Adagio Teas - Duplicate

This tea was a bit of a puzzle. The first time I made it, I didn’t have the ingredients list or the description in front of me, so I was going in a bit blind. I’m fairly new to tea, so it looked/smelled to me like a white/green mix with a mild fruity sweetness going on. I don’t think I would have come up with “peach” as the main flavor though. I mean, it’s not like it didn’t smell/taste like peaches. But it’s blended well with the other flavors to create a new feeling of its own.

I really liked this tea. I’m a fan of light teas in general, so this was completely up my alley. A light tea with a little peach and a hint of sweetness. Perfect.

Some pictures can be found on my blog: http://lizkuba.com/tea-review-taurus-by-adagio/

Packaging

The imagery for Capricorn is weird. Goat-fish? Oookay. So the artwork for the Capricorn tea is surprisingly graceful, given what the artist has to go off of. We have an androgynous person with white hair (hood?) and goat horns, and they’re holding (?) a brown fish tail. They’re on an earthy brown-auburn background with flowers and leaves.

Leaves

The leaves are very aesthetically pleasing. It’s a lovely mix of greens, browns, and yellows (which is impressive, considering that the base teas are black and white) in the right proportions to give a very earthy, organic feel. In my review of Libra, I lamented that the rose petals were dry and yellow, but here I like the yellow color a lot better.

I find the smell of this absolutely fascinating. I was expecting something autumnal, based on the packaging. Instead, the dominant smell is coconut. But it’s not remotely tropical smelling. It’s coconut in an extremely earthy way. I’ve never really smelled coconut in this context before, it’s really quite lovely. I’m thinking that the vanilla is what really smooths this out.

Tea

The smell isn’t nearly as BAM! Coconut as the unsteeped leaves are. Don’t get me wrong, the dominant smell is coconut. But it’s quite a bit more muted, letting some of the natural smell of the tea leaves come out. The vanilla seems to be missing now.

The tea itself isn’t as complex as its constituents. The dominant flavor is just the black tea. It seems to be tempered somewhat by the white tea, but it’s more in a less-black way than a half-black-half-white way. The aftertaste is a lot smoother than the initial black-tea flavor.

Several other reviews I’ve read of this tea suggest it’s a milk-and-sugar kind of tea, and I can definitely see that working. Unfortunately, I don’t regularly stock milk or cream, but the next time I buy some, I’ll definitely give this tea a try again.

A copy of this review is available on my blog, along with a couple of pictures: http://lizkuba.com/tea-review-capricorn-by-adagio/

When I went to order this tea, it was unavailable as an individual purchase but available as part of the “earth blends” set – because, as any good Cappy knows, you’re an earth sign!

The tea itself seemed a little intimidating at first, because most black teas and I have a contentious relationship. However, the white tea and vanilla buffer/mellow it a bit, and the coconut (more so than the vanilla for me) adds just the right amount of sweetness. I let it cool down a bit before I drank it and it was simply refreshing and slightly energizing – this might be my new morning cup of tea!

Overboard TTB.

I can see the coconut in the mix. But I can’t taste or smell it. Disappointing for that aspect. Otherwise it’s just another vanilla black tea blend from Adagio. There are so many of those that they all seem to just blend together now.

This tea is light and floral. The pearls were nicely wound and were generally free of flaws. The aroma of the leaves is strong with the scent of jasmine. The liquor is light and is, again, strongly scented with jasmine. The taste is a light green tea with a strong jasmine taste – actually too strong, which is why it gets lower marks for flavor. Even with minimal steeping, the tea gets overly bitter from the overuse of jasmine; however, the flavor gets better with subsequent steeps

Thank you NayLynn and Brandon! This is a yummy tea that fits well in the group of teas that I have been gulping down with total abandon. I REALLY need some that aren’t too high on the caffeine but have the vanilla and chocolate I love.

I have to agree that I don’t get the connection with the name but it really doesn’t matter. A nice tea. I have enough for another 2 cup pot… so yea!

Not feeling the best today. Construction going on in the building and since I’m allergic to just about everything, well. . I sound like Rudolph today from all the dust and debris that is making its way into our building. So I went simple. My boyfriend got me the Juicy Slices pack for my stocking so I grabbed this one. Its not too bad. You can definitely tell that this is a citrus tea. Its almost overwhelming the tea. The green tea is very light. Its one of those Meh teas where its just ok, it doesn’t wow you but you are also not running to the kitchen to dump it out.

Overboard Traveling tea box

Hmm, I’m not really getting any notes with this one. It almost reminds me of the tea that you get at a Chinese restaurant. Light, unoffensive, not especially memorable. It smells sweet, it’s a tiny bit creamy at the front of the sip but not enough to remember. Not bad, but not something I’d likely stock.

I chose this tea at random, because I was able to add an extra sample if I posted on facebook. I wanted to try a coconut tea, and I realized I didn’t have much experience at all with spiced teas. This smells like a normal chai, but milder because of the ceylon (or at least I heard the chai teas were mixed with ceylon… I could be wrong. It just says black tea on the page…) And the coconut makes it sweet. The predominant flavor, though, is the lemon grass. it’s great. I’m wondering if it will go well with caramel. Anyway, I think I’ll brew some more. This seemed to brew the best, though, so maybe I should use more chai tea per cup and brew it longer.

A simple, light green tea with a gentle citrus taste. Nothing exciting but a nice calming healthful tea.
I checked on Adagio’s site but they don’t list this as a loose leaf in a tin at all. I bought this at Meijers in a very nice tin. On sale it is only $8.00 for 4 oz. They also had the Ingenuitea brewing mug on sale for $15.

I’ve been rolling in Jasmine pearls lately, trying to find the ideal one for me, so I have a pretty diverse and fairly recent frame of reference for this one.

I’ll save you the long spiel. If you’ve had jasmine pearls you know what to expect. What makes this one unique from others is that the flavor is mellow and registers on the cocoa/nutty side with light floral, as opposed to the more fragrant and heady or fruity and sweet jasmine teas. Definitely not soapy or anything like that. This one is smooth and a little creamy. It’s not my favorite, but pretty good. :3

Loved the jasmine flavor in this tea but I find that it isn’t as fragrant as the white jasmine I tried yesterday. Still delicious though. I didn’t over brew it this time so it doesn’t taste bitter at all! Will have to try the Teavivre Jasmine Pearls next and will compare!

Backlog:

A really good Jasmine Pearl. The jasmine is soft and sweet. The green tea is has a light, fresh taste that marries nicely with the exotic flavors of jasmine. Beautifully floral and sweet.

A good jasmine pearl. Not the best pearl I’ve had, but it’s a good one.

Like several other people here I’m a Sagittarius, so I had to snag this for myself. The tea tastes like Earl Grey Moonlight with raspberry instead of orange peels. I think I prefer this to EGM, actually.

Also the tin’s purple. Not that it had anything to do with the rating; purple’s just my favorite color, along with black and red. Also it’s a black tea with red flowers. Happy day!

I’d suggest not going any longer than four minutes on the steep; I usually go for five with black teas, but when I did it had taken on a nasty bitter taste. Four was just right.

HHTTB Round 3

Eh. Not a jasmine tea I would look forward to drinking again. It has not quite bitter, but just off putting aftertaste. the jasmine isn’t very strong, but it’s also not very interesting. I didn’t feel like this one has the depth of flavor that so many other jasmine teas have. This one is a dud for me.

The scent of the dried tea in these sachets of Adagio Organic Citrus Green Tea is rather offputting. It actually smells caustic—like strong citrus oil used in industrial cleaning. In fact, it reminds me of the perfumes by Lush, many of which feature nose hair-singeing amounts of citrus oil.

Fortunately, the aroma is tempered through steeping, leaving behind only a shadow of the citrus. I don’t know about this blend. The underlying green tea seems to be good—why adulterate??

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!

This tastes like a deeper, stronger dragonwell. It is very grassy with a bit of nutty thrown in. Given that, the insane price tag to me is not worth it. Good, but not THAT good.

Perfectly serviceable Earl Grey tea (in tea bag form, but good quality tea bag), medium strength brew, holds up well with cream and sugar. Not an especially strong bergamot/citrus aroma or flavor.

It’s a never ending cycle… at least until I’ve figured it out. Currently it’s ‘feel bad all day’ because I haven’t had tea, and/or ‘feel bad at night’ because I can’t sleep because I had tea too late. lol

I still can’t figure out if I like this one or not. I made a few mugs over the weekend, and two pots today. It SMELLS like chocolate- like the faint whiff you might get if someone at the next table was enjoying a hot chocolate. But it doesn’t taste like chocolate. I kind of wish it smelt like when you’re baking brownies and that lovely chocolate smell fills the kitchen. I wonder if there are any teas like that.

Fair enough, I feel like the first steep of this tea always tastes burnt, even if I leave it in for something like 20 sec. I’m probably doing it wrong, which is sad because I have an entire tin of the stuff. The other steeps are like ‘what is this? I don’t know. What does it taste like? Ummm….". I don’t get the mango, I don’t get the vanilla, I do get the black tea. Maybe I need to rinse the leaves in cold water first?

On the other hand it smells delicious while it’s brewing. And the leaves look soo pretty after you drain them.