Another tea with a duplicate entry. I wish the Steepster gods would use their super merge powers on these. It messes with my OCD.
If I had to guess, this has a separate entry because one is “organic” — but I find it hard not to believe these are the same tea. The description is identical, and there’s nothing in the “organic” description that elaborates on the organic label. BTW, mine is labeled organic and I’m taking the plunge to put it here with the vast majority of entries.
In the tin, I definitely get the “sour, dead plant” aroma from the dry leaves that I have associated with white peony in the past. A more charitable description is something like “arboreal” or “woody.”
The steeped tea’s aroma seems to veer rather significantly from that, however. I can’t say I’m smelling toasted chestnut, which I associate with a very specific smoky smell from the stands in NYC in winter, but I do understand the honey reference. Though it’s not an intense smell, there’s a sweetness that is reminiscent of a very light honey. The tea is a very pale yellow.
So to compare this to the Andao, which I just had a few minutes ago: they’re pretty similar in flavor (minus the undefined fruitiness, which I am now convinced was a holdover from a different tea), as I would have expected since they’re the same type of tea. The main difference is that the Andao is both more and less. It has more of a rounded flavor, whereas I feel as though I’m searching for the flavor a bit in this one amidst the hot water. But it is also less sharp. The Rishi has a sharp note that reminds me of a darjeeling, while the Andao doesn’t.
I’m going to rate this a little higher than the Adagio because I enjoyed this more, but lower than the Andao which will earn a ratings bump.
Flavors: Earth, Honey, Plants, Wood
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Duplicate entries, and the fact the Steepster Gods fail to do anything about them (I’ve reported several myself on the Duplicate/Merge thread in the forums and still nothing has been done about them!) drives me crazy too. I’m a cataloger in a library, so my job day in and day out requires me to merge cataloging records in a huge library database so we don’t have 20 different records of more or less the same book, to make it easier for patrons to find things and place holds… so perhaps this irks me more than the average user, but it really gives me the itchies!
It feels like clutter!
Duplicate entries, and the fact the Steepster Gods fail to do anything about them (I’ve reported several myself on the Duplicate/Merge thread in the forums and still nothing has been done about them!) drives me crazy too. I’m a cataloger in a library, so my job day in and day out requires me to merge cataloging records in a huge library database so we don’t have 20 different records of more or less the same book, to make it easier for patrons to find things and place holds… so perhaps this irks me more than the average user, but it really gives me the itchies!
It feels like clutter!