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Sipdown. I made the last of this into a latté last night and it really brought out the gingerbread flavour nicely. Much better than the so-called gingerbread lattés you get at coffee shops.

With a bit of a longer steep the lavender comes out a little bit more which makes this blend slightly more interesting. Still doesn’t make me a fan of red rooibos though; it’s still ‘meh’ at best.

Another sipdown. This has served me well as a wake-up breakfast tea (I work 5am these days). No matter how I steeped it I still couldn’t get rid of that weird grape-like note which I’m pretty sure is some contamination of some sort. Ah well, I enjoyed this blend all the same.

Sipdown. It’s a nice tea to be sipping while I work on my big university assignment, as the ginseng and green tea clear my head and give me an energy boost without making me totally wired.

Yum, the tea smells like one of those vanilla nut lattés that they used to serve at Starbucks before they got all cheap and crappy. With teas that are a mix of more than one kind (in this case black tea and oolong) it’s hard to determine what the steeping parameters should be (Adagio’s are always vague at best) so to be on the safe side I went with what I’d usually do for the lighter tea (it’s a dark oolong so about 90°C).

The flavour is nice and quite bold with the hazelnut being especially noticeable. The oolong gives it a bit of sweetness as the tea cools and the vanilla smooths out some of the harsher notes from the Irish Breakfast, so it all works together pretty well.

Another blend that I’ve been drinking but never got around to logging. This tea reminds me a bit of Davids Tea’s Toasted Walnut with its rich nutty flavours. It’s sweet with hints of creamy white chocolate and the green tea base is light and refreshing enough to keep it from being too cloying. By all the rights the camomile shouldn’t really belong in a blend like this, but somehow it works.

I’m glad I bought a big bag of this tea – I’ll be able to enjoy it for awhile yet. :)

I’m not sure I would have purchased this tea normally, but it was on sale for 75% off when Teavana was staging their take-over so for that price I figured why not? I’ve drunk green chais before, but the addition of the peppermint as well as other herbals (bay leaves and stevia leaves) along with the usual chai suspects intrigued me. It smells nice – like a spicy chai but with cool, minty notes. Unfortunately the brewed tea tends to come across as being rather bitter; I think the addition of the stevia leaf was to try and alleviate this, but it didn’t really work in my opinion. It might also be that the green tea base itself is a bit too harsh. Whatever the reason, I’m afraid this tea doesn’t really do it for me – it’s just as well that I didn’t pay full price.

This is another tea I’m not sure really deserves to be called a proper chai because the spices are really quite muted – though the little bite of black pepper is nice and interesting. However I’m really liking the addition of the coconut to this tea which gives it a smooth, almost exotic flavour. It might be contributing to the oddly fruity taste I’m picking up when I drink it. I actually really like this tea but it’s not what I generally look for in a black chai.

Sipdown. I brewed up the last of this as a traditional style chai which was very delish.