Adagio Teas

Tried this flavour with a bunch of others from Adagio. 6 of us drank, 5 liked this flavour best. Especially the vegan people in the group _ Will definitely order this in the future and recommend it as a dessert tea with biscuits and jam.

About the tea – It’s a flavoured black, to me tastes of vanilla and caramel flavouring but everyone else said it tasted creamy. The actual black tea taste was very mild. I found it quite enjoyable as one of those flavoured desert teas you have with biscuits and jam.

This tea or any of the Adagio range is not by any stretch a FF high-grade connoisseur tea, but that’s not why we were drinking it. It’s more of a high-end consumer tea.

A very generous sample from Kawaii433 that took me a while to work through. Thanks :)

Same base oolong as the Adagio Peach Oolong she sent. Same base flavors — roasted barley, autumn leaf, wood, mineral — but the grapefruit elevated that kind of heaviness into something brighter, though like the peach oolong, more aromatic than full of taste. Odd medicinal-artificial whiffs in the aroma. Decent citrus zest tingling and very, very light bitterness from some grapefruit rind. Pretty smooth tea. I steeped many cups of this western (2 brews with 2tsp) before deciding to finish off the bag doing a gongfu session in a 100mL teapot. No difference whatsoever between the two methods. A good thing about this tea is not having to be mindful of brewing temp; boiling works just fine.

This is a very old sampler I got from… I think the first Adagio order I ever made, sometime in the summer of 2017? And I don’t order from them anymore, so… it at least feels like a long time ago, now. It was my free zodiac birthday sampler based on my birthdate. I had every intention of getting around to it last month and somehow never did…

I think part of why I haven’t gotten to this sooner was the mix of tea in what appears to be mostly herbal ingredients, when I’m always in the need for more herbals to drink at night, but it looks pretty scant in the black tea leaves listed in the ingredients (and I didn’t even notice the white it boasts in the ingredients…) so I figure the caffeine must be pretty light in this. It’s a Friday night and I’m off tomorrow, so a lightly caffeinated herbal should be alright tonight, so I figured I’d finally drink this one off, in the mammoth-pot. (Probably a bit over-leafed, but maybe that will make up for the age of the leaf and the fact those Adagio sampler tins, while “looking cute” have pretty much no air seal on them at all, so I’m expecting some bad flavor deprivation…)

The tea is dark red, and the aroma smells heavily of rooibos and chamomile. I’m not a big chamomile fan, but the rooibos is very rich in this blend and helps balance out that flavor a lot for me, so it isn’t quite so overwhelming and overbearing for me. Mostly I get a strong, forward rooibos flavor that is a bit woody, grassy, sweet, and floral in flavor; likely these flavors are amplified by the heavy taste of chamomile that comes out midsip to finish and lingers on the tongue. This tea apparently has orange and grapefruit flavoring, but I’m not tasting any flavoring at all, so either it is the age of the sampler, or because I’m very sensitive to the taste of chamomile, it is just drowning out any other flavors for me. I feel like there is a very subtle hint of citrus left on my tongue in the aftertaste, but I can only pick that up after the thick chamomile taste finally subsides, and during the sip I can’t notice any citrus notes at all. So this pretty much just tastes like a rooibos/chamomile blend. I honestly can’t taste any black/white tea notes and don’t know why they would be included in this blend; it seems silly to add caffeine to this when they aren’t really adding anything to this blend in regards to flavor.

This is pretty meh. Since I don’t really like chamomile and this isn’t providing much else, this Pisces tea just isn’t for this particular Pisces, I guess. To be fair, the rooibos is making this much more palatable for me than many chamomile teas I’ve tasted, so I will finish this pot rather than dump it, so it does have that going for it.

From Meowster! Thanks so much — I’m slowly trying to get to all the teas, but usually I go for sipdowns or favorite teas. This one is a quality, tasty keemun. If I was in a blind taste test, I’d definitely say this was a keemun, however this one is a puzzle when it comes to distinct flavor notes. The leaves are very huge and wiry, they seem to be an even mix of black and golden in color. The brew is a medium strength, with a hint of smokiness, but there is so much depth here — it is tough for me to describe. Maybe even notes of grapes, which I don’t usually notice in any teas. It’s funny that so many leaves are huge now, across the board from all tea shops and (I think) that means higher quality for the most part, but I also seem to love smaller leafed teas more… maybe not quite CTC size leaves, but a nice mid-size tea leaf seemed to always be my favorite years ago. Like most of the Teavivre black teas have such HUGE leaves now. This tea is satisfying anyway.
Steep #1 // 1 heaping teaspoon for a full mug // 15 minutes after boiling // 2 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 3 minute steep

Welp, my Better Tea Club came two weeks early. They said it was because the shipping date is normally the 21st even though I tried to have it set up for the 6th. OOPS. Guess I will have to be canceling that. Anyway, this was actually a tea I was excited for. So here goes
Western brew: 7min, 212F, 2 tsp, 12oz.
Taste plain is… bland. You can taste the spice but it isn’t too prominent. So I latte-ed it. Two splendas, plus Almond milk. Taste now is… MMMMM. What an improvement. The sweetness really brings out the spices. I don’t get an overpowering cinnamon so that’s a plus. I’m getting cloves and cardamom. And the natural vanilla is shining through as well. I also taste… raisins? That’s a bit weird but it is there. I am very pleasantly surprised with this tea. Adagio hasn’t been impressing me lately, so to find one so satisfying is a nice change. I heartily recommend this one. Very tasty.

First sips give off strong orchid flavor with a very green tea-like aftertaste. It is very enjoyable and has full flavor.

-edit
After drinking it more this , I would definitely order this tea again. A very nice tea for the morning.

Welp, I’m back in the monthly “Better Tea Club”. I really want to branch out into other, actual better tea clubs. But, until then, here we are. This tea is part of the March box. I figured I’d brew it up to see just how bad it is. For the record, it smells like vanilla body spray in the package, so my hopes are not too high for this one.
Brewed Western Style, 1.5 tsp, 16 oz, 3 min, 212 f.

Taste plain is… well it isn’t the worst thing I ever tasted. It’s definitely vanilla, and definitely black tea base. It isn’t sweet or anything, just a basic vanilla black tea. I’m going to try and add a Single Splenda. Oh geez, maybe I should have only done half a splenda. It’s syrupy sweet super vanilla now. I mean, I don’t know what is better/worse. Either way, I really can’t recommend this. It’s not well done. The vanilla is just too artificial. Sorry, Adagio, this is a miss for me.

I really enjoyed this Oolong. It’s a great tea to drink while you are working. This taste isn’t overwhelming, but complex enough to be very enjoyable. It’s a comforting tea. The smell is reminiscent of wet leaves/leaf piles in a pleasant way. I will buy this tea again.

I really, really want to like this tea, but I’m not sure how I feel about the smell.

Lapsang souchong was my intro to loose-leaf tea, so there’s some sentimental value to a good lapsang. But this one kind of left me scratching my head.

As far as the taste, it’s very lightly sweet and smoky and has a delicate flavor. You can’t really add anything to it without overpowering the flavor, so it’s best taken straight. I’ve had several cups over the past couple weeks and I keep revisiting it, but it’s just weird. The best cup I had was brewed at about 5 minutes with water freshly boiled. Lower temperatures or steeping it for a shorter amount of time left it tasting really weak.

The smell is overpoweringly smoky. Almost like someone took a bunch of pine needles and liquid smoke (not a good one) and dumped it over tea leaves. The taste is fine if you can get past the smell, but the smell is too strong for lapsang. It smells like a campfire, but there’s something artificial about it. The more time I spend around it, the more I think there’s something chemical-y about it.

I’m not sure I would recommend it to someone wanting a good lapsang. I would probably recommend it as an ingredient for a good steak rub or to make a bourbon infusion with. Not sure I’d recommend it to any of my tea-drinking friends though.

Like the taste, but just can’t get behind the way it smells. It just makes me want steak.

Another sample from the generous Kawaii433, thanks!

This smells straight up like a roasted barley tea with baked peach scent, pushing into artificial territory. This ain’t no juicy fresh peach. Taste is so much weaker than aroma. Has some of that roasted barley, autumn leaf, wood, mineral and peach flavor. Weird body — thin yet slimy? and strange aftertaste. I tried doing a second steep but it was lacking so sticking to one steep for the last bit of leaf in the bag. Oh, I’ve tried both 195F and 212F for brewing with no noticeable change. At least the tea can’t be screwed up that way.

Finally, a review for something other than 52teas! LOL! Anyway, I re-upped my Better Tea Club for this month, and this was one of the featured teas. Visually, the tea kinda reminds me a bit of gunpowder green, while the smell is definitely potent in bag.
Brewed 3 min/170 F/4 g/16 oz
Taste is. Hmmm I’m not sure if it is crossover from the almond milk I was just drinking prior but this one is very mild and sweet. I’m getting notes of peas and green beans, but also a bit of hay, and I swear a hint of meat. Not sure about that meat bit, it’s a rather faint meat flavor, sort of like beef broth? Chicken broth maybe? Not sure. Really wish I hadn’t had a whole cup of almond milk prior (I needed to down some meds) because it is skewing my palate. Swishing it around my mouth to cleanse it a bit, I think that meat flavor I’m getting is closer to chicken broth. Does that mean it qualifies as umami? I have never fully been able to grasp the concept of savory or umami other than people saying “Chicken broth”. If that is the case, then yes this tea qualifies as savory. I dunno. The more I drink this the more I like it. It’s grown on me over the course of just one cup. I certainly like it better than some other oolongs I have had (I am beginning to think I really just don’t like dancong) but it isn’t quite as good as my Milk Oolong from Mandala. I supposed it’s worth a solid B, and a recommendation from me. I guess if you like green oolongs give this a shot. There are much worse teas out there.

I like this. Added a splash of half and half with a little sugar, and it’s perfect. Smokier, but also definitely sweet on its own. I wanted more of a dessert tea anyway, so this is exactly what I wanted. Trying to ease back into tea.

I am a big lover of different kinds of spicy chai teas and make it a point to try almost every one that I come across. This one is quite tasty with enough chocolate to make it noticeable but not so much as to take away from the spice.

First this tea smells M ZING, it definitely has a chocolatey earthy smell. It also tastes wonderfully earthy with just little hints of something a little darker that I can’t quite describe. I love it with a little honey or raw sugar.

Cold brew sipdown! (192/397)

Yep, this is much better as a cold brew. I can actually smell and taste the chocolate, and the cherry isn’t as overwhelmingly strong and artificial. In fact, I think the cherry note is coming more from the honeybush, which always comes off as cherry-like to me, than it is from any artificial flavouring. Upping my rating quite a bit from 53. I still wouldn’t purchase this myself, but I’m enjoying my cold brew cup.

Thanks Sil for the sample!

The honeybush is more prominent in my mug than any of the added flavours, but there is a tangy cherry note which follows up the honeybush, mixing to give a cherry cough sweet sort of flavour profile overall. Not bad, but it is a little weird, and I’ve had just about my fill of cough sweets the last couple of months (I had flu, multiple colds, sinusitis and a nasty bout of tonsillitis which has rendered my tastebuds nearly useless since the middle of January) so the taste memory was not exactly the most welcome one. There is a lingering sweetness which I originally assumed was vanilla, but the more I concentrate – and after having it pointed out in several notes – I can tell that it is supposed to be chocolate. It’s that ‘cocoa butter’ sort of note which I find most ‘chocolate’ teas end up translating as, but I do taste it nonetheless. I’m intrigued by the sound of a cold brew, so I think I might try a very small batch with my one remaining teabag and see if that coaxes out any more of the cherry or chocolate flavours.

Received in the awesome package from TreeGal. Thanks so much! Somehow I’ve never tried this one before. The marzipan is spot on in accuracy and very intoxicating. However, it is probably trying to mask a lower quality oolong (It’s Formosa — the brown type that looks like leaves and twigs.) I’ve not drank too much Formosa and also don’t think it’s supposed to be the highest quality of oolong. Almond would seem best paired with the flavors of Formosa anyway. And I wouldn’t want a high quality oolong drenched in any flavor anyway… The second steep is less marzipan with more of the oolong flavors making an appearance. If anyone doesn’t like the amount of marzipan, they can always dump the first steep and just drink a second or third steep. But this tea is MARZIPAN and I like it. They should have named it ‘marzipan’ actually. It hits a marzipan craving if you have some of this tea around.
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug // 24 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 2 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
2019 Sipdowns: 20 (DavidsTea – Forever Nuts)

At first, the smell reminded me of a pasture/very earthy. After a couple of sips, I get a strong grassy and wood undertone. I grew to like it a little more by the end. The earthiness can be a lot to handle if you aren’t use to it. This is my first pu’erh, so I’m slowly learning.

A must have for cool mornings. Tastes just as the name suggest.

I ate the last mango in Paris…. but there was still mango tea in the pantry.

Mango is the unofficial fruit of today. There is a scent of mango and some citrus notes. The flavour is nicely mango, with a little peach. A good fruity blend.

I think I’ll leave off a score from this one since it’s rather old. I’m finally nearing the end of the over two pounds of tea meowster kindly sent me this summer. I’ve mostly been sharing this one with family members since I’m not a big fan. There’s a murky green tea flavor, but for me, it’s missing any distinct mango flavor. Adagio has some green teas that are quite nice, so it’s possible this one was too in its prime. As it is, it’s not too pleasant. Mango seems to be a flavor that’s difficult for teas to capture in a totally satusfying way.

This tea smells horrible while brewing, strongly of tobacco. And on its own, I just can’t stand it. I understand that a lot of people love gunpowder. It’s just not for me. However, I decided to try making Moroccan mint before I gave up on it, and sure enough it makes a pretty good Moroccan mint with enough mint and sugar. At least it won’t go to waste?

My daughter asked for a cup of this today, so I made a cup for each of us. The peach flavor really shines in this one. The tea itself has a really mellow flavor, sweet but not overpowering. I really like this one.

Good for a daily drinker through the week. Not special, but doesn’t claim to be- just a decent puer for easy, quick brewing. Brewed grandpa style in 17 oz infuser tumbler.