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Another floral from my swap with Kittenna! I’m making progress. This is one of the ones I requested since I love floral teas, so I was confused by this when I sniffed it. It’s so… peachy. The description doesn’t mention peach at all, nor is it explicitly in the ingredients, so what gives? I mean, it’s not lightly peach, it’s VERY peach. You’d think they would mention that.

Peach surprise aside, this is a pleasant blend! There are some big jasmine pearls in there, but the taste definitely is only mildly floral in mine. I think the peach kind of masks some of the other flavors, since I’ve lost the subtlety I’d expect from a white blend. The jasmine is there, but only faintly, and that nice “fresh” almost grassy/springy taste from the white seems to be hiding. It’s allllmost there, but it’s hard to pick out individual notes when your entire cup is all BAM PEACH. Funnily enough, this is one of the best peach flavorings I’ve tried, which is odd… why don’t they market this as a peach blend?

I’ve never had white hibiscus, but there’s a soft sharpness (oxymoron, but it makes sense… sort of) going on. A bit tart, so it’s reminiscent of a not-yet-ripe peach. Okay, that doesn’t sound so great, but you know when fruit is almost at its peak, and still has quite a bit of firmness left but the flavor isn’t as strong? That’s honestly when I like fruit best, I like ‘em very firm and that mushiness associated with fresh peaches is a big consistency problem with me. I’m fine with them in baked goods, but fresh… too squishy! So I do like the memories the white hibiscus brings up. I do wish it was less fruity and more floral though, so I’m going to give it a shorter steep! Or perhaps cold brew the rest of my leaves.

I got this in my swap with Will Work For Tea—is it just me, or are oolong and pineapple a very popular flavor combination recently? Or maybe I’m just noticing them more? In any case, I like oolong and I like pineapple, and I’ve found that I really enjoy Lupicia’s fruit-flavored blends so I knew I couldn’t go wrong with this!

The dry leaves don’t smell like pineapple, they smell like a milk oolong! With flavored oolongs I dislike when the “flavor” parts overpower the actual tea, so this made me happy. Plus, you know, I love milk oolongs. After a 13-hour cold brew the pineapple is a lot more subtle than I thought it would be. The oolong is front and center, buttery, sweet and creamy. I don’t know what kind they used, but it really does remind me a lot of a milk oolong, with gentle floral notes in the background as well. The floral aspect reminds me of Butiki’s pineapple oolong, though they are a bit less potent here. The pineapple comes in at the end of the sip, subtle and a bit tangy as pineapple should be. Very natural tasting and not artificial. Another winner from Lupicia, I really need to make an order there soon!

I’m on a chai kick, so I decided to revisit an old favorite tonight… apparently old enough that I haven’t actually logged it here, though I feel like I have a memory of doing so. Oh well! This isn’t going to be a proper review since I played around with it a lot. I was in the mood for a dessert chai: I wanted chocolatey, caramely, nutty. My obious option was to blend (I was going to go with RoT chai + Florence + Caramel Apple Supreme) but felt like I’d lose the spicy chai kick, so instead I made this and added a few things. While it was steeping I cut up a soft caramel candy and threw it in, along with some fresh-cracked pepper and a hint of cloves. Then I poured it over a spoonful of nutella, mixed it all together, and added a splash of milk.

Oh. My. Lord. It is SO good. The additions thankfully don’t overwhelm the chai so it’s quite spicy and strong and the apple is still prominent, but you get a wonderful sweetness from the caramel, chocolatey nuttyness from the nutella and creaminess (presumably from both the caramel and milk). It’s sinfully good.

This is my first warm cup of tea all week, believe it or not—I’ve really been in the mood for cold drinks but I had a stressful day and hot tea always helps me relax. I hadn’t tried this one yet and chai is one of my go-to “calm down, brain!” teas so into the cup it went.

I’m a bit perplexed by this blend. I like my chais spicy, and this definitely delivers, with that back of the mouth heat you get from whole peppercorns. There’s a bit of a bit from the ginger too, but I think the other spices are a bit lacking. I’m not getting much cardamom/cinnamon, and the vanilla is also very faint. The black base is also a bit underwhelming, with no real strong notes to tie everything together. I prefer malty bases for chais usually, and here I kind of taste that, you know, “tea” flavor but it’s really overwhelmed by the pepper and ginger. So it’s both strong and weak, which is kind of a funny conundrum. I think with a little bit of tweaking this could be a nice blend though, I am loving the addition of whole peppercorns!

I logged this a week ago and forgot to write anything! Aah, I’m so terribly behind on tasting notes. When I made my first (and only) Adagio order, I got some coupon thingy during checkout that gave me 10% off. Of course, that negated the free shipping so I had to add more tea! Rather pay for some samples than shipping. They’re sneaky like that!

Anyway, my two samples to balance out the total were this and Thai Chai… which of course were my favorites of the ones I ordered. I mean seriously, I got 3 oz of White Cucumber and 3 oz of Raspberry but NOT of this?! Argh, past me, WHY. This is such a nice, refreshing white. I’ve had it hot, chilled, extra-strength over ice, and this time cold brewed (since their samples are very large). Adagio can be heavy on the flavoring, but this one is done with a gentle hand. The white base is a middle-to-lower-grade white peony but it’s still wonderful cold, crisp and slightly floral. The blueberry is so natural that I was kind of taken aback, since it’s a flavor that is easy to make artificial. Definitely one of my favorites iced, I’ll have to bite the bullet and place another order there!

On a related note, I find Adagio perplexing. A lot of their teas are so-so, but others are downright awful. Yet some are totally wonderful. For example, their Raspberry tastes like cheap candies but Ripe for Romance (a chocolate raspberry black) has a great, authentic raspberry taste. I wonder if they source their flavoring agents from a lot of different places?

And this one is only from 2 days ago! I’m making progress. I got this in my swap with Kittenna, which worked out perfectly since she hates floral teas (particularly rose) and I love them! I’ve had a few rose congous before, but never one with a green base. Rose pairs pretty well with almost any base in my opinion, so why not a green congou?

I cold brewed this as per usual… I feel like that’s all I’ve been doing recently, but it is summer after all. When it’s really hot out I sometimes put a splash of rosewater in my ice water just for an extra refreshing drink, and that’s exactly what this tastes like! Well not exactly, since the green base is pretty prominent, moreso than I thought it would be. The rose though is so nice, perfectly floral and kind of… crisp. Like almost icy and cooling. It’s a different aspect of rose that I’m not really that familiar with since I don’t often have it iced, but I think I will more often now!

I am so behind on my tasting notes, this is from 3 days ago! I think it just slipped my mind, so I suppose I should dive back in. This was in my box from LiberTEAS, which yes I am still digging through. Honestly, I doubt I’m even halfway there yet! The shame of a slow tea-drinker.

I love mango, and it seems to be a flavor that’s pretty easy to capture in tea-form. After a 12-hour cold brew this had a really fresh, juicy mango flavor, almost like fresh juice or biting into a ripe mango. It’s not artificial at all, which is always nice. However, surprisingly I am getting a really strong floral taste as well. I thought at first it might be from the oolong base, which adds some nice grassy vegetal notes, but it’s clearly rose. Like, if I didn’t know better I would swear this was a rose mango blend. Though really, that’s not an issue for me since I LOVE rose! In fact, I think I enjoyed this a lot more because of the rose taste. The fruity and floral notes just go so well together. I’ve really enjoyed the teas I’ve tried from Lupicia so far, they really nail their fruity blends.

A few weeks ago Azzrian mentioned mixing this with vanilla powder, and Stacy was kind enough to send me a little baggie of it so I could try out the combo myself. Sadly you have to let it sit a week or more, so I actually had to be patient about something tea-related. When it comes to new purchase and teas, I am not exactly a patient person, so this was pretty difficult for me. I just kept thinking “has it been a week yet? How about now?” Of course I lost track of time and let it blend for almost 2. I am both impatient and spazzy it seems!

Anyway, this smells just as good with the vanilla, a little creamier and sweeter. I brewed it with some rock sugar as per usual but I think the vanilla adds some extra sweetness as well (though it still wasn’t too sweet by any means, the guranse kind of prevents that!). This is like a different tea now—a Tamarind Pop Float! The creaminess tempers some of the citrus flavors, and the vanilla really brings out the brown sugar taste. It does mask a bit of the woodsy/tobacco notes from the guranse, so I don’t think I’d say that I like this better than the original blend. I think I do like it about the same though, it’s hard to rank one over the other when they’re so similar. I think the no-vanilla is more of an everyday tea (I do drink it several times a week!) whereas the vanilla blend is an occasional treat. I mixed up about an ounce of it so there’s plenty more to go! I also have leftover vanilla powder and am considering putting it in other things too…

So I’ve been having issues with my fridge recently, it’s not nearly cold enough. It was set to 5 when I moved in and had been fine up until recently, when stuff started going bad way too fast. So I turned it to 7 and made my nightly cold brew. I woke up and… it was a tea slushy. What the heck, fridge! It goes up 2 more coldness settings, I shudder to think what they’d do to my tea. So I have it at 6 now… I feel kind of like Goldilocks. In any case, I was really worried that it might have messed with the flavor of the tea, since the leaves were a bit frosty around the edges and I wasn’t sure when it started to freeze up.

Well the flavor is a bit tamer than I would have expected for a 14 hour steep, but I’ll chalk that up to the giant chunks of tea-ice. I really like berry teas and this blend has a pretty unique combination: blueberry and pomegranate are front and center, complimented by a lovely sencha base. I am not familiar with goji berry so I’m honestly not sure if I’m tasting it. There were some pretty large berries in there so I’m guessing they did impart some flavor, I just can’t pick it out from the blueberry/pomegranate. But that’s one of my favorite flavor combinations so I am not going to complain! This is really an excellent iced tea, really refreshing and very natural-tasting.

I got my samples from Epi Tea today, and of course I dove right in! There’s a long list of teas I should try first, but I was dying to taste this one. Lavender Earl Greys are some of my favorite EG blends, and while my current favorite blend is ETS’ Versailles Lavender I’m looking for one in teabag form. I know some loose-leaf fans have kind of a stigma against teabags, but I enjoy having an easy way to brew up a cup when I’m feeling sick or, well, lazy. ^^; Plus these are pyramid bags, so the tea does get to expand quite a bit.

This is a very soft EG. The bergamot, lavender and black base aren’t very assertive, but not in a negative way. It’s very much a tea for slow evenings where you can relax and unwind. In fact, I might have said this was an ear grey cream if I didn’t know better, it has that soft creamy vanilla background taste going on. The lavender is very nice, not overpowering, only slightly perfumey. I let it steep for 6 minutes+ on the second steep (kind of lost track of time!) and it was more agressively floral, which personally I like. This is the best bagged lavender EG I’ve tried!