Adagio Teas

This was handed off to my mom, it didn’t do it for me. I’m not sure what it was but it tasted like burnt chocolate, like when you melt it in the microwave for too long with a hint of spice.

Day 4 of 2022 Advent Calendar. Nothing wrong with it but just not strong enough for me

Turns out I had more to try and make it stronger and I now love this tea and can’t wait to get more

Adventaggedon Day Four – 4/5

This was an alright tea, but obviously not a favourite of mine. I’m kind of getting just a little bit impatient waiting for something to pop up from this advent that’s a bit more overtly festive in nature – but I totally get that this _is_a more wintery profile even if it’s not a Christmas-y one.

The dry leaf smelled so much like cola to me, and that I think tainted a bit of my impression from the get go. Steeped up I thought this was smooth enough with a pleasant body and foundation of gentle earthiness from the pu’erh base. Of the spices, ginger was the most prominent to me but it also still tasted like cola to me and that was just strange. My brother used to mix instant chocolate milk syrup and cola together when we were kids, and I always thought it was pretty gross – but he loved it. I hadn’t thought about that in a very, very long time so (if nothing else) I’m grateful for the hit of nostalgia and this tea returning a fond memory of my brother to me.

It got better as it cooled and more of the chocolate notes started to come through. Not a rich and creamy milk chocolate, but more of a raw cacao/cocoa powder kind of vibe. Sometimes I like chocolate and ginger and sometimes I don’t, but I thought this was a nice balance/ratio. Still, just a hint of cola. Couldn’t get past that.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClwxRN7O-LO/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=satAqbkC80Y

Day 3 of 2022 Advent Calendar. It’s a subtle and sweet. Very enjoyable

Got this as part of a sampler in my annual tea swap. This is the wrong season for me to be drinking this tea. It’s a nice light green with a strong smell of raspberry.

I will be coming back to this and the other greens when the weather warms up and I can do them iced. It was a pretty average “green tea” taste with some raspberry overtones, but it didn’t do anything specail for me. I want to see what it tastes like when I can make it stronger and over ice.

As a winter hot tea, it’s not doing anything particular for me.

Adventaggedon Day Three – 2/5

This was my favourite Adagio blend yet, and honestly close to being my favourite of the day too. I thought there was something just truly lovely about the balance of cranberry and walnut notes – not too tart or sweet on the part of the cranberry but still bright and flavourful, and not drying/astringent on the end of the walnuts. I even got a little bit of a maple note in the finish that complimented so pleasantly.

It was maybe just a tiny bit too juicy of a fruit note to totally sell me on the muffin element, but I completely see the direction they were going and it’s exactly the right kind of nutty vibe for this style of muffin. The base was totally fine, too!

Just a lovely surprise of a cuppa.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CluMZkouA7b/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM92tDVVJFo

This one is a nice lavender earl grey to drink with milk. I also often over-steep it and it isn’t a problem. A lot of Adagio’ black base teas don’t seem to be nearly as forgiving as this one. I still need to try it as a London Fog at some point.

Day 2 of Advent Calendar. Was very good. Perfect cross between tart and sweet

Adventaggedon Day Two – 3/5

I thought that this might have been a new tea from Adagio because I didn’t remember it from any of my past orders, but given the quantity and posting date of all these Steepster reviews it doesn’t look like that’s the case.

The dry leaf aroma was intense. Lots and lots of passionfruit and red fruit flavouring packed into this little sample, with a whiff of cinnamon. Steeped up, it was a beautiful bright red colour and the aroma a little nicer – a bit like a tropical grenadine. I didn’t notice the cinnamon as much, either.

It wasn’t really my favourite tea. The passionfruit was just a little bit funky paired with the cinnamon. Even though the cinnamon was pretty light in intensity, it was more of that red-hot sweet type and I just found that strange with the tropical notes. It’s weird though, because this was much more red fruit in taste to me than I would have ever guessed based on both the name and ingredients list. A touch of hibiscus, but mostly a pomegranate kind of vibe. That worked _much better with the cinnamon and also kind of worked a tinnnyyyy bit as a bridge flavour between the tropical flavours and cinnamon.

I don’t think I’d revisit this one, though.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/Clrnn5vOcag/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_3jBwLHMkU

This was the first tea in the Adagio advent. It was nice and subtle spiced with a hint of sweetness. I just don’t gravitate towards honeybush enough to grab more.

Day 1 of Advent Calendar. Good for a chai but nothing in the flavors that screams pumpkin anything

Adventaggedon Day One – Tea 3/5

It’s honestly kind of weird that this is the first year I’ve done the Adagio advent calendar. Other than DT, I feel like they’re the tea company that has been releasing one the longest. Only other company that comes to mind that could maybe give that a run for its money is Bird & Blend – but I’m not awake enough right now to try and fact check myself on that right now. Anyway, I’m finally doing it now!

I actually ended up with two advents today that featured pumpkin teas, which I thought was weird. Though, if you’re going to include a pumpkin blend I suppose I prefer you do it early and get it out of the way before that festive mood really sets in. This was intriguing to me too because I love Adagio’s honeybush base, but generally don’t particularly love pumpkin spices. The first thing that I noticed about this blend, though, was that it was pretty clove forward. Clove is one of those spices that most people seem to think they dislike but, when mixed with other spices, actually enjoy more than they expect to. In North America, anyway. I feel like I’m one of the outliers in the fact that I actually enjoy that taste of clove on its own a lot. So, a Pumpkin Chai that’s heavy on the clove? Perfection!

The honeybush was also really nice and, though the next most prominent spice was ginger (not a favourite), it ended up being a pretty nice cup of tea overall. I think I’d actually probably much rather have this over the more traditional black tea based Pumpkin Chai.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClpC3C9OZ7i/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4E8DPn6oww

Day 1 of 2021 Adagio Advent Calendar

I bought last year’s calendar when I went to buy a bag of the recommended Reindeer fuel and it was so cheap and there was a discount.

I haven’t had new Adagio samples for years, so this is a good way to sample.

Not sure why they chose Pumpkin Spice as the first day of Christmas Advent – maybe saying goodbye to fall?

Either way, the clove smell was so strong on this one dry that I thought at first it had menthol and had to check the ingredients.

The tea is okay but milder, the clove is the only thing I really taste. Perhaps some added spice but it’s hard to tell. No pumpkin found in here by my palette. :(

This is old, and I definitely underleafed it. I remember this being a very strong, bergamot-heavy EG, but this time around I can taste the malty black base a lot more, and the bergamot adds nice aromatic citrus notes that meld with it nicely. I actually think it’s better balanced now than it was when it was fresh! I added the tiniest pinch of brown sugar which brought the bergamot out more, and the teeny weeniest little splash of milk to temper the astringency (even though there wasn’t much). It’s rather lovely this way! The sweetness and creaminess added by the milk and sugar really round out the tea, making it a very nice Earl Grey! It’s not a stand out, but then I tend to see EG as a cupboard staple rather than something special anyway (except for Earl Grey cremes, now that’s a different story). A nice morning sipper!

Part of my tea-exchange sampler for the season – this one’s a perfectly serviceable vanilla tea, but not one I need to keep in my cabinet. I’ll finish the sample, and move on.

Day 7 of Advent Calendar

Very pleasant tasting. The coconut gives it a light sweet flavor

It’s a basic spice tea. Nothing particularly jumped out about it for me, and I don’t feel the need to keep it in the house. I got it as part of a sample pack of other spiced/nut teas, and there’s nothing wrong with it at all, but it doesn’t spark joy.

I’ll finish the sample pack, but I don’t feel any need to get more. Very much a “shrug, OK” tea for me.

I am currently out of my chestnut tea, which is one of my favorite Adagio teas, so I was pleased to get this one as part of my annual tea-gifting that my friends and I do amongst each other. Hazelnuts are more common than chestnuts in some types of things, but they’re less common in tea, and this one was quite good and scratched the same itch as the chestnut.

It’s a lovely nutty flavor, along with the proper “yes there is black tea in here” and it brewed twice without notable degradation in flavor.

Since this one is so similar in terms of what I would be drinking it for, I’m unlikely to seek it out when I have Chestnut in the house – but if Chestnut is unavailable for some reason, I will swap it in without compunction and be just as happy.

Definitely a success.

It’s annual-tea-gifting time amongst my friends and I, and I have been given two four-pack samplers from Adagio. Today’s was Almond. That’s it, just almond.

Given that I really like almonds, I was dubious about this tea – most of the ‘almond’ or ‘almond-marzipan’ teas I’ve had have had a fairly modest almond-ness to them. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to be grabbed by the lapels of this tea as it shouted “ALMOND!!!” in my face.

“Yes, yes you are, aren’t you,” I replied, and the tea subsided a bit, appeased.

This is a very almond-y tea. I like it quite a bit for just that reason! It’s probably capable of assuaging my desire to eat an entire box of marzipan all at once (but I don’t keep marzipan in the house anymore – it’s too dangerous for just this reason – so I can’t test this hypothesis) and certainly it fulfills its name.

I shall be very happy to keep this sampler around. We’re a bit tight on tea-cabinet space right now, so I’m not sure I’ll keep a large amount of this one around long-term, but for the moment, I’m quite enjoying it.

Definitely one I plan to drink again.

Sample pulled from a TTB. The flavoring here was a little mild, so I mostly just tasted low quality black tea with a bit of dark fruitiness below. It was okay, but not something I would want again.

This is from a TTB from last year. I taste a strong chocolate flavor, but no caramel. I don’t really like the black tea Adagio uses. It’s still pretty tasty with sugar and milk, but not quite hot chocolate level.

I drank this with a Pan au Chocolate and it was divine! The Flavors are so well balanced in the mouth, nothing fought for attention or stuck out. So smooth in the mouth and on the nose.

On the front, you get the fruity taste of cranberry and apple and a slightly vegetal taste from the green tea. It finishes beautifully with the rich, warm flavor of the pecans and chocolate. A nice soothing cup of tea.

Light pink in color with the full flavor of hibiscus and rose. All the other flavors are drowned out. I do get some of the lemongrass coming through on the back end. Fruity, sweet, and floral. Bright flavor, makes me think of summer and bubblegum. The hibiscus and rose stay on the tongue long after the cup is finished.

I am not a fan of rose or hibiscus but my aunt loved it.