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I’ve had this cake stashed away in the bottom of my raw pu-erh box for the last six months or so but haven’t tried it until now. Out of town family decided to invite themselves to my house for a long (very long!) weekend and I needed a little treat after finally shoving them out the door. I didn’t weigh the leaf because I left my scale in the other room and didn’t feel like going to get it. My water amount wasn’t terribly precise so I’m not sure weighing the leaf would have done much good anyway. I was using a glass gongfu bottle that is, I think, 200ml on the water chamber side…but filling it all the way is usually too much water for the amount of tea leaves that will fit in the leaf chamber side, and there’s also pressure buildup and sputtering of hot water on my hands and that sort of unpleasantness if it’s too full. I tried to aim for about 2/3 full but I wasn’t very careful about it. For entertainment I decided to use both a silver lined teacup and a double-walled glass espresso cup of about the same size to see if the cups made any difference to the taste.

It smells like delicious Mengku tea. Fruits and something kind of like fresh hay. For some reason the scent of Mengku raws makes me think of naps in the sunshine. I got a little more bitterness and astringency than I would have liked but I’m not sure how much is the tea and how much was my lazy, imprecise steeping. It’s pretty young still, maybe a couple more years would do it good. But next time I’ll try to take more care with my brewing to see if that makes a difference. Interestingly, the tea drunk from the silver cup tasted sweeter than the tea drunk from the glass cup. I don’t know if that was just a psychological thing or if the temperatures ended up being different when I drank them or what. I’ve always been a little skeptical of some of the claimed benefits of silver teaware so I was surprised to find a noticeable difference. The magpie in me enjoys drinking from shiny pretties so they seemed necessary regardless of any possible tea-improving capabilities. From either cup there’s a pleasant sweet aftertaste that makes an interesting contrast to the bitterness. I made it about four steeps before wanting a nap. Raw pu-erh seems to make me sleepier than other teas.

I’m not sure if it’s because this was my first blooming tea or if it’s really that good but this one has always been my favorite. It’s smooth and slightly sweet. The flavors work well together. The tea isn’t too much for the jasmine and the jasmine isn’t too much for the tea. I can usually get several mugs or a couple of decent sized pots (steeping more-or-less grandpa style) from one ball. The few I have are really old, from when they were sold in the cardboard box instead of the newer tins, but they still taste fine. Being individually wrapped seems to have kept them fresh. I tried emailing Adagio a while back to ask if these are still individually wrapped in the new tin packaging but they gave me kind of a non-answer that didn’t actually say. I’d like to buy some more but the quantity would depend on the packaging. It’s not an everyday tea for me and I feel like individually wrapped would stay tasty longer than loose in a tin.

I made the tea in my Grosche Merlin glass pot (aka “Conehead”) this time and was reminded why I don’t use it often. Mine is the version of it with the long skinny infuser (didn’t use it with the blooming tea) and the lid that still fits the pot with the infuser removed…apparently there was a version with a smaller lid that fell into the pot if you tried to use it without the infuser. My lid might not fall in but it’s so tall, awkward and wobbly that holding it while you pour is an absolute must and it gets annoying after the first couple pours. The size of the pot works pretty well with the tea, though. I kept topping off the pot with hot water whenever it got down to somewhere between 2/3 and 1/2 full and the tea kept going until three adults had drunk their fill. These Adagio blooming teas have never failed to bloom for me and my guest (who had never heard of blooming teas) was stunned when it started opening up. She had to take pictures of it and send them to her husband. I love it when one of my tea party “victims” gets excited by my weird teas and treats (I also fed her pastries filled with my homemade cardamom-vanilla rhubarb butter).

I’ve steeped my other August samples following their instructions for the first cup just to see if I like their recommendations and if it helps bring out the flavors listed in their descriptions, but I’ve never had an oolong brewed western style that really wow-ed me so I’m skipping straight to gongfu with Eventide. I’m still quite an oolong newb but they’re growing on me. Water about 200°F, a few little balls of tea leaves sprinkled in the teeny baby gaiwan ‘cause I’m too lazy to weigh it out, steeps starting at 15-ish seconds.

The first couple steeps were mostly just roast flavors and aroma. Nice toastiness, not one of those that smells burnt until the other flavors start coming through. The package lists steamed banana leaf as one of the flavors this tea is supposed to have. I have no idea what steamed banana leaf tastes like but I taste something that could maybe be green leafy something. And something fruity…tropical fruit? I’m so bad at picking out specific flavors. There’s a little bit of floral too, but I only get it while my cup is hot. Once the tea cools the floral vanishes. Weirdly, one sniff of the gaiwan lid smelled exactly like my mother’s caramel cinnamon rolls. The corner rolls, specifically…the ones that start to get a little hard on the edges and the goo is aaaaallllllmost a tiny bit burnt. I don’t know if this tea would be good with baked goods but it has made me want delicious cinnamon rolls and croissants.

The packaging mentioned Guinness-like flavors so this seemed like a good choice for St Patrick’s Day. The dry tea smells kind of like boozy raisins to me. There’s an alcohol-ish (the drinking kind, not the cleaning kind, but I can’t really pinpoint what kind specifically) scent I get from several of the darker cocoa-y type flavor August teas. Maybe it’s something in their flavorings or maybe it’s my allergy-addled brain (yay, springtime) not knowing what I’m smelling, I don’t know. The brewed tea smells like dried cherries and spices. I taste a bitterness that sort of reminds me of the bitterness of coffee but the flavor isn’t anything like coffee. There’s some dried fruit flavor. I guess I could maybe see how if you stretched your imagination you could get pumpernickel but the dry smell was probably closer to pumpernickel than the flavor. Nothing reminds me much of stout beer like Guinness. It’s not a bad tea, I just don’t really taste the flavors listed on the package.

I thought this tea might be a good one for days I want coffee but my stomach doesn’t think it’s such a great idea. It really smells like coffee dry. While it was steeping I could smell something sort of toasted grain-like. I wasn’t completely sure if that was the barley malt or the mate. I have very little experience with mate (just a couple of flavored bagged teas from grocery store brands) so I’m not sure I could identify “mate smell”. I usually taste my tea before deciding if it needs milk/cream or sugar, and I probably should have done that with this one too…but it’s been a grumpy day of spring allergies and stressed out sewing procrastination (feeling a bit in over my head on a project) and it looked and smelled like the kind of tea I’d want to add something to so in went the sweetened condensed milk right away. I don’t teally taste the coffee. I can still smell it a bit but it’s not nearly as strong as the dry tea. It kinda just tastes like roasty black tea. I may have buried any of the more subtle flavors in sugary milky goo. It’s not bad this way but it doesn’t make me think coffee. Oh well, will taste it first next time and maybe use plain milk if it needs additions. It feels astringent in a way I’m not sure I’ll like plain but always good to try it anyway.

Dry this tea smells mostly like cherry to me. There’s something else there that I thought was part of the cherry flavoring (you know how some flavorings can be strong and almost boozy smelling when fresh?) but now I think it might just be the smoke. As with the other August teas I’ve tried, I followed the package instructions for my first time making this tea (boiling water, 4-5min, approx 1 tablespoon per 10oz water). The brewed tea smells smokier than the dry leaf. I taste more smoke than cherry too. The cherry didn’t disappear, the smoke is just stronger than it was in the dry tea. I’m not really enjoying this one. I let my cup cool too much before drinking and it’s just not great at this temperature. Maybe it would be better hotter. The cherry tastes unpleasantly artificial to me. I’m not sure if that’s the added flavoring or just the combination of smoke and cherry. I think I’ll try it with milk/cream next time to see if I like it better that way. And I’ll definitely try to drink it before it cools to lukewarm next time. I like the size of these sample packages…enough tea to make more than one cup so you can experiment with the preparation a little bit (or fix any oopsies that occurred) but not so much that you might end up stuck with a ton of tea you hate.

After reading one of Roswell Strange’s notes mentioning orange blossom I was all set to try Metropolitan as my next August Uncommon Tea since it said something about neroli on the back of the package but after opening it and sniffing I wasn’t sure it was quite what I was in the mood for. I sniffed a couple more teas and settled on Arabesque instead.

It smells good. Very creamsicle-y. It’s not just vanilla, it’s that creamy vanilla ice cream type vanilla. I’m not sure the sample size is the best way to try this one. My sample pouch has several large pieces of orange slice that might’ve thrown off the ingredient balance and the tea leaves fall to the bottom and hide in the pouch’s crease so it’s hard to get an even mix of everything if you’re not making the entire pouch in one go. I steeped according to the package instructions (175°F water, 4-5min) to see how that turned out. The brewed tea still smells like creamsicles but maybe a little milder than the dry leaf. I’m not sure if it’s just been a while since I’ve had teas that are flavored with things other than flower petals or citrus peel but August teas seem quite strongly flavored/scented to me. This one isn’t as intense as Black Metallic but it’s definitely not weak flavor either. The flavor is creamsicle…but not. Maybe it’s the jatoba wood or something about the base tea but something there keeps it from being as creamsicle flavored as it smells. In a weird way it kind of reminds me of some non-dairy “healthy” creamsicles I tried that had coconut milk or something instead of ice cream. The orange is there, the vanilla is there, but there’s a little bit of an odd taste and there is absolutely no creamy mouthfeel. Not BAD but disappointing if you’re expecting it to be identical to the dairy version in flavor and texture. I think if you go into this tea expecting liquid creamsicle it could be disappointing. As it’s cooling I think the wood might be coming out more and the vanilla is becoming more of just a sweetness. It smells more like a sweet summery orangey sandalwood type thing than ice cream truck to me now. It tastes more like orange and wood too. I feel like those are two completely different descriptions but both describe the tea? I’m guessing how well mixed the ingredients are when you scoop them out will determine whether it leans more toward the creamsicle flavors or toward the wood type flavors. I think I like it. It seems like a lighter, gentler on my stomach, more relaxing tea than some of the others I picked from this company. I’d like to get a bigger bag at some point to hopefully have a more even mix of ingredients to see if that changes the flavor at all.

This tea sounded amazing to me as soon as I read the description. Seeing that it was labeled as being vegan-friendly made me lose control of my finger and before I knew it, a pouch of Black Metallic and samples of several other teas had been added to my shopping cart and then I received an order confirmation. While I’m not actually vegan (lacto-veg, so not too far off, though), I’m rather weirded out by some of the things that pass as “natural flavoring” (or at least some things that have been used in the past…beaver castoreum, anyone?). I really appreciate that August Uncommon Teas seems to have actually looked into their flavorings and categorized teas by dietary needs instead of assuming all tea would be vegan/gluten-free/nut-free/etc or that all flavorings must be derived from the fruit/flower/whatever they’re supposed to taste like. It might seem like an insignificant or silly thing to most, but it’s a big deal to those with allergies/intolerances or strongly held dietary convictions. But anyway, on to the actual tea…

It smelled so good when I tore open the pouch. So. Good. It wasn’t the smoky violet scent I imagined but deliciously fruity. Elderberry, I guess? I’m not sure I’ve had elderberries before. I steeped according to the instructions on the package and didn’t add anything to it. I doubt anyone was dying to know, but the nifty 50¢ measuring spoons August sells fit neatly in their 50g/15cup tea pouches but I don’t think you’d be able to close the 4 cup sample pouch with a measuring spoon inside. It was hard to let the tea cool enough to drink. The aroma filled the whole room and it was fabulous. This is another tea I’d buy to use as potpourri even if I couldn’t stand the flavor. The flavor takes a few sips to taste everything that’s going on. At first sip there’s a kind of bitterness that disappointed me but as I keep drinking I don’t notice it and I think maybe it was just my tongue (or brain?) trying to make sense of the combination of elderberry and violet. Maybe like how at first violet candies can taste like soap or perfume but you come to appreciate the floral flavor as you get used to it? I don’t know. The violet seems to be lurking more in the aftertaste for me but it’s definitely there. It’s an interesting combination of flavors. Berry juice with violet flowers floating in it. I’m not sure I can pick out the smoke or oolong flavors but I’m sure they’re adding to the complexity. I could see some people (my mother) possibly wanting to add sugar to this tea but I’m not sure how well it’d do with milk/cream. Maybe it’d work if you brewed it stronger than I did this time. Interestingly, as I reach the end of my first cup and contemplate resteeping the leaves, my tongue has a tingly feeling like I just had a spicy tea. Not sure what that’s all about. Overall, I like Black Metallic and would probably order it again when I run out. But I’d try a lightly smoked violet tea without fruit flavors too. I’m looking forward to trying the other teas I ordered from this company. I’m a fan so far.

A few additional thoughts from the second steep:
1. I think the spicy-like tongue tingle was just acidity. My stomach felt it before my mouth figured out what it was. Maybe not one to drink on an empty stomach if you’re sensitive to these things.
2. If you need a snack to go with this tea, Peanut Butter & Jelly Bobo’s Oat Bars go with it nicely.
3. If my comments about dietary preferences came across as in any way judgemental it was completely unintentional. My stance on that is basically “I’ll do what I think is right for me, you do what you think is right for you”. I’m not looking to push my lifestyle as the one and only right way. My gripe is when someone, whether through ignorance or malice, interferes with me doing what I think is right for me. It annoys the crap out of me and makes me lose all trust in a company if I see obviously mislabeled products (like “vegan” cosmetics with beeswax and carmine or “vegetarian” dishes with fish sauce or chicken broth). And it happens all the time! I think it happens slightly less often with common allergens but I still see it often enough for it to be a concern (and good luck if you’re allergic to something that isn’t a “top 8 allergen”). I tend to look for things labeled vegan because it’s easier than trying to figure out what a company’s definition of vegetarian is because it varies so much…but I still have to read through ingredients lists and try to get an idea of whether the company has any idea what vegan even means or if they think it’s just a trendy thing to slap on packages to boost sales. This is turning into a bit of a tangent…but my point was that I don’t care what you eat or don’t eat, I just want foods/drinks labeled appropriately. Ideally, things would have complete ingredient lists instead of these ambiguous “flavoring,” “coloring,” and “spice” ingredients (as far as I’m concerned they might as well just print out a label that says “ingredients: stuff”) but until then, I’m glad companies like August are putting in at least some effort into labeling and categorizing their products according to dietary needs. Am I 100% sure that I can completely trust their labeling? No, but I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt because they’re at least making an effort.