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This was a highly anticipated treat. I was convinced that Canada Post had lost it, but luckily it arrived on Friday, almost a month from the day I ordered it. We tried it out at my grandmother’s over the weekend and really enjoyed the strong lime aroma. I didn’t get any cheesecake taste (very sad face) but I did get a wonderfully limey tea. I have a couple other lime teas from David’s Tea and I learned that I really enjoy lime in tea. Since the beau loves lemon, this seemed perfect. And honestly, if this had been marketed as a lime tea (no cheesecake!) or had the promised cheesecake flavour, it might have been perfect. For now, it’ll sit around 75, and I will continue to see if I can get that promised cheesecake flavour. Maybe it needs lower temps? I boiled it last time…but at least I got two solid steeps before we switched out of necessity.

My aunt was in Durham for July to work on her degree. Luckily, she brought me back some tea! I am fairly certain this is the tea I have, though mine is a 50 count of teabags rather than loose. I was thrown off at first by the talk of mangos and tropical fruits because I expected a black tea with rose (and nothing else) but the smell was very enticing. My grandmother thought it smelled terrible, but she mostly likes to mock my teas.

Last night, the beau and I decided to try it out. We sat around drinking tea with candles lit. Sounds romantic, right? Well, let me add that we were playing Magic. You know, the card game. Yup, we’re cool. Anyway, the tea actually impressed me. The black tea was very mild and the “troical” flavour more forward but in general it was still on the milder side. Granted, we steeped it a little weak, but I really enjoyed it. It was wonderful to sit and sip mindlessly which is exactly what I need sometimes. Definitely reliable and quite tasty, but I wouldn’t call it English Rose. I don’t know much about Rose teas but I didn’t identify any rose flavour.

Dear Detox,

Today, I love you. Last time, I didn’t. I wish I weren’t so wishy-washy, but, hey, what can I do? Today you are soothing, comforting and warming. Convincing me that my sniffles are not real and even if they are, you will kick their butt. I have spent the last 8 days at my grandmother’s without any legit tea and you are a wonderful way to return to the fold. You make me happy in these sad days after my grandfather’s funeral and you even remind me a bit of my beloved gin, of which I should very soon partake.

Thank you!

Finally trying this again. Dry smell is scrumptious, steeped I initially get standard black tea smell, albeit (artifically) sweetened. Upon closer inspection, there is a definite creamy berry sort of aroma, almost reminiscent of a french vanilla cappuchino. The black tea smell is a little disconcerting, not of the best quality. I’m positive I didn’t oversteep it, but it almost gives off that aroma. Looking at the leaves, they are very small and broken up, so I’m assuming that is the source of the ‘bitter’ smell. Hopefully, I am over-analyzing things.

The liquor is very dark and a little ominous. Lets dive in! First sips are (unfortunately) skewed by the onions from my lunch. Onion taste aside, there is a lingering sweet berry taste after the sip, but I get some of that bitter black tea at the front. It blends well with the vanilla to cover it up, I don’t really get a straight up bitter taste, but it definitely lacks the complexity and taste of some of my favourite black teas. This is one tea that only deteriorates as it cools, I prefer to drink it while hot before the bitterness becomes strong.

I definitely enjoy this but sadly have not been wowed like everyone else. I think that with a better base, this tea could really shine but at the moment it is held back by my impressions of the lower quality black tea. I’ve never had another Adagio tea before so I don’t know what they’ve used in this or what they use in general. I took a peek on the site but I didn’t see anything about the tea base. Anywho, this continues to be good but not stellar in my books and it makes me a little sad.

The aroma of this tea is wonderfully enticing. I gave it 2.5 minutes to steep and got a wonderful rich amber liquor. Closer to brown than anything, really. Steeped, it smells super sweet, not like a china black but more like a tea that has been dosed with honey. I take my tea unswetened but enjoy naturally sweet teas so we’ll see what I think of this.

First sips are really wonderful. More honey flavor and aroma than black tea taste but I can sense it hidden underneath. I’m off my black tea kick (though they are still favorites) but this is a wonderful treat. Many thanks to Ruth for having given me this sample months ago. If I happen upon this in my tea travels I will be sure to stock up! Mmmm..

Ps – I am on my iPod so I can’t rate this but it will get a solid 85 when I am on a real computer again.

edit: as it cools, it gets less obviously sweet and the black tea flavour really develops. Very very nice.

Once again, I was sucked in by the “new tea!” at David’s Tea. I went in to smell this and the Canada Day blend and left with a pre-filled bag of both. As a “white” (I use quotation marks because I have trouble seeing tea amongst all the other ingredients) this is one of the more expensive teas at DT – I think it was $10 for 50 g. In general I have no problem with white teas costing more but since I have trouble seeing any tea in here at all, I think this is a classic case of DT over-charging and hoping nobody notices. I bought the 32 g bag for $6.50 and feel a little ripped off by how little there is in here. There won’t be as many pots of this as I would hope for the cost, especially since they recommend 2 tsp of tea to a cup.

Cost woes aside, the smell of this dry tea is amazing. I have had a couple mango teas in my day and found none of them captured the smell or taste of mango. This one has the ripe sweet mango smell bang on. This is very exciting! Once I poured the water into the pot, I noticed a lot of little floaty bits that escaped my fine metal strainer. I know it’s picky of me, but I hate when bits make it into my cup…it keeps it steeping and generally sort of grosses me out. Minus points for cost and floaty bits, but big points for smell. Lets see how taste holds up…

The liquor is really quite yellow and honestly smells still quite a bit like mango. Maybe more mango juice than fresh mango, but that’s okay. Still doing better than my other mango teas. First sips are bright and juicy. Not necessarily mango but definite tropical fruit with an almost sharp taste. No tea flavour at all, but I’d be shocked if there was. This is actually really satisfying as a mango taste for me. If you’re not looking for tea flavour, this is a tea that I would think has a wide range of appeal. I could imagine enticing my grandmother with this one (but only if I told her it was herbal…she doesn’t like true tea to not taste like tea. If I called it a tisane, she’d be all over it). Similarly, I think my 2,3 and 6 year old cousins would love this iced.

I really like this and on a taste scale it deserves mid 80s. I don’t know that I will buy more because it’s just more expensive than I would prefer. It’ll be interesting to see if this can manage a re-steep, since tisanes aren’t so great for that usually and this might as well just be a tisane. I look forward to the adventure, though!

PS – Thank you Mother Nature for giving me a day cool enough to enjoy a hot cuppa in my (always hot) apartment without complaining! I think it would almost be worth having air conditioning so I could still have tea in the morning and at night.

Over time, this has gone from my favourite and first beloved loose tea to one that I turn to only in times of illness. I developed another summer cold after a marathon hospital visit to see my grandfather (now released and doing well, yay!) and the beau thought Detox might help. Now, to be fair, I was in a terrible mood when I drank this because I was sick again and absolutely tired of it, not to mention achey and sore. Anyway, I somehow mis-brewed this and didn’t end up with my usual potent juniper lemon mix. Instead I had a watered down mess. Drinkable and totally my fault, but saddening nonetheless. I still really enjoy this tea but I think that in my never-ending quest for more tea I might not refill this tin the next time it empties. I think we’ve had a solid 300 grams so far, my Detox friend. Thank you for that!

And that, as they say, is that. I’ve had a number of cups of this tea and I just am not in love with it the way I had hoped, or even that I was in the beginning. I gave the remains to a vanilla loving coworker and have freed myself of guilt.

When I look for a vanilla tea, I want a caramel sort of vanilla. I found this to be a coconut sort of vanilla. (I don’t know if I am the only one but I find strong vanilla smells and taste to be coconut-esque, and I don’t like coconut). Rather than force myself to like it, I’ve decided (quite rightly, I think!) to re-gift it to someone else who might enjoy it more. I wish I weren’t so prone to falling out of love with teas.. : (

Had a cuppa this with the beau this evening. It’s been a while since I had it and I always think it will be overpowering lemon based on the smell, but I find it’s actually milder in taste than in smell. I didn’t find it to be tart or bitter, but a nice citrus flavouring. Yes, it took over the oolong flavour (which I don’t mind, since I expected it) but there was still a depth to the body of the tea, reminding you of it’s oolong roots.

I drank a cuppa Creme Brulee this morning..I apologize, but it must not have been very memorable because it only just occurred to me to log it. I was looking for a yummy caramel-esque tea and was hoping this might be it. Not so. I had no trouble drinking the cup I prepared, and it was rather surprisingly flavoured like creme brulee (though I don’t have creme brulee that often).

However, it wasn’t memorable and both the beau and I declared we didn’t feel the need to buy more of it. I’m not sure if it is a problem with it being rooibos based and not feeling substantially “tea” enough for me, or if there was just something a bit off about the flavours. It doesn’t really matter, I suppose, but it does seem like the sort of tea I would have really enjoyed at the beginning of my tea journey, but at the moment it doesn’t really fit into my tea desires. Sorry, creme brulee!