Christmas

Adagio Advent Calendar – Day 24

The last one from Adagio! Unfortunately, it seems like a boring orange spice tea.

Yeah, it’s mostly orange and clove here. There’s a bit of candy cinnamon as well, and an earthy black base.

Inoffensive, but quite boring.

(today’s advent teas: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJMA9FugSnn/)

ETA: Forgot to add my thoughts on the calendar overall!

This was probably my least favorite advent calendar, though we’ve already established that I haven’t had good experiences with Adagio’s teas. I did feel like there was a good mix of different bases and flavors though. The design left a bit to be desired, though I liked the images they fell a bit flat without any metallic or texture detail and a plain semi-glossy surface. I will say, I really liked that the windows were separated into two halves, days 1-12 and days 13-24. This made it much easier to find the number I was looking for each day. I did find one or two teas that I really liked and plan to reorder. This was also the cheapest of my calendars at $29.

This Christmas tea tries to do what chai teas do, but not as well. Not my favorite, and I haven’t been drinking it much at all. But for a sick day, when I can’t smell or taste well enough to appreciate the good teas, this will do.

043/365

Christmas Day tea! It seemed like the obvious choice, to be honest. I mean, when else is it absolutely and completely appropriate to drink a tea called Christmas…

I liked it more than I was expecting to. It has all the ingredients you’d expect in a Chai…but it doesn’t taste like a Chai. I’m guessing that’s because the balance is different – it’s definitely heavier on the clove and cardamom, and it’s less spicy, more smoothly aromatic.

In order of appearance, this tea contains cinnamon, orange, cardamom, cloves, and ginger, and something about this particular combination of ingredients really does say “Christmas” to me. I think, above all, it’s probably the orange that does it. It’s quite distinctively orange, and that sums up Christmas as resolutely as a tangerine in the toe of a stocking.

The base is Adagio’s usual Ceylon, and it’s as you might expect. Smooth, perhaps not quite as malty as I’d have liked for this blend, but a decent base for the flavours all the same. I drank it without milk. It was Christmas in a cup.

This tea has a special place in my heart. I need to have it every winter season. However, I feel like it isn’t always blended the same way with the same ratios of ingredients? I really liked the sample I got first but the bigger bag tasted a little different. More clovey.

Also, I remember when I went to the Adagio store with a friend before Thanksgiving and was already craving this blend but it wasn’t on the shelves. One of the guys custom blended it for me. I asked him if he’d “make Christmas” so for the remainder of my time, we were constantly breaking into the song “Making Christmas” from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Good times.

I really liked this tea when I first tried it; it was spicy, pungent, and interesting. It didn’t really remind me of the holidays per se, but at least it was nice and warming with the strong flavors of cinnamon, clove, and orange peel.

The last few times I’ve made it, though—despite steeping for quite a while—it came out a bit bland, actually…like diluted cinnamon/orange black tea. Hm…maybe I’ve inadvertently cut down on the amount of tea I’m using, or maybe I somehow managed to concentrate all of the delicious herbal/spice bits into earlier cups…?

Anyway, the tea WAS good when I made it properly, but I’m hesitant to recommend this one since if you’re ordering from Adagio and want an interesting “holiday” flavor, I’d personally go with the gingerbread for the same price per cup.

Raw Notes: Large pieces of cinnamon stick are worth mentioning. The blend as a whole has a very strong scent of waxy orange, clove and cinnamon. Very Christmas-y.
Steeped Notes: The flavour is darker than it’s initial orange heavy scent. Meaning that the clove and cinnamon have blended with the black tea base which is now the main feature. Though the orange is still present it’s more towards the end during the after taste. Despite being black ie without milk nor sugar it’s very easy to drink, with only minimal astringency which I believe most of which comes from the spices. It’s almost liked a mulled wine but in tea form.
Overall: This has everything I associate with Christmas and on top of that it’s actually very pleasant to drink. I believe this would be a lovely tea when served to guests around the holidays, if they like mulled wine and tea they should like this. Although I’m admittedly not a huge fan of Adagio I do think this blend is among my favourites of theirs.

For pictures and more info please view my blog.
http://www.kittylovestea.co.uk/2014/12/24/tis-the-season-tea-be-jolly/

Looking at the ingredient list on this, it seems like there should be a lot of different flavors going on here. What actually happens, at least when I taste this tea, is that all those flavors lump together and produce a strong black tea flavor with a very bitter orange peel component. I really don’t notice any of the spices or anything like that.

This tasted very similar to chai, which I love, but it wasn’t quite as awesome as most chai is a bit stronger. I prepared this like I would chai, with a bit of milk and agave.

I found this tea to be okay- it tastes like what it says: spice with a hint of citrus, but I think Adagio make better spicy and fruity blends. I find the flavors of Adagio’s Oriental Spice to be much bolder than in this blend.

Good orange flavour, but a little mild on the spices. I added vanilla, and a cinnamon stick.