Tamm

Another Teavivre tea for me!
This tea is really great for when I’m not feeling my best. It has a lot of sweet and roasted notes. It is super easy to make, so I can ask my husband to prepare it for me. I really love this one so I’m upping the score.

I’m still sick and I guess pu’erh is the only thing I can really taste, so here’s some more for today! :)
I can’t taste much, but this is leathery, bread, and broth like. I really like this one! Hopefully I can continue getting better through today!

I have been so sick this week. I was supposed to be tackling a huge reading assignment for a project I’m starting Spring semester, but I can hardly keep my thoughts straight. I’m very stuffy so this is the only tea that I can even taste today.
Today’s steep was at the same time, ratios, etc. as usual, but yielded a much lighter brew than other cups I’ve had. It tasted distinctly salty to me today. The hay notes were more evident with lots of honey too. I am glad this more brash tea is making me feel better.

Thanks Teavivre for the sample!
Can I just say that these are super cute? For whatever reason I think these pearls are just precious. The thing is, I generally don’t like straight black teas (other than pu’erh) so this is a big step in a different direction for me.
I’m surprised how light this brewed! It is a very light, almost clear broth color. This smells very hay-like. The tea is pretty thin compared to other blacks I’ve had. I think I know why blacks are strange for me: they’re kind of meaty. This mostly has meaty, hay notes. It’s not a great tea for me, but I’m pretty sure a lot of people would really love this one!

mmm this is such a good tea! I have always really loved this one and I can’t say it enough that milk oolongs are a must try!

sipdown!
Let me tell you guys that without tea today I’d probably have slept all day. I took a sleeping pill last night and whatever it was seems to have completely overwhelmed me. So much for being productive!
The dry leaf smells strongly of wood curls and spice. There are also chocolate and roasted notes.
I used extra leaf in this cup so I could be done with my sample. Since I used extra tea for this the flavor really turned out to be deep, chocolate-like, and somewhat floral. There are very light roast notes. This tastes somewhat milky almost; or at least creamy. Overall a pretty good oolong!

Many thanks to Teavivre for this sample!
The dry leaf of this smells very similar to the Xiaguan toucha I was drinking earlier. I prepared this tea per Teavivre’s instructions of ~1 min. steep times. Pouring this tea was really interesting! I noticed that at first the water was very russet/copper colored and then ended with very deep browns and reds. I guess I never paid attention to that before.
This pu’erh has a distinct hay and bread like quality. There is some sweetness, but it is at the back end of the sip. It also kind of reminds me of cream of wheat for some reason; so farina like. Something about drinking this makes me think that it’d pair well with almonds and crystallized aged gouda cheese bits. I think that the mouth feel of this reminds me a bit of almond skins and that’s where I’m getting this. That sounds really weird when I write it down! Overall this is really easy to make and it is a great pu’erh for newbies like me.

This tag seems to work for my toucha for now. I’ve had this tea for some time now and I love it so, so much! It was my very first pu’erh purchase and I could not have picked a better one. The toucha was only $3 at a local Chinese shop that I love.
I always do 1 quick rinse and then 2 steeps. Today I used just a bit less leaf than usual and slightly cooler water. This tea is so amazingly sweet. I am really struck by how honey like and fruity it is. At longer steeps it tends to be more leathery and thick. But today’s cuppa was very juicy and almost left my mouth with that feeling you get after eating/drinking mint. It is pretty interesting as I haven’t noticed this before with other teas. This was a really great find and I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase it again.

Today has been such a great tea day! Sencha, pu’erh, matcha, and dancong?! Who wouldn’t be happy with that? :p I’m trying to stay hydrated because it is so dry here now that I’ve had to have the heater on.
This tea is really only good when cut with my other matcha powder. This one tends to be more bitter than what I’d like. It also does not mix as well as other matcha powders that I have tried. The foam is beautiful though and I love the easy to store tin.

This second steep is getting its own review because it was so different!
This was a little under boiling for 1min.
The second steep reminds me of stones in summer for some strange reason. The texture is really evident in this tea. There is a great deal of mineral in this cup and it is followed by light fruitiness. It almost reminds me of the insides of grapes. This cup is also more green tasting than my past one.
Still a really unique tea and one that I’m looking forward to drinking again!

I love this oolong. There is something distinctly mineral in the flavoring that I find interesting. But the main attraction is this almost lychee-like flavor. It tastes more like lychee than artificially lychee teas I’ve had! This tea also seems to have more body than other oolongs that I’ve tried. There is a sweet, honey,and fruity juiciness to this tea that makes it one of my favorite oolongs.

I’ve had this sample for quite some time now and I feel bad that I’ve waited so long now that I got a good whiff of it. The dry leaf smells very sweet and I used extra leaf because I wasn’t sure I should be using for such a small amount of tea. My ceramic pot is ~5oz. This tea is very sweet and pea-like. It tastes crisp. In the back of the sip there is something deeper and more umami. This is a really great green and is reminding me how much I love Japanese greens.

I have to admit that this tea tastes a lot better when you’re able to mix the ingredients around a bit more. Until moving it into a larger container (instead of the bag) I hadn’t realized how much rooibos was in this tea. It really separates and the flavors are far more balanced this way. It has a really sharp edge to it. This isn’t really a bad thing, but I really have to be in the mood for it.

Backlogging.
This was the last of my samples and I have to say I enjoyed this one the most. It is far more toned down than other berry blacks that I have and it is such a good thing. The Adagio mixed berry tea came to mind because for some reason it tastes a bit chalky to me. We used to have these awful candies when I was a kid that was just fruit flavored powder in these plastic fruit. They were awful, but super common. That is what other berry teas remind me of. This one is more heavily a black tea with notes of berry. I can’t quite pick out what berries it should be, but raspberry came to mind.
To be honest, this is the only Twinings tea I’ve had that I’ve actually enjoyed and I’d buy it if I ever saw it in a store.

When I opened this today I was instantly taken back to my childhood. I used to spend most of my time at my grandmother’s home. She had lots of fruit trees and a really wonderful garden. My favorite part were the raspberry bushes. The dry leaf smells just like those bushes somehow.
When steeped this has a darker amber color and smells mostly like white tea rather than flavoring. If someone preferred their flavoring light I’d suggest Adagio’s white tea blends because they are a lot more toned down. This mostly tastes like plain white tea with a slight sweet edge to it. Mostly honey like to me. This might as well be a plain white tea, but not a bad one by any lengths.

Here is another sample that I got!So recently I got a journal and I’m loving it. I mostly draw, write random quotes, and tape things in it, but it has actually made a huge improvement in my mood.
When they say lemon they really mean it! I just opened the satchel and it smells really strongly of lemon and mint; much more than chamomile. This tastes mostly of chamomile and some almost popcorn overtones that remind me of the dreaded melange tea from Teavana. This has very little lemon and I wish there was some more. If I was going to have this regularly I’d be tempted to add some. Not a super impressive tea, but not a bad one either.

This tea is simply awesome. I could smell it before I even opened my package! I was worried that it would taste boring because it’s a pretty simple premise: hazelnut and cream. But it is so good. I think that I’ve already used 1oz of the tin simply because I’m favoring it over the rest of my stock. I can’t believe that Adagio is selling these blends for only $9/4oz AND they come in a tin. The tin itself is also beautiful. It also has steeping instructions, description, and is going to be a nice tin to have around after I finish the tea.
As for the tea itself the cream is much more obvious than I thought it would be. It really balances this flavor out. It reminds me a bit of yellow cake. This tea is much less temperamental than the other black by Adagio that I’ve been drinking.
So overall I’d really suggest this out of the two new versions of the Zodiac blends that I’ve tried. I’m so impressed by the amount and quality of the tea that they give you for this that I’m planning on trying at least two others in the series. This tea is on my “must haves” for Adagio.

Free sample time!!! I ordered 3 samples awhile ago and they just arrived the other day. I’m surprised there isn’t a review of this one yet. It smells extremely similar to the Government and the Inspector blend from Adagio. Just a little more anise/clove seems to be the biggest difference. Steeped this smells a bit like hazelnut, but with those dried cinnamon sticks in it.
Dang. This is more cinnamon than anything! It says ginger on there, but I’m not seeing any of that. I am pretty sad that this is so overwhelmingly cinnamon stick. I’m really not liking this one.

Normally I really love this one, but I just realized that I was mindlessly drinking my cuppa and it was really astringent. I do have to warn people by saying that this one is finicky. I’d suggest always steeping on a very minimal to no boil and for only 3 min. or else the results are pretty terrible.

Wow, I think I forget I have this one a lot of the time. I don’t drink it very often due to the mate. This one tastes much better at lower temps, steeped for ~5 min. This tea tastes more chocolaty than Adagio’s chocolate chai, that’s for sure! Lots of nut notes and a small amount of cinnamon.
I would suggest people just buy the mocha nut mate because the cinnamon in this does not influence the flavor enough to really warrant the blend.

Sipdown!
This one was really great as long as you don’t steep it too long. The base tends to get very bitter, very fast when brewed at higher temps for too long. I kept hearing about chocolate with this one, but never got a lot of chocolate notes. This is a great after dinner tea and I’d be pretty tempted to say that it’s one of the better blends that I’ve tried from Adagio.

I believe this product has changed some as the graphic is different than the one displayed here and is no longer listing white chocolate. Cocoa is still an ingredient, but may be very different than what the other posters rated.
For me this is a ho-hum premix chai. For me many of these mixes are too sweet and honey-like. This one has some sweetness, but it is less than the Oregon brand. This has a lot of nutmeg in it and it is really apparent in the smell. I didn’t notice at first, but this has a very strange undertone. I think I may be the cocoa. It smells and tastes a bit artificial/odd to me. Overall it is pretty nice. I’d suggest this to someone new to chai/tea in general. But for me this has too little kick and too much weird whatever it is I’m tasting.

It took a bit for me to warm up to this tea, but you know what? It is perfect for this time of year. It has been a bit rainy today and I had to trudge through my last readings of the semester today; but now I can relax with a nice, fall inspired cuppa. This tea has some good spice flavors that are less of the mainstream hot cinnamon and clove and more of something that reminds me of nutmeg.

I’m so happy so far with my finals results! I even got 100% on my presentation last night and I’m not one for public speaking; so that was a miracle!
This tea was another of Teavivre’s generous samples. Unfortunately, my lid fell into my cup when I was poring so some leaves got more steeped than others. This steep reminds me mostly of deep greens like spinach. It is just a bit sweet. There is also a back flavor of a bit of barley like baked-ness that reminds me of Rishi’s Tie Guan Yin. The major difference between the two is that this one exhibits more creamy flavors than the Rishi version.