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I wasn’t too impressed with the other tea I tried from RoT’s Wellness Collection, but this one isn’t half bad. The smell is lightly spicy mixed with the smell of red rooibos, which I’m not usually keen on but it isn’t too prominent in this blend, thankfully. It tastes mildly herbal and distinctly sweet from the licorice root. The rooibos flavour is there too but not that strongly – actually nothing in this tea really comes across as being very strong or excessively prominent.

Hmm, this actually smells a great deal like the Mayan Chocolate Chili Chai – it’s the ginger and cocoa bits, I think. I like that Frank add ginger to all of his chais – it gives the teas a little bit of a zing that not many other chais have. The chocolate is also nice, it’s quite distinct while still being balanced with the other strong flavour in the tea. I’m not getting a huge amount of cheesecake flavour, though that might be because I steeped this cup a little on the light side. I’ll make the next one stronger and then we’ll see.

First of all thank you to Batrachoid for giving me some of this tea to try.

I’m not really tasting the supposed caramel flavours in this tea though that might just be a reference to the naturally slightly nutty flavour of the bancha base. The sesame seeds are more obvious although the flavour isn’t as strong as with Adagio’s sesame-flavoured black tea. It’s a nice green tea, but nothing too extreme.

This is a quite a green-tasting green tea that makes me think of slightly under-ripe mangoes rather than the soft, dripping- with-juice, fully-ripe mangoes. The flavour of the tea is full and quite robust for a green tea. Not bad, I guess.

My boyfriend got this tea for me while he was on a trip in the States – he knows how much I love mangos. It’s an interesting-looking tea – a mix of dark and green oolongs mixed with what looks like white rose petals and mini crysanthemum flower heads. The blossoms give the tea a bit of a floral flavour that makes an interesting combination with the baked and fruity notes of the dark oolong in the blend. The mango flavour isn’t really all that mango-y unfortunately – it’s sort of a generic tropical fruit flavour that probably comes from an artifical source of some sort.

Altogether, it’s interesting but not rave-worthy, I suppose. Though it does make a nice enough low-caffeine tea for sipping in the evening while I study.

I raised the steeping temperature by 10 degrees C which seems to have really helped bring out the tea’s flavour. I also cracked a bunch of the coriander pods in the blend to enhance the spice’s flavour a bit. The apple and the coriander together are a good combination and they give the tea a sort of warm, almost homey sort of flavour that reminds me of baked apples or even apple pie, though it lacks the sweetness of the latter.

I’ve tried various steeping combinations and no matter how I do it this tea seems intent on remaining relatively medicore. It’s basically a regular green mate with a rather unremarkable orangy-citrus flavour. Kinda meh, in my opinion.

This tea came from Jessica I think, I’ve got so many sample kicking around that it’s hard to recall who gave me what. The leaves of this tea were quite fuzzy and fluffy with silvery hairs like the tea’s names suggests. Knowing how high Adagio’s steeping times generally are, I reduce the recommended 7 minute steeping to 5 minutes. I think it was a good move as even now the jasmine is quite strong and I don’t think I’d care for it any stronger. It doesn’t have that soapy characterstic that some jasmine teas that I’ve tried have had (and that I loathe) and it’s a fairly natural-tasting flavour, though it’s just on the verge of being too perfumy – I like my jasmine to be a bit more subtle.

This a good-quality but otherwise fairly typical white peony tea in my opinion. The pale yellow tea yields a flavour that is light and delicate. It’s a nice ‘evening’ tea as it doesn’t have much of a caffeine kick but it still satisfied my craving for actual tea (and before anyone asks, I’ve hated most decaf teas I’ve tried).