and “drink cold” and had to have another cup of this. I have enough for two more cups and then I will be crying forever.

It’s still delicious blackberry pie in a cup and I love it.

I heard Ramona sing…

Ramona is a girl after my own heart. Like me, she’s an American living in Toronto. At one point in the movie she has pink hair, like me. And, you know, she has, like, eleven evil exes…like me XD.

And, the girl has a butt-ton of tea.

“We have blueberry, raspberry, ginseng, sleepy time, green tea, green tea with lemon, green tea with lemon and honey, liver disaster, ginger with honey, ginger without honey, vanilla almond, white truffle, blueberry chamomile, vanilla walnut, constant comment and… earl grey.” (Though girl lives in Toronto and needs to up her looseleaf game)

So when I looked at the ingredients and spotted berry and cinnamon, I fell in love. Two of my favorite flavors, I just hope they play well together. The scent of the dry leaf is all cinnamon, but the steeped tea smells like blackberry. Hrmm.

Oh my glory. It’s blackberry pie in a cup. I always add a pinch of cinnamon to my blueberry pies and this reminds me of that. But it’s not a generic berry, it is very firmly a blackberry flavor. The flavor seems to take over and fill your entire mouth and oh my god I am in lesbians with it. (I know it’s an obvious joke, but it needed to be said). If you are on the fence about trying the Scott Pilgrim sampler set, get it for this tea alone.

I really like this one. Its a sweet, comforting rooibos. I love rooibos teas, and everything in this comes together to be a sweet, yummy treat.

This is definitely a good white tea blend. Very refreshing and smooth for after dinner. I’ll be ordering it again with no tweaks to the recipe!

I am getting ready to expand the HRH Emperor Oliver Custom Blends Collection at Adagio (shoppers: take note! http://www.adagio.com/signature_blend/my_blends_2.html ), so I thought that I’d raise a glass of this yummy white tea blend in His honor on this very humid early evening two weeks before the first anniversary of his departure from the terrestrial realm.

This tea is good. I’m glad that I have a supply of it on hand, as it is currently “unavailable” chez Adagio. Has anyone else noticed that many custom blend ingredients seem to be nearly continuously out of stock?

I have been neglecting white tea and my HRH Emperor Oliver custom blends from Adagio, so I just brewed up a cup of #2. It’s really quite good! It has a succulent quality and is not sweet but less vegetal than most green blends. I am happy about this tea and will be returning to it again soon.

The liquor is a light peachy green. The stronger wafts of cucumber off the dried tea are present but faint in the brewed up. Very thirst quenching, smooth and satisfying.

May the furry pristine white body of HRH Emperor Oliver rest in peace, while his angelic soul soars above!

second infusion: just as good as the first.

Second infusion was delicious—just as good as the first.

Third infusion was lighter but still nice.

This was my second custom blend white tea at Adagio, designed to honor my beloved HRH Emperor Oliver, who departed from this world on September 16, 2013. I combined snowbud, white cucumber and white monkey for a soft and tender blend—no fruits, no bells and no whistles. Because I used only a small proportion of the cucumber, the scent and flavor are quite light and the brew is very refreshing. I dislike the scent of the straight-up Adagio white cucumber dry—to me it smells like vinegar—but here it is nice in the blend.

hrh emperor oliver #2 can easily serve the same function for me as a cup of sencha after lunch, so I’ll probably alternate back and forth between the two. Since all of the teas here are white, I’ll reinfuse the blend later on for an early evening pot, since most of the caffeine will have come out in this infusion, given that it is water soluble.

I like this tea and will not be tweaking it at all. A thirst-quenching light and limpid halo-white blend!

Soon I shall be departing from HRH Emperor Oliver’s final resting place, so I felt the need to brew up a glass of one of his commemorative teas this afternoon. Today I made #1, which is a simple blend of white tea with blueberry and peach flavor, and decorated with cornflowers. It tastes quite good!

May HRH Emperor Oliver rest in peace! His spirit will surely follow me wherever I may go.

What can I say? This stuff is delicious—and smells wonderful, too! A fitting tribute to the olfactorily gifted HRH Emperor Oliver…

The fruity peach and blueberry flavors sit perfectly atop delicate white tea. The blue cornflowers impart a bit of haute couture pizzazz to the dried leaves.

second infusion: I drank this after dinner. It was just as good as the first, but hopefully with less caffeine…

Another lovely pot of this white tea blend. The fruity flavors really came through today—especially the peach.

The second infusion was very good. The third was a bit weak. I’ll probably stick to two in the future… I’m using a cast iron testubin-type pot and allowing the leaves to fully blossom (not using the mesh basket). I might try the basket next time to see whether my belief (that tea is better infused in a larger volume) has any basis in reality.

This is my very first Adagio Custom Blend. I chose a simple combination of their white blueberry and white peach and added some cornflowers. It’s very pretty, and it tastes rather good: clean and lightly fruity.

The white tea apparently comes from Fujian province in China. I am satisfied with the result and will continue to design new teas in this series to commemorate HRH Emperor Oliver, who took leave of this world on September 16, 2013. Tea and cats are natural companions.

I’m interested in creating these teas in part because in perfumery there has been a huge onslaught of new “autodidact” perfumers who appear to be just mixing stuff together in their garage—or kitchen. Perfumery is a profession, but tons of people are christening themselves perfumers, probably in many cases because the mark-up is incredibly high. Only about 2% of the price of a mainstream perfume is for the actual juice. The rest goes to marketing, packaging and, of course, profit.

So why is this relevant? Because I want to say that just because I can choose to mix a bunch of ingredients together does not make me a master tea blender. I am a complete and utter dilettante, but what appears to matter above all in both perfumery and tea blending is that the ingredients being blended together be of high quality. Then most combinations are going to work. No magic, really, at all. Just a decision to combine this with that. Originality in perfume making is overrated, it seems to me, given my experience at Adagio.

This is the first time I’m tasting this tea and I added almond milk to see how it would taste with this tea since it smells very sweet in the bag. It tastes good like this! I let it steep for a few minutes and added maybe a couple of tablespoons worth of almond milk. Has a little bit of a smokey character too it and a little bit of almost a carmel taste to it.

My Pen Pal and book blogger extraordinaire Jenny Colvin (http://readingenvy.blogspot.com/) created this tea over at Adagio, and enclosed a pouch with her last letter. Earl Grey Creme. Coconut. Yes please! Once I inhaled the delightful fragrance of the dried blend, I wondered why I never thought to combine these flavors — they smell SO GOOD together.

The brewed tea is absolutely delicious. The creme together with the coconut is swoonworthy, and then the light citrus adds elegance and prevents the blend from being too over the top dessert-y. Perfect sans additions (although I could see adding a little milk and sugar for a decadent treat. I can see making a tea latte for a really, really decadent treat, too!).

Magic! Jenny, how did you think of Earl Grey and Coconut together? Brilliant!