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This is another of the Adagio white teas I got from Meowster’s cupboard clearout a couple summer’s ago (thanks Meowster!). So far this has been my favorite of all that I have tried; it was the most pleasant of the different flavored whites I’ve tried as a warm cuppa, and right now I’m drinking it as a cold brew, which I prefer even more.

The berry taste isn’t syrupy or candy-like, which can be the case in a lot of strawberry teas; but it isn’t really a strong, in-your-face sort of distinct strawberry flavor, either. I get a more gentle sort of berry sweetness, and a subtle tanginess as well, that I think compliments the refreshing white tea. This white tea isn’t coming off quite as leafy either, which probably helps (or maybe the flavorings are just covering it up more this time around). It tastes more like damn earth rather than autumn leaves, slightly vegetal, and a bit of melon rind, which comes in more at the front of the sip, but the close is a sweet-tart sort of berry taste; not distinctly strawberry, but an indistinct yet pleasant red berry sort of note. It’s a refreshing iced tea, and actually brewed a nice warm cup, too, while the other flavored whites I tried I really preferred as iced beverages to their warm cuppa counterparts.

Thanks for the sample, Meowster! Just one more flavored white from the cupboard clearout to go!

This is another of the Adagio white teas I got from Meowster’s cupboard clearout a couple summer’s ago (thanks Meowster!). I had enough leaf for one warm cuppa that I made a few nights ago to sip on while I read graphic novels, and then I used the majority to make a quart of cold brewed iced tea, my preferred way to drink flavored white tea.

I definitely prefer this one iced to the warm cuppa (not that the warm cup was bad), but I just find the fruity pear on the white base comes out very refreshing as an iced brew. The base on this white is strongly autumn leaf in flavor, and that strong earthy/vegetal flavor may be why it presents a little nicer to me iced, perhaps. The pear flavor is actually pretty nice — it’s no 52Teas pear flavor, but it’s decent enough. It tastes like pear and isn’t coming off oddly artificial, it just doesn’t taste as particularly juicy as other pear flavorings I have tasted on other teas. I sort of wish the base white tasted more like the hay/melon notes I got from the White Tangerine tea as I think that would go better with the pear flavor than the autumn leaf/wood notes I’m getting from this base… and the more strange thing is I wouldn’t be surprised if Adagio is using the same base and only changing the flavorings/additives.

Thanks for the sample, Meowster!

Ever had a morning where all your tea plans fall apart? First, I couldn’t find this tea anywhere. I have my teas “catalogued” and organized in a very specific way, and it just wasn’t where it should be. As a librarian, this was very frustrating. As a librarian, I also know it is entirely possible for an item to get miscatalogued and be “on the shelf” in the wrong place, so I basically had to go through my entire tea shelf digging through each section until I could find it (finally found it in the “white teas” section… ugh!) I moved house last year and am not entirely surprised that when unpacking over 500 teas a few mishaps happened along that way, but that put me short on time racing against the clock to get a cup of tea brewed before work… and then when I dumped the hot water into my gravity well infuser, it didn’t hold the water like it always has, and I had boiling water all over my counter! That was fun to clean up.

So, then I had to get my spare infuser out and start a fresh cup (I thankfully had just enough in my sample from teasipper’s cupboard sale to make another cup — thanks, teasipper!) and steeping another cup made me late for work. I don’t know if the other infuser is dead or if a really thorough cleaning will bring life back into it, but I cleaned it just a few months ago, so it may just be time to lay it out to pasture… I do make an awful lot of tea with it…

Anyway, the tea is quite a fudgy flavor. I do recall it brewed pink originally in my infuser, but I’m drinking it in a closed thermos here at work, so I can’t really enjoy that “novelty” of it now, and don’t really taste any difference from the beetroot to the flavor. It does taste a little fruity, though; it reminds me of the subtle fruity notes from a good dark chocolate, like a hint of berry that I can’t quite place (I’m leaning raspberry, but not quite).

It’s a nice chocolately tea, I just wish it hadn’t been such an utter mishap to make it! Thanks for the sample, tea-sipper!

It’s been hard to coordinate teatime over two different timezones virtually with Todd so I just went ahead on my own this Sunday and tried another from my mystery box set; this green tea sounded nice to go with my eggrolls and white rice I was having with dinner. I was very curious about it; gunpowder green tea usually isn’t my favorite (because of the smokiness of it) and jasmine can be hit or miss for me depending on how strong the flavor/aroma of it is, but I absolultely love lemon myrtle (easily my favorite of all the lemony herbals) and rose so I was curious how the flavors would end up playing out.

The lemon comes out as the main flavor note, and it’s that nice strong, slightly tart, rich lemon that I just love, smooth and fresh and clean, the lemon myrtle really shining. There is a nice floral flavor to the tea as well, though I mainly taste the rose. Rose with lemon has always been one of my favorite flavor combinations so it is very nice. There is a strong vegetal taste from the gunpowder tea (almost a slight spinachy taste toward the back of my tongue) but I’m not getting that smoky hint that I usually taste from gunpowder, probably from the strong citrus and floral notes dominating.

It’s a nice, relaxing, floral lemon tea. I’m enjoying my warm pot of this, but would like to also try an iced brew of this at some point, too.

This is my last white tea from a teabox; it came from the Discovery Teabox, so thank you to Skysamurai for hosting the teabox and all contributors for sharing their teas! I had a small amount of leaf so I decided to use my mini gaiwan, which holds about 40ml of water comfortably, for the session.

1.65g / 40ml (mini gaiwan) / 185F / 20s|30s|40s|50s|60s|70s|80s

The wet leaf both looks and smells like autumn leafs on the ground after a rain shower. The brew in the cup is a light tawny yellow and has a somewhat sweet, floral aroma; the first infusion tasted delicate, sweet, floral, and a little fruity, with the main notes presenting as honeysuckle and rose. The second infusion was slightly darker and a little more metallic on the nose, with a strong rose and berry aroma, and a more present fruit flavor (strawberry?) came out on the tongue. The back of my tongue picked up an autumn leaf vegetal taste toward the end of the sip. The third infusion was stronger in the autumn leaf notes still, with some woody notes as well, in both aroma and taste. The fourth infusion brought out mellower notes of melon and pear. The strong rose, honeysuckle, and pear surfaced during later infusions. I let the session go until I spilt the tea dangerously close to my laptop and took that as a divine sign, though to be fair the water in my thermos was starting to lose some warmth and the tea was fading by then anyway.

It was a pleasant session and I’m glad I got to sample the tea, thanks!

This is one of the few Adagio white teas that wasn’t from the Meowster cupboard de-stash that I snatched up… I think I got it from my very first Adagio order, making it a very old tea. It is an opened packet, so I must have tried it at some point, but I haven’t recorded it here yet… I used the remainder of the sample to make a quart of cold-brewed iced tea.

Honestly, this reminds me of TeaSource’s Green Tea with Mandarin Orange, having that brisk though somewhat artificial-tasting orange flavor. This is the sort of tea I actually prefer iced, and it is pretty refreshing that way… the flavoring just presents better that way to my palate that way. Since this is on a white tea base rather than a green tea base like the other tea I’m familiar with, rather than grassy it has more of a hay flavor, and a very subtle note of melon. The orange itself isn’t too strong/overbearing, but that could be just the age of my sample now… personally I prefer it that way. It’s more subtle/less citrusy and the white tea is allowed to shine through a little more. I have a feeling that probably isn’t how it usually is, though.

I finally finished off the big bag of Cherry Blossom Green Tea making iced tea, and since flavored whites is another type of tea I tend to prefer iced, I’m going to try to work through all the ones I got from Meowster’s cupboard clearout a couple summer’s ago (thanks Meowster!). This pouch only had a single serving in it though (which isn’t really enough for me to go to the trouble of icing) so I just made a single warm cup to sip on tonight. I normally have a strict “only herbals after 6 pm” rule, so I’m hoping the white tea doesn’t buzz me too much. I know there are some claims it has “less caffeine” than other teas but I’m not one that believes that stuff too much, hense why I avoid all camelia sinensis in the evening…

I’ll be the first to admit that grapefruit is not a flavor a really enjoy… but it isn’t like bananas where I have such a strong aversion that I can’t stand being in a room with one either, and depending on how it is prepared and other flavor pairings, I can tolerate them to varying degrees. This one is actually not too bad to me… there is a little of that citrus bite but it doesn’t have that overwhelming grapefuit sourness that I dislike about the fruit. It is certainly “grapefruit” flavor, but I am tasting subtle notes of lemon and lime which may be why I’m handling this better than most grapefruit-flavored things. If it were any stronger than this, I’d probably really dislike it. The white tea itself is coming off fairly subtle, but I’m getting a light autumn leaf flavor in the background.

Not something I’d ever purchase for myself (again, grapefruit isn’t really my fruit), but I’m glad I got to try this since I am surprised by it. Thanks for the sample, Meowster!

I realize teas like this typically “should” be drunk gong fu, and maybe I will still get around to that (I have 50g, so plenty more to experiment), but today I just wanted to brew up a quick mug of something to go with my grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. Originally I was going to make a straight black but when I started digging through my straight tea storage, I saw this pouch, it had been opened at some point, and it’s old, so I figured, why not? (It has been brought to my attention my definition of “old” and other Steepsterers definition of “old” is not the same, so I will specify this is the Spring 2017 harvest. Yes, I consider 2017 teas “old.” Remember, I didn’t get into the tea game until fall of 2016 so my oldest teas in my collection are currently 2017 teas, and those are the ones I’d rather get out to replace with fresh.)

Anyway, I was certain I’d reviewed this before, since it was an opened package, but I did a Ctrl+F on my Steepster.txt file where I keep all my review writings and… nope! So here we go. Considering this is an older tea and brewed western, I’m sure it will not be as nuanced, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. (To be fair, anything I say about oolongs should be taken with a grain of salt anyway).

3.5g brewed in 350ml water at 205F for a 3 minute steep. The aroma is incredibly fruity, like oranges and honey, immediately making me think of marmalade jam. I’m getting a bit of an apricot note in the aroma as well, and a more subtle maltiness. The flavor is quite tasty, definitely very heavy in the fruity notes that were coming out in the aroma. Mainly I’m getting an orange taste, but it is sweeter and honeyed rather than citrusy, and I’m getting a strong stonefruit impression. There is a bit of a maltiness with hints of baked bread, cocoa, cinnamon, raisin, and toward the end of the sip, a sweet florality toward the back of the tongue that tastes of rose to me. I’m really enjoying it and impressed with how much flavor I’m getting considering the age and brewing method I chose.

Virtual Teatime with Todd during Sunday Doctor Who! We got the same teas from the Mystery Box sale (sans one banana tea; I appreciate it, Anne!) so we decided to do a sampler round during our weekly Sunday online viewings. I wanted to do this tea first, because I had a sealed older packet from the 2018 Christmas box, and I’m all about using up older tea first.

The dry tea leaf actually had an aroma that reminded me of coconut creme, for some reason. I brewed 5g for 3 minutes in 500ml water. Steeped up, though, it smells more like vanilla brandy, and I think I do pick out the marshmallow, though my nose is still reading the fragrance as toasted coconut (maybe it’s the toasty association in my brain of both ingredients?) The tea is smooth, with notes of malt and honey, and I’m definitely tasting vanilla and cream, with a touch of astringency left after the sip. It’s actually a rather robust black base, and I think if I were to make a second pot, I might add just a hint of sweetener, perhaps experiment with a touch of honey or making this as a latte with vanilla almond milk. Straight up, it is a nice breakfast option or afternoon pick-me-up tea due to the boldness of the assam.

This was one of the teas provided to me for sample by Plum Deluxe, thank you so much Plum Deluxe! I have been curious about this tea because I love chocolate orange as a flavor pairing, but have yet to try a chocolate orange tea that I really like (Terry’s Tea from Bird & Blend really didn’t do it for me, not having much chocolately flavor and the orange coming off with that very artificial flavor that I typically find of the orange flavoring used in teas). I was very curious to see how this one would go over with me, or if I’d find the same problems I tend to find with chocolate orange teas.

The smell in the package definitely reminds me of those dark chocolate covered orange gummy candies I got once at Trader Joe’s and loved; brewed, the orange aroma is presenting a little more of that “artificial flavor” orange I’m used to in teas, but I’m surprised how strong the chocolate is coming off the top of the cup, since I’m used to chocolate notes not presenting well in tea. The flavor is actually surprisingly nice; the chocolate notes are coming through well, more of a dark/bittersweet chocolate but there is some sweetness there as well. The citrus is a little artificial, but not overbearingly so compared to some orange teas I’ve tried, it is on par with some orange sweets I’ve tried. There is a pleasant citrus zest tartness on the back of my tongue, likely from the actual orange peel in the blend. The tea base, a blend of black tea and honeybush, is nice; I’m wondering if a naturally chocolately Chinese black is used (it isn’t specified), but I think the honeybush adds a touch of rounding sweetness to some of the tart citrus notes. There is a good balance. While I haven’t tried a lot of chocolate orange teas, this one definitely holds up as the best of the onest I have tried, and certainly one I wouldn’t mind having again.