Adagio Teas

Definitely a green tea, though it came in an “assam” tea sampler. It was OK, as I am not a big green tea fan.

This was a great start to the growing mountain of autumnal teas I have in my cupboard. I’m usually put off by flavourings instead of natural ingredients, but this creme brulee flavouring completely won me over. It just smells so damn good.

Dry, it reminds me of cream, caramel, Bailey’s Irish cream liqueur, sweet stewed apple and a little tartness that reminds me of cranberry (after reading the ingredients I can see this is actually rosehip).

It was agony waiting for my water temperature to drop to 82C. Worth it though. The brewed tea had an aroma of Bailey’s again, cream, and sweet caramel, losing those more down-to-earth apple and tart berry aromas.

The flavour, thankfully, was not as sickly sweet as the wet aroma suggested – for which I am very grateful. I tend to get sick of overly sweet teas very quickly and can rarely finish a whole cup. But this was perfect.

Having consumed a vast amount of marigold tea earlier this year I picked out the familiar mellow note in the tea body almost instantly, along with the distinct gunpowder green tea. I didn’t detect any of the smokiness that other Steepster tasting notes talk about, instead I found a burnt sugar note, just like the crispy top of freshly made creme brulee that my father used to make. He used a blow torch to melt the sugar like that. It’s a miracle we’ve never had a house fire. I digress. The tea is smooth and light overall, with dancing apple and caramel notes playing over my tongue.

It’s VERY easy to drink and the sweet flavours linger for a little while after each sip.

Pictures in the blog review (we’ve recently changed the design of our website, so it’s all shiny and new): https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/adagio-autumn-mist-green-tea-review/

Today has been one of those “my GI tract is trying to kill me” days, and my ginger offerings have been (mostly) exhausted (I at least used up all my bulk ginger from the co-op in San Francisco, and it’ll be a long time coming before I can go back there… I could only find the powdered kind at my local grocery and that just is not what I want, meh).

I thought turmeric might be the next best thing, especially since most turm blends include ginger. And I’ve had this sampler forever. I’m used to turm blends being spicy but this appears to be more apple than anything looking at the dry contents. The brewed tea is a sharp marigold color and smells like a more earthy sort of apple spice tea. The flavor is actually pretty nice; I am a spice wuss and have had turm teas that knocked my socks off, that I could only drink with ample amounts of milk to cut the spice, but this is a mild, sweet tea. Honestly, I’d have a hard time telling it is a turm/ginger tea at all; the main spice note I’m getting is cinnamon, not ginger. The base is heavily apple, and I’m getting a strong stonefruit note too (it has mango flavoring apparently, and lately my palate has been reading mango flavor more as peach/apricot). So I’m getting a sort of apple/peach cinnamon tea, with a sort of earthy, rooty touch to the flavor toward the finish. A little warming toward the back of the tongue, but not spicy. It’s fine overall, but I doubt there is anything special about it compared to any of the other turm teas that seem to be making the rounds these days… of course, I haven’t tried very many either, so I may not be the best judge of that statement.

Oversteeped this, and thankfully, it’s unharmed! I finished my 4 oz of Harney’s decaf earl grey yesterday, and I wanted to try this one today so I could have them relatively back to back. As usual, I’m drinking this with milk, sugar, and vanilla. I do think I like this better than Harney’s version. The flavors are just stronger. The bergamot is very present and tasty. The black tea isn’t intrusive, but it’s strong enough to be a nice background for the flavors. Like many decafs, it’s not really strong enough for a second steep, but that’s okay. I’ll enjoy my sample of this and possibly order a larger amount next year.

Wow I love the base tea they’re using here. It’s incredibly chocolatey in both steeps. The vanilla is quite present and tasty. There’s a slight bit of bitterness at the very end, but I can put up with that. I can’t emphasize enough how delicious this tea is. It doesn’t need milk, and it’s definitely as good as, or even better than the not decaf version. Extremely pleased.

I received this sample from a cupboard clearout from Meowster a year ago, thanks Meowster! Since I tend to like fruity herbals like this iced, I used it up as a cold brew. The amount of leaf I had was able to brew up a liter and a half of cold brewed iced tea.

This is your typical dark red hibi-hip fruit tea; I don’t add sweeteners to my hibi-hip teas (since I actually like the tart/tangy notes of hibiscus and can take it like a champ) and have to say I actually find this one relatively sweet, myself (hibi-haters would probably disagree with my assessment, though). There is a slight bit of fruity tanginess toward the end of the sip but mostly it comes off quite sweet and punchy to me, and I’m getting notes of blueberry and a pithy sort of raspberry specifically, with a more general red berries/fruit punch flavor.

It’s a fine iced tea for folks like me that enjoy fruity hibi-hip teas. And for those that don’t like a certain red flower, I’m sure it’s “overly tart” and “hibiscus ruins everything” and “why can’t they just make fruit teas that don’t have hibiscus” blah blah blah I’ve been trying to catch up four months worth of Steepster reading for ages now and probably need a break because can you tell I read that a lot? I read that a lot.

Well, I thought this was fine, at least, but nothing that particularly stood out from any other fruity hibi-hip tea. I’m glad I got to try it, though!

I haven’t done very well of posting on here like I keep wishing to. But I still drink many cups daily and look for interesting teas often. I got this tea to remember my best friend, who passed away two years ago. Somewhere along the line he got interested in teas and branched out in ways I hadn’t. His first love was matcha, which I never made properly or appreciated.
His girlfriend told me near the time of his passing (of diabetes complications), he was enjoying some oolong teas. I would guess he got them from teavana, as he liked physical stores and got a lot from them. In fact, my last text message from him was about teavana closing.
So I ordered this tea. According to the package, it has notes of peach pit and apricot. My first try making it only found bitterness, following the directions of boiling water for five minutes. Since then I’ve attempted a few other temperatures and found that 180 at 4-5 minutes suited me best. That’s when I detected the peach flavor, which is also very evident in the scent of the steeped tea and the dry leaves. They give off an almost perfumed scent.

This cup is one of more unique teas I’ve tried, and seems best supper very slowly. I detect the apricot notes once it starts cooling off. I would gladly drink this tea in the late afternoon or evening to relax with. I wish my friend were still around to see what he would think of it or know which varieties of oolong he enjoyed.

I generally love Sri Lankan teas, and I didn’t dislike this one. It was a “no frills” kind of tea. It was okay, but I have enough tea that I do like more, that this one I probably won’t restock.

The flavor definitely isn’t mango. It’s just kind of tart and strange. I’ll manage to finish what I have, but I don’t want this one again. Adagio has a few good fruit options, but many are sour and weird like this one.

My main question: if I brewed at a lower temp (185 F vs. 195) and for less time (1:45 vs. 2-3 min.), how did this tea get bitter?

Okay, I admit to having used a lot of this tea. 3 tsp seemed like a good amount to start when filling my Ingenuitea almost full. Maybe it was too much. (I have a gorgeous tall Yokohama mug I got at Pearl River Market in NYC before it became a glorified gift shop. And tonight, I wanted THAT much tea. So sue me…) Maybe if I had followed the directions more exactly, I would have had something tasteless, watery, lacking in jasmine flavor, or lacking in tea flavor, as other reviewers mentioned about this tea. Or maybe it would only have been bitterer? That’s what too much time or too hot of water does to green tea, right?

In any case, I stand by my decisions on time and temp. I’m willing to concede however that I may have used too much tea. The result: a thick, sweet, bitter, mineral-y, flowery brown/green brew that is just TOO MUCH FLAVOR for me. Flavor overkill!

That having been said, I’m still sipping it. It might be growing on me…or maybe I just like jasmine so much, I don’t care much how I drink it. Huh, maybe it’s time to invest in the $20 jar of dried jasmine blossoms at the Asian market near me…! (There’d be less caffeine, anyway!)

After pondering, I’m not going to say anything else about this tea until I’ve tried it with less tea. It just wouldn’t be fair. However…I’m going to keep my descriptors and ratings until I have a reason to amend them.

The flavor is pretty light. If I had to guess, I’d say the flavor is melon, but maybe I could buy that it’s dragon fruit? It really needs a touch of sugar to bring out the flavor. Cool, it’s pretty pleasant and not at all sour. Each cup I have of this is better than the last.

This one smells a bit like wine, so that’s accurate, I suppose. I could totally buy that the flavor is elderberry rather than some vague berry mix, like most berry teas. There’s also something a little herbaceous in there. It’s pretty sour, but better with sugar. Overall, I think this makes a decent cup of tea. The elderberry flavor is fun, but I’d probably prefer if it were only going for elderberry and not wine as well.

I like it for what it’s worth. It’s light but flavorful. It’s a good tea when you can’t decide exactly what you want.

For a few years, I haven’t really been in the mood for chai. Recently, I’ve enjoyed a few chai samples I’ve had, so I ordered more. I had this with milk and sugar, and it’s delicious. What a perfect balance of spices. Not spicy, but bold enough that you’d never guess it’s decaf. The second steep was strong as well. I guess I’m a chai fan again!

A bit sharp, too spicy for me. I mean I like spicy food and jalapenos, so not that kind of spicy, but this isn’t smooth at all.

A decent green tea, but does taste green. It is smooth, however. I"m sure if you like green tea it’s great, but since I’m more of a black tea consumer, I still prefer the balck teas, but for a change of pace this is fine.

This smells so strongly of lemon. It’s very enticing. In flavor, it’s a slightly better version of Celestial Seasonings’s lemon lavender. The main flavor is the tasty, clear lemon. There’s not much lavender to be found, sadly. I need to buy extra lavender to throw in my cups on these occasions.

I could tell from the smell of this that it wouldn’t be my favorite. This white base is just sort of weird and the peach flavor is nearing cleaning product territory. I much prefer herbal peach teas since there, the juicy peach can really shine. I think I dislike whatever Adagio put in there to make it similar to the beverage it’s named after since I like their other peach teas.

In the package, this smells exactly like peach rings. In flavor, it’s a bit murkier than that. Herbal peach teas often have a little bit of an unpleasant aftertaste that I can’t identify, and that comes in occasionally here. The peach is decently tasty, but there are better peach options. I think I prefer peach with chamomile to balance it out, so the second time I made this, I used 2 tsp peach to 1 tsp chamomile, and that was a real winner. I’m on my third pitcher of Celestial Seasonings’s country peach passion this week, and yet I’m still trying to adjust my other teas to make them taste more like country peach. I guess that’s a testament to how good that flavor is! I love trying new peach teas, but I always go back to my trusty country peach passion.

The lime was pretty fake. It’s not too surprising since it’s made up entirely of apple, rose hips, and hibiscus, so the lime has to come from added flavor. It’s rare that a lime tea impresses me, and sadly this isn’t one of them. It’s too bad since key lime is such a lovely flavor. I’m going to try blending it with some other teas to make it more enjoyable.

I am loving this one lately. It makes two tasty steeps of sweet, almost chocolatey tea. It reminds me of their turtle flavor. The honeybush is great, especially with added sugar to bring out the flavor. Yeah, I’d definitely call the flavor chocolate over hazelnut specifically, but I’m enjoying it. Too bad I only have a sample size.

I’ve been drinking this tea every day. The flavor here isn’t as distinct as I’d imagined it would be, but it’s actually pretty nice. I think I prefer Adagio’s honeybush to their rooibos since it’s just rich sweetness with no detracting qualities. The orange is light, and the main focus is on the tasty honeybush. It’s well-balanced. I’m pleased!