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Thanks to my friend Aisha for swapping me some of this tea!

Today is one of those days where the thunderstorm’s been building all day long, and now it’s a bit darker than it should be at 4:30 pm, and the air is cool and damp, and it smells like rain. I’m so excited. I love rain and thunder and lightning.

The leaf of this smells like buttered, movie theater popcorn. It’s great. It’s mostly green leaves, and they’re flat and hard-edged and sort of artichoke colored, and then there are some twisty black leaves in there as well.

I steeped according to my general Adagio green parameters – 180, 2 minutes.

Okay.

The smell is still sort of caramelly, but the flavor is first buttery green tea (green tea + caramel?) and then vanilla. I taste a tiny bit of the pu’erh in the background, but it’s not enough to overwhelm the flavors.

If I had tried this tea before placing my last Adagio order (it should get here on Wednesday, hopefully!) I’d definitely have added some of this. It’s creamy and mellow without tasting too artificial.

Thanks to The Tea Merchant for this sample!

Hm. It’s a really pretty peachy orange color. I cold-brewed it overnight. The dry smell is really fruity and great. The tea liquor definitely smells like apricots. But I’m not sure it tastes like them. I mean, I’d definitely go with fruit, but I’m not sure I want to jump straight to apricot – blood orange and nectarine, maybe?

It’s good, though, I’ll grant it that. It’s been crazy hot here in NY, so I’ve been drinking iced almost nonstop!

Ooh, I do love this one. I forgot I still had a sample tin, and I made up a big mug to drink while playing UNO out on the hill. It’s really smooth and sweet, as long as you treat it right. No boiling water here!

I got this as a free sample in the last order I placed with Adagio. When I ordered it I thought at first that it was actual hibiscus, not a flavored black. When I learned it was the latter, I got really afraid. I don’t mind hib… it can just get SO tart. So I’ve waited to try this for a few weeks.

Yesterday I steeped a pot of it hot, but left it on just a bit too long (Adagio’s flavored blacks are sooo sensitive) and it started to get bitter, so I didn’t have more than a sip or two of the pot.

Later that day, it was really awfully hot out. I wanted tea but didn’t want to drink anything hot, so I filled a T-sac of this and some cold water and decided I’d let it cold-steep in the hour or so I had before class.

It’s REALLY GOOD. Which surprises me immensely! I admit, the flavor was a bit light, but even still. The black base was a bright, solid black, and the hibiscus gave it just a little bit of floral fruitiness without being sour. I’m not sure how it’d fare in other circumstances, but I for one really like it in this context. I’m really interested to try it with some rose and rosehip mixed in.

After this morning’s Lipton Mint fiasco, I wanted a “real” tea for my reading. I love my classes to pieces, but I’m in three lit classes and a psych, on top of my Education seminars, so there’s a ton of reading.

Right now I’m sitting out in the grass right behind my window with a pot of this and Oedipus the King.

I’m raising the rating a bit because I think I appreciate it a bit more now, maybe in comparison to that Mint tea! I don’t see how you can rate teas objectively, really, since it can be SO subjective.

There’s something deliciously nutty about this. It tastes a little bit roasted, but I’m not sure I’d call it a roasted oolong. It’s naturally sweet, so I didn’t put any sugar or anything in it. Yum!

Mint. Riiiight. The Cafe at my school offers a few kinds of Lipton tea. I didn’t have time to make up a baggie of my own tea before running to class this morning (with the Education program, I now have extra classes at 7:30 am), and the Pub (which serves Tazo tea) is way out of the way. So if I need tea in between education and creative writing, which, to be honest, is always – I’m stuck with Lipton.

Okay, fine. I don’t have anything against the fact that it’s Lipton, really, only that it just doesn’t taste very good. This is no exception. I guess it’s vaguely minty… sort of… and there’s a sort of licorice or tarragon kind of flavor in there too. I left the teabag in for the whole hour and a half of class, and to be honest, I could hardly taste it. It was probably an old teabag, but still. Ick. I need to remember to bring my own tea and just get water.

Noms. I steeped a cup of this this morning, only to forget it as I was running out of the door. At least I forgot it in favor of my phone, ID and keys, as my dorm has a physical lock this year and not a keypad.

So I came home and made another cup. It’s kind of a standard, solid black tea, only the cinnamon in it gives it something new! That’s the best part of it. I don’t often find cinnamon in teas other than in chais, and usually they’re too spicy for me to enjoy without a lot of milk. But this is very well-balanced.

And I’m kind of dipping Nilla wafers into it, so that’s fun too.

I’m taking advantage of the fact that my roommate is in class to write my essay on Yeats – I’m SO excited to be starting my creative writing class off with some of the best Yeats (or at least some of my favorites), only I fangirl a bit too much over him. I was having trouble not squealing last night. He’s just SO GOOD. And Irish lit is one of my specialties. But oh my goodness. Good tea, good poet, happy Shell.

The first time I had this, I was underwhelmed by the comparison to Teavivre’s.

This one is better brewed Western-style, I think.

And as I’m sitting here printing out literally hundreds of papers for my Creative Writing class (no text, just 20 odd PDFs of poems and stories that we have to print out) I figured it was a good time to give this one another go.

Steeped with water a little bit hotter than Teavana recommends – I used just-off-boiling instead of 195. But it’s still good. It’s rich and thick, and it’s not overly astringent the way it was the first time I had it. It reminds me a bit of late winter, when the leaves have all fallen off he trees and the sky is dark and grey – it feel s like it would fit in there pretty well. Good tea.

Woohoo, I like this one. Maybe I’m also in a super good mood. Both of those are true.

I’m sitting here, and I’m supposed to be doing photo work, but instead I’m chairdancing to uptempo Billy Joel.

Yayyy.

But a really good cup! Dark and malty without being too strong. It tastes authentic to me. Ireland was where I first started drinking tea seriously, and I know I’ll get back there one day. But for now I feel like I’m sitting in a tiny little pub in Doolin, a tiny little drop of a town that has as many pubs as houses and is basically comprised of farms and cows and sheep. (bo and caora in Irish!)

Thanks to Kiaharii for this! It got here a wee bit late, but safe and sound, and due to my mistake, not hers! :)

I worked a 13 hour day yesterday because one of our cashiers called out, and I’m the best cashier in the store. (And I’m not bragging – all of my managers and every competent – read adult – employee in the store have told me this. I’m the only one apart from Liz, our Customer Service Lead who’s allowed to train newbies)

Came home exhausted, spent the rest of the night curled up on the couch cradling a cup of tea and sobbing about all the things I was supposed to do but couldn’t.

And then I was in work today to buy school supplies, and my boss talks me into working today too. It’s the height of Back to School and the cashier they had scheduled is painfully slow at the best of times, never mind during BTS. So after she got me in, she actually texted him and said not to bother coming in because she’s got me.

I’m gonna miss this store.

But there are holes worn in my working shoes and I can feel my arches collapsing where I stand.

So I was very excited to come hone and see this on the table.

I went for the TARDIS because I’ve heard fantastic things about it and also I wanted a fruity something tonight, not anything serious.

It’s good. The ratio of the blackberry to the black tea is good, although there’s a little too much bergamot for me. It’s not me steeping it wrong, since I steeped it at 2 minutes with 180deg water (the latter part by accident). No milk or sugar, but I don’t think this should need it. I didn’t taste much of the vanilla and found myself wishing that it was an EGC base instead of a straight EG.

Still, it’s really good. The blackberry is just right. A satisfying cuppa after work!