Note: the bottom of this review contains a personal story I felt like sharing, but I’ve inserted a line for folks that just want to read about tea.
Perhaps this is just me, but most of what I’ve had from Adagio has seemed “stale”. I put FOUR heaping teaspoons in my steeper, steeped it for 2 minutes, and I got slightly green tea flavored water. I’d talk about what this tasted like, except that’s where it stops. I can tell there was some tea in the water – that’s pretty much it!
Ironically I just ordered something from Adagio, but it was a tasting cup. I really wanted a small cup to taste some teas with; the steeper I typically use makes 16oz, which just doesn’t work with lots of steeps.
And right after I ordered it, I had a funny mental intersection of tea, memory, and emotion.
When I was 19, I liked to get up in the morning and drink at least two or three cups of coffee. I lived with my friend Marc, who was brilliant on a ceramics wheel (and in lots of other ways too), and he surprised me one day with a HUGE mug that he’d made for me. The thing had to be at least 24oz. I loved it, and used it to drink BIG cups of coffee and tea.
About a year later, he drowned while in Africa for work. It was strange and shocking; he had traveled to lots of different countries, and was in great shape since he was an avid swimmer and rock climber. It took me a long time to accept that he had passed away, and then to grieve. A couple years later my then significant other dropped the mug one day, and it shattered into a million pieces. I felt shattered too.
Right after I ordered that tiny little cup, I thought it was so odd that nearly a decade ago I had loved that big, big mug. And now here I was wanting this tiny little cup to drink my tea.
