Adagio Custom Blends

I had a very busy day yesterday so I didn’t end up having time to watch the Simulcast for the Fruits Basket series finale, but you best bet that when I woke up today the first thing I did was steep up a mug of this delicious orange creamsicle Kyo tea and watch that finale. I cannot fucking believe this series is over – it was so, so good and I just cried so, so much as I watched. Such perfection!!

I guess next adventure is to read the manga!?

Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m a big fan of the Fruits Basket anime. I watched the original when I was in highschool, and have been closely following and obsessing over the reboot – some day I will get into the manga, but right now I’m holding back from diving into that rabbit hole…

Kyo is my favourite character in the series – and the most recent episodes of the second season have been some really good Kyo episodes. I love soft, tender and gentle Kyo. The Kyo underneath all the anger and resentment, and the defensive shield he puts up to hide that. I’ve wanted to sample through this Fruits Basket inspired set of teas for a long time now, and while I didn’t go all out and order the whole sampler I did toss in this Kyo blend with my last order.

The teas picked for the blend seem perfect for the character – Tiger Eye, Blood Orange, and Cream. Kyo is possesed with the cat zodiac spirit, which ties in the Tiger Eye. Blood Orange fits because, aside from his orange colour scheme/character design, this seems appropriate for his fighting spirit as well as the bracelet he wears fashioned of blood and bone. Cream for the soft person underneath it all, who had his childhood stolen from him.

The bonus for all of that!? The blend tastes really good! I often forget that the black tea base Adagio uses for most of their main assortment is a bit more fickle/sensitive to oversteeping and as a result I usually get astringency in bitterness in my cups because I tend to not be the most attentive to steep times when I’m working. However, even with a long steep time I’m finding this blend reaalllyyy smooth and enjoyable. I’m not tasting as much of the Tiger Eye as I thought I would – but I’m not mad at that because the result is essentially a rich, deep Creamsicle type of flavour that it so scrumptious! Feels like tasty, sublime relief on a hot summer day.

Plus, it just feels righ for Kyo as a character.

It’s always so fun when a fandom blend not only makes sense for the character in the teas that were composed, but is also just really tasty to boot!

Sipdown (2320)!

Like a softly spiced strawberry pastry of some kind. Love how cozy the cinnamon notes in this are and, how despite the mixed based, it’s just so smooth and consistent. I could very easily finish this one off myself, but it’s fun to share fandom teas so I’m adding the last couple cups of it into the SVTTB for others to enjoy!

Geek S3E3 – Twilight

So, there isn’t really a world where I see myself spending money on a Twilight fandom blend from Adagio – if I’m buying a fandom tea it’s going to be for a fandom I’m actively exploring or already deeply invested in. However, this tea (which is from a creator’s Halloween inspired collection) is probably the closest thing I owned to a ‘Twlight fandom’ blend so that’s what I went with for me pairing while rewatching the movie…

There’s I think four different teas in this blend, but the ones that actually come through in the taste are the cinnamon black tea and Hazelberry Pu’erh. It’s full bodied and pretty smooth and thick, with lots of earthy malty base notes. The slight nuttiness, delicate strawberry and warming cinnamon are all really cozy and have a comforting quality that makes me think of cinnamon pastries.

It’s also just a bit muddy and that kind of awkward kismet of flavours felt sort of appropriate for the clumsy highschool romance portrayed here, which just oozes cringe about as much as it does “meet cute”. Ultimately, there are elements of Twilight I love that are equally balanced with elements I loathe and somehow this tea just seems to find that crux in the middle and nestle right on in there, which is why it made such a good pairing.

Steeped up on Friday and I think I enjoyed this more than my first go with it. I kept the steep time pretty short, and the result was that I got a little less cinnamon and no astringency. What that left was a delicate strawberry note, hints of cinnamon, and a tiny bit of a chocolate note – so more like a gentle chocolate strawberry tea with some cinnamon instead of a cinnamon blend with strawberry. Less weird, at least for my own palate.

Another Spooktober appropriate Halloween tea!

This is a really pretty looking fandom blend; the pop of bright red from the small cut strawberry and the cinnamon chips contrast so lovely against Adagio’s black tea base. It smells cinnamon forward, with undertones of ripe strawberry. The taste is a bit weird? I think I’d get used to it with more cups; I guess I just find cinnamon and juicy strawberry a little strange. A creamy or baked strawberry fits a little better in my head. There’s some nutty flavours, but not as much as I would expect from the ingredients list – the focus is definitely strawberry/cinnamon. A little drying – I think that’s just Adagio’s more finicky black tea base.

On top of the ripe pineapple and distinct smoke notes I thought the cinnamon in this blend especially came out to play in this cup. As a hot tea it was good, though it felt more like some sort of throat soother type of vibe that I could see, maybe, a pirate drinking on their ship on a cold night at sea. Sort of a tropical hot toddy, if you will. I let the latter half of the mug cool and drank it chilled, and I liked that a lot too – it was a little more of a tiki/cocktail sort of vibe but with the smoky edge.

Steeped this up on Friday while working from home but then only got around to drinking it when it was cold – delicious, though! Starts off with a sweet and tangy tropical note that reminds me of the ‘juice’ in canned pineapple tidbits. That’s followed up with a lightly savory, woody smoky note from the lapsang. Gives “grilled pineapple” in taste in just a really unique but satisfying way and it was surprisingly refreshing even when room temp!

Oh Seahawk…

I’ve basically just been waiting for my next Adagio order to get a big bag of this, and so that’s exactly what I did. Also the first thing that I steeped up once I recieved and unboxed that order. I know I’m super predictable with my love of lapsang, but how can you possibly not love this smoky Thai influenced pineapple blend. It’s scrumptious.

Oh Seahawk… What do you even say about Seahawk!?

He’s definitely a character that annoyed me a bit at first, but he kind of grows on you in an irritating sort of why where at the end of the series he was in my top three favourite characters. I particularly love his relationship with Mermista. It’s hard to verbalize why their relationship is so endearing to me, but I think a huge part of it is how completely supportive he is of her in everything she does and also how he is ALWAYS completely honest about how he feels about her.

So lets talk about this blend! It’s one of the most clever Adagio fan blends I’ve seen in a long time! You have a mix of tropical fruit heavy teas along with Lapsang Souchong. This confused me at first, but then I realized the tropical fruits are because he’s a pirate sailing through exotic locals and the Lapsang is because one of his reoccuring character traits is that he burns down ships. It’s genius, and hilarous!

More than that, though, it also tastes incredible! I swear something magic happens basically whenever you use Lapsang in flavoured tea blends, but the combination of really sweet and fresh pineapple notes with hints of coconut, cinnamon, lemongrass and then a really lingering finish of woody pine smoke from the Lapsang tastes fucking incredible together! It’s the perfect marriage of this very Thai inspired tasting tropical chai/pina colada vibe mixing with the savory smoke. Yum yum yum!!

I swear, this is giving my long standing favourite Adagio blend (The Woman) a real run for its money!

#mugtober

Theme for this day was black tea/black cats. I captured the black cat part with my mug pick, so plan was to just pick a more Halloween themed black tea blend. I was actually going to do a different fandom blend from Adagio but my tin of it is in a shelf behind a bunch of stuff I couldn’t be assed enough to move out of the way, so I settled on this one instead.

I added some cashew milk because I thought the cream might mix with the chocolate and cherry and make for a sort of “Black Forest Cake” profile, but instead it masked most of the cherry and made for a cup that was kind of just like drinking milk chocolate with a subtle nutty undertone. Fine enough, but I was a little sad about the missing cherry notes and I mostly ended up drinking the mug after it was cold because I didn’t feel super pulled to the hot profile.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQwCoMq5br4

I recently binged the entire She-Ra and The Princesses of Power series on Netflix, but about halfway through my binge I placed an Adagio order for Halloween teas and I decided to add some She-Ra blends into the mix too…

It was tempting to buy a tea for each character I loved (which is A LOT of the characters), but I was smart and only bought blends for characters I loved that also sounded like teas I might enjoy. That ended up being two characters; Scorpia and Seahawk. Scorpia is actually my favourite character in the entire series so I was excited to get this blend! I also love Catra/Mermista/Entrapta, but their blends didn’t speak to me the same way. I ended up drinking this tea, and the Seahawk tea which I’ll write a note for after this, while binging the final season – and it made that last season feel SO SPECIAL. I could gush about She-Ra for hours, but I wont. Instead lets talk about the tea…

This is essentially a chocolate and cherry blend, which is a tricky combo but always nice if done well! In particular, it uses Dewy Cherry which is a blend from Adagio that I actually really enjoy. My all time favourite Adagio fandom tea (The Woman) uses this blend so I had high hopes. Maybe too high, honestly. The flavour of dewy cherry comes through and, as expected, it is the best part. However I don’t like it with the milk chocolate notes and very tannic black tea; it just doesn’t mesh well. The idea for this blend, I think, was to combine to sweet and bright/cheerful things – which is perfect for Scorpia as a character. She’s drawn as the most masculine/tough and intimidating of the princesses and covered in sharp armor, but in reality is the gentlest and kindest and most cheerful of the characters. So either a sweet and soft milk chocolate or a bright and cheerful cherry would have been perfect for her! But creamy milk chocolate and vibrant cherry just don’t couple well, sadly.

But it’s a Scorpia tea – so I was happy either way!

This was one of the first teas I steeped up at the start of October! I definitely was very quick to pull out all the Halloween themed Adagio blends I bought last year – this is their time to shine! Truthfully this is probably my favourite candy corn tea if only because it doesn’t actually taste like candy corn…

I like the idea of candy corn soooo much more than I actually like the taste of it in practice. It’s like thick sugar paste/fondant and I just don’t enjoy it both texturally and flavour wise. However, the visual! Man, this visual! Something about looking at a bowl of candy corn immediately gets me HYPED for Halloween. It’s just so… aesthetically perfect.

So the more Creamsicle leaning flavour profile here that pays homage to the colours of candy corn coupled with that brisk black tea base is just delicious to me. I get the best of both worlds in terms of stunning taste and fun Halloween spirit.

Candy Corn is a Halloween classic so how could I resist picking up a Candy Corn tea for this October!? Let me tell you a secret though; when it comes to actual candy corn it’s not a flavour that I enjoy…

It’s a testament to the power/influence of it as a Halloween icon though because I see basically any Candy Corn inspired thing other than real Candy Corn and I immediately want to buy it because motherfucking Halloween! Shockingly, there are probably a DOZEN different Candy Corn inspired tea blends on Adagio so I had a lot of range to pick from. I chose then one that had the most appealing to me flavour composition and not the one I thought was most accurate to actual Candy Corn, which is basically just a mix of fondant/icing that tastes like pure sugar. No thanks…

So this is essentially caramel/orange/cream with black tea and honeybush. I guess I have seen cream and caramel flavour candy corn so it’s not totally off base in the interpretation of the flavour – but orange seems more out there and I would guess is only included because of the actual colour of candy corn. I’m okay with that, though!

The taste is straight forward – literally all of the flavours I just mentioned are represented, including a malty backbone from the black tea and that sweet and nutty flavour of honeybush that is so distinct. I would say the strongest flavours are orange, cream, and honeybush. It loosely reminds me of Candy Corn, but whether it’s accurate or not isn’t really the goal that I wanted from this cup – the important thing is that it tastes good, and it does. I find it a little thin, and the caramel could be better but I enjoy the orange and cream combo a lot – and I get the FUN of Candy Corn for Halloween which is exactly what I wanted.

I also drank this while watching Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror episodes which was a massively fun and nostalgic Halloween evening activity that only made the tea that much better!

Couldn’t resist stocking up on a bunch of Halloween inspired tea blends to sip throughout Spooky Season this year, and I do love a good caramel apple so this was the first one that I tapped into when I got the order earlier in the week!

I had this one at my office, but the idea is to drink these blends while doing fun Spooky Season activities throughout the month – like watching TV shows/movie and pumpkin carving. I did over steep this by a hearty ten minutes because I got caught up in responding to emails, and my inattention to steeping was punished with a hefty dose of astringency. However, the flavour of the blend itself was good and I could see from the taste that with proper steeping I would have enjoyed this a lot. Very sweet, bordering on caramel with hints of apple, cream, and cinnamon. Caramel is an infamously hard flavour to capture in tea – this felt a bit more like the thin and sort of artificial/generically sweet caramel like might see used as a Sundae syrup? On the cusp of nailing it, but just a bit off.

I look forward to brewing it properly later this monthl.

I just added this to my cupboard but to be honest it was a tiny amount of tea to begin with and I have had it before so now there is only about a serving left. I made lattes with whipped cream and sprinkles for my husband and myself tonight and this was super good for that.

My lattes for two are generally made thus: twenty ounces milk and three tablespoons sugar heated and three teaspoons tea added. If the tea blend is full of pieces of dried fruit or chips or something, I will add a little extra or make sure the spoon is heaping. Heat (but not to boiling) and leave it at least six minutes but preferably ten. As long as the milk is good and hot you can turn off the burner for the last bit of steeping.

Strain into two mugs and top with whipped cream. My husband really loves sprinkles so I add those cuz he is a nice guy.

This tea has been here for a while. It was a gift to my daughter and she never got around to trying it, but in spite of its age it had great flavor still and nothing had gone “off.” This is something I would definitely consider repurchasing just for cold weather treats. The tea and the spices both come through nice and strong and really since it has so much flavor I could cut back on the sugar. If the blend is heavy on “pieces” rather than tea leaves and flavoring, it sometimes needs that bit of extra sugar to make it flavorful.

Sipdown 68

Cinnamon. A bit boring, but not bad by any means. Definitely a bit better than the 56 I previously gave it.

This smells like a melted red hot. But, the cinnamon is much more mild than I would’ve thought. A bit of woodiness. Overall, the flavors are a bit too muted. Pretty average.

It’s my day off and I’ve been drinking a ton of tea. I’ve been working, but in a reduced capacity up until yesterday. We’ve just gone back to regular operations and I’m feeling very ‘meh’ about having to interact with so many people everyday again. I’ve been looking for another job for about 9 months, and it is so insanely difficult. The amount of effort I’ve put in has been exhausting, on top of the confusion and sadness I’m sure everyone is feeling as a result of the pandemic. I’m also taking an HR Management class right now, and had my midterm yesterday (got a 96% woot!), but that’s another layer of stress. So much stress lately, I’m glad I have my tea.

The name and image on the tin still make me laugh. Sadly I don’t think these little Adagio tins maintain flavor very well, because most of the Halloween teas I bought from Adagio last year are really starting to lose their flavor (way more than any other tea I have, and I have some that are significantly older than a year). Kind of a muted/nondescript cinnamon flavor. Like someone swirled a cinnamon broom around in water.

I’ll admit- I got this tea because the name/image make me laugh. Luckily, this is a really tasty autumn blend! A bit roast, with some squashiness, a touch of spice, and a pronounced sweet almond flavor. Really enjoying it.

Another winner! It has the creamy caramel flavor that I’ve been looking for, combined with mild ginger (not a spicy ginger, just ginger flavor). Added a bit of honey, and it’s quite an autumnal treat (plus the vintage Halloween art is wonderful too).

I’ve tried Adagio a couple times over the last 5 years, and finally stopped about a year ago (with the exception of picking up Brigadoon breakfast) because I disliked almost everything I tried. But, I’m on the hunt for tasty fall teas, and I’m a sucker for vintage Halloween imagery…which took me to the collection that this was a part of. I was intrigued by the hojicha/pumpkin flavoring/spice combination, so decided to try 6 custom Halloween blends.
This is the first one I brewed up…and I actually love it! The spice component is pretty minimal, and the focus is more on the roasted squash quality that comes with the hojicha+toasted mate+pumpkin flavoring. The only thing that would have made it perfect is real pumpkin pieces.