Shanti Send Message

Well, that’s odd. I tried the Gemini blend (White Monkey, White Peony, and White Peach) which smelled strongly like sweet peach, and then opened my tin of regular White Peach today, and the peach smell is totally different from the peach smell of Gemini. This smells like delicious, fresh peaches, whereas the Gemini blend smells exactly like those peachy-o’s peach ring gummies. Two very different but definitely peachy flavors.

The taste? Well, it’s light and peachy, and completely different from the Gemini. Instead of an almost-overbearing sweet cloud, the peach in this tea is light, fresh, and better “blended”. By blended, I mean that the peach doesn’t just come in at the tail of the sip, like in Gemini—it’s there throughout the sip. There’s this weird sense of foreboding I get when I drink the Gemini, because I’m end up thinking too much and always notice when that peach cloud sneaks in. With the White Peach, it’s always there. It also has this interesting, “juicy”, refreshing, thirst-quenching quality that is really appealing. Because they’re so different, I can’t say I prefer one over the other. I think if I’m in the mood for refreshment, I’d reach for this one, and if I’m in the mood for sugar, I’d go for the other.

I’ve been craving chai all day, and so I tried this out for the first time. Ugh. This was even worse than that chai concentrate I had this morning. I can only taste the spice in the aftertaste. This tastes like milk mixed with roasted yam. For anyone who’s wondering, this is a mix of Irish Breakfast and Masala Chai. The only spice I can taste is cinnamon, faintly. Now I’m disappointed and grumpy since I haven’t managed to get a good cup of chai all day.

(edit: LOL, was so pissed off I initially rated this an 8. I’m raising it a little, since this was only my first two times trying to make this.)

Meh, on the borderline of yucky. This is almost too sweet (and I like my sugar with tea and cream). Hardly any spices. Actually, this tastes like sugar cane flavored milk with a hint of tea and honey. Yuck. While I was pouring the mix into my cup, it smelled like Arizona sweetened Iced Tea….:O
I haven’t had it in a few years, but I remember the Tazo chai mix being much, much better than this.

I’m a Gemini, and I like this tea. On my little tea journey, I’ve learned three things: green-black or green-white blends are often better than their parts alone, I prefer teas with gentle hints of flavor, and that clumsy people like myself should avoid black teas (you know, boiling water and all).

Given all of that, this does seem like the perfect tea for me. And the balance of green and white is just right, which I can appreciate. It tastes very slightly vegetal, but with a fog cloud of peach that sneaks up and over it. Really delicious. My only criticism is that the peach is a bit strong for me. But I’m ridiculous and prefer my flavored teaz in the form of tea with natural notes of peach, rather than a peach flavored tea. Reading the reviews, a lot of people were disappointed this wasn’t peachy enough, so I think I’m just very sensitive to flavoring. Also, white peach tea is listed as the third component in the blend, so it’s not even like there’s a lot in there. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble at all drinking this one up. :)

Edit: Lies, lies, lies! Second steep was infinitely better…no wonky flavor clashing, no overbearing flavors, just a nice, light peachiness and tasty green and white tea. Uprating.

I almost had a panic attack while making this. I brewed it up for the first time using my Zarafina, and it came out tasting hardly as delicious as it did when I was making it at home with a tea ball and microwaved, who-knows-what-temp-this-is water. I was getting that icky, cardboard-fruity taste of the ceylon that I was disappointed with yesterday in the Valentines blend, instead of creamy, tea-y deliciousness. The solution? I switched to the oolong setting, and the tea came out delicious and creamy like I remembered. So, I guess I dislike Adagio blacks brewed at almost-boiling to boiling water…how strange.

deep breath So this is my first rooibos tea, ever. No, really. I’ve been a little put off by the descriptions of red tea, ranging from sour wood to pencil shavings to sweet bark, and would not have mustered up the courage to order any on my own. Fortunately, I ordered the zodiac sample set from Adagio, which includes quite a few teas mixed with rooibos. For today, I picked out the Pisces blend, which is a blend of plain rooibos, orange black tea, and “just a touch of chamomile”. Three teas I’d normally never order on their own.

I opened the tin and noticed that is smelled minty. Or like rotten oranges. Or like a mix of vapor rub and blackened rotten oranges. Not pleasant. Also an appetite killer. But I managed to work up the courage and poured the little wood bits into the steeping basket, and let it steep for 5 minutes. Now that I have the actual tea in front of me, it smells less like mint and more like orange. But yucky orange…not citrusy, and slightly spoiled. Taste is thankfully lighter and tastes like mostly like wood and faintly like orange. It’s not horrible, though. While is smells a little sour, it doesn’t taste very sour.

Should I add sweetener to this? Can I add sweetener to this? I pour in a little Splenda. Hey, this actually doesn’t taste that bad. Well, it kind of tastes like Splenda-water with an aftertaste of wood and orange. But it’s not bad. It’s actually kind of good.

But the smell. Oh, the smell. Miss Princess Purrfect aka Wendy the cat jumped up to smell this, the first time she’s ever done that for a brewed tea. And her face, when she smelled this…it wasn’t just offended, or taken back by the steam, like she normally gets when she sniffs hot food. No, her nose actually scrunched up and she looked disgusted. That is the first time I’ve ever seen her make that face. Actual disgust, not “whoa wtf is that” or “ugh how dare you offer me that”. Disgust.

Wendy darling, I empathize. I’ve almost finished the glass, but that smell…I don’t know if I can handle it. Perhaps I’ll get used to it if I steep it another time? For now, though, this goes into my “swap” pile.

Just received my package with a little over $50 dollars in samples from Adagio, so I have lots of new teas to try out in the next few weeks. Yay!

This was the first one I picked out of the bunch to smell, and now the first one I’m actually steeping. The smell is exactly like chocolate covered strawberries, no mistaking it. Not strawberries plus chocolate, fighting with each other, but specifically chocolate covered strawberries. The first few sips of this, I was unimpressed…typical Adagio ceylon base with that dull bitterness it always seems to have. I wasn’t sure how strong the chocolate-strawberry flavor was going to be, after reading *Ricky*’s review (and others), but I could actually taste them quite strongly. Anyway, at first it seemed average, like nothing special. I added a little milk and Splenda, and it was still average. But all of a sudden, I had finished my cup and I wanted more. I actually was craving more! I get bored with tea flavors easily, so that rarely happens. Perhaps the bitterness left on my tongue from the first few sips faded away. Whatever it was, this is good, and a little on the boring side, but I’m glad I tried it.

Editing to add, second steep isn’t worth the effort.

Ah, Aveda tea. If you’ve ever had an appointment at an Aveda salon, you probably have tried this tea. Or, if you’ve tried their Peppymint drops, this tastes like a tea version of those. Now, I don’t like plain peppermint tea, and I don’t like the hibiscus that most companies add to their herbal blends, so this is a great alternative for me. It’s made up of only four ingredients, all of which are organic: licorice root, peppermint leaf, sweet fennel, and basil. Yes, there’s peppermint in there, but I like it. I just don’t like the way peppermint tea tastes by itself, but I like the “cooling” effect it adds to this tea. Licorice root is the primary component (the tea looks like it’s made up of thick chunks of bark). The tea tastes more sweet than like licorice to me—I know it’s the licorice that’s providing the sweetness, but it doesn’t taste like licorice. Ack, this isn’t making much sense…hopefully you get what I mean though. I’m sensitive to sweet and cloying tastes, but I’m fine with this one because it’s the aftertaste that is cooling and sweet, not the tea itself. . The other thing I like about this tea is that it’s hard to oversteep this tea. It never ends up tasting like a cup of liquid herbs (there’s basil and fennel in there, but I can’t taste them). No single note stands out. It just tastes good, and sweet, and refreshing. I’m giving this a high rating because it has never let me down.

Tried it iced this time instead. I think I overstepped it, so it came out bitter. Not really feeling this, which is strange because I like sweet earl greys which are citrusy and flowery and perfumy as well…

Taking a 1-2 day break from tea, because my caffeine levels have been through the roof and I’ve been sleeping at odd hours. Not sure if I have any tasty herbal teas…tasty being the key word.

I added a few cardamom pods to the mix, and it came out meh. “Meh.” I think this is more the fault of the additional cardamom than the actual tea itself.