VariaTEA Send Message

Even though I know Adagio teas aren’t always the best, their kitschy/gimmicky blends always get me. I wanted to try their Wicked Tea Collection last year and when they brought it back this year I was intrigued again but being Canadian its not the easiest to get ahold of Adagio blends and I didn’t want large portions of their teas as I tend not to love them. Thankfully wonderful people like Cameron B exist and she was kind enough to share samples of the whole collection in our swap. Thank you, Cameron B!

This tea had an adorable candy eyeball mixed with green sprinkles. It was all very cute. Maybe I’m taken in by the cuteness but this actually is not so bad. Better than other Adagio blends which tend to be more bitter/astringent. There is a slight metallic quality here but mostly I’m getting caramel. Not creamy caramel though but more like a less sweet and earthier caramel. A few weeks back I had a caramel that tasted slightly like cardboard and this is slightly reminiscent of that. Now having described it, this doesn’t sound like the description of a tea that’s good. I suppose not so bad is the best I could hope for with most Adagio blends so in comparison I’m alright with this one.

Bringing teas to school with me has had me making great use of the teas in my focus box. I have been trying to work on drinking those down since they are at least a year old or more. This particular tea is in the “or more” category and is probably closer to 2 years old. Oops.

Drinking it today, it is a little astringent. I used the recommended steeping parameters of 5 minutes in boiling water vs my usual 4 minutes in 200F water and that might be where the astringency is coming from. It is not super offensive – just slightly metallic. The metallic latches on to the awesome waffle flavor which is still present but not as prominent as I’d like (again, I blame the steeping). Blackberry sort of lingers over the entire sip so that you don’t realize its there until you finish and it comes to clarity that there was more than just astringent black tea and waffle while you were drinking.

I moved in to my apartment at the beginning of September. When I got here, there were numerous things that were not so great about the apartment. One of my outlets wasn’t working, the screen on my door looked like someone/something ate the bottom of it, when I tried to use my shower the water comes out both faucets so I don’t get great pressure, and the list goes on. Actually, the day I moved in my sinks wouldn’t drain and my toilet didn’t work so they had to get a plumber in immediately. Building management apologized and asked that I send a list of the issues in the apartment. They said the tenant before me never complained so they were unaware of the many issues and since the tenant left at the last possible second, they didn’t have time to investigate before I moved in. So, as much as I hate complaining to Landlords, I sent the list of issues.

A couple days into living here, my air conditioner blew a fuse. Building management replaced the fuse but they kept blowing and when the air conditioner went so did everything else in my apartment including my fridge. My brother in law was awesome and brought me all new breaker fuses so that I just had to push a little button to reset it anytime the fuse blew. In doing so, he also managed to fix the outlet that wasn’t working as I guess it was just an issue with the fuse. That meant I could get my air conditioner off the main circuit and onto its own fuse so if it blew, it was just the air condition that went. Unfortunately it was hot as balls when I moved in and the a/c kept blowing fuse after fuse no matter how many I tried and if I had the breaker fuse in, it would just pop every couple of minutes. I was dying of heat and I spoke to building management about it and it seemed I needed a proper electrician. As much as they came in every other day to fix issues for what seemed like weeks, they didn’t really address the major things. For instance, this fuse thing was finally addressed when someone my sister works with was kind enough to send her electrician brother in to my apartment to check it out for free.

As for my shower, they finally sent maintenance in to look at it on October 19. Over a month and a half AFTER I moved in. Maintenance basically established I need a plumber. Unfortunately, in addition to not fixing the pressure issue, maintenance somehow fucked up my shower even further and so for the past 10 days I have been unable to get hot water in my shower. It’s cold. I would like a hot shower. I tried to be patient but building management doesn’t seem to be moving on this issue so I sent an email to complain. I hate having to badger them but its getting cold and hot water in my shower would be nice.

Anyways, what this is all leading up to is I need something comforting and warm so I made this tea as a nutella latte. The nutella is awesome but it’s drowned out all eclair flavor. It sure is chocolatey though and quite the nice evening treat.

In an effort to never throw out food, I have a calendar on my fridge that clearly lays out all the expiration dates of food so I can plan meals around using up things that are about to go bad first. Except, even with the calendar it seems time is flying so quickly that I still get surprised by things about to expire. For example, my Greek yogurt is best before the 30th, which in my mind seems like it is still far away when it is actually in two days. Seriously, where did October go?!?

So in an effort to determine how to use up my Greek yogurt before it goes bad I took to Pinterest. I found an interesting recipe for a Greek yogurt coffee cake. Then I got lazy and decided to make a smoothie with Greek yogurt instead. As per usual, I grabbed a tea I thought might compliment the banana and vanilla greek yogurt smoothie. Walnut Truffle seemed like something that could be interesting and thanks to the extreme generosity of Evol Ving Ness, I have 120 grams that I need to work through. So, using a lot of leaf to make a concentrated version of the tea didn’t feel like a waste.

The concentrate was quite strong because unlike the cocoa rooibos from the other day, I can definitely taste the walnut truffle tea. It is actually a bit weird because I get the nuttiness and the banana at the same time but then that melts to the truffle flavor which is almost too rich for the smoothie. It is like a dark chocolate and walnut fudge almost that is too strong a flavor to just blend with the banana and vanilla in the smoothie. It is not bad but not the best smoothie I have had either. Fun to try though so thank you Evol Ving Ness for the chance (and many more chances) to revisit this blend.

This tea was interesting in that it smelled almost entirely like gingerbread with a hint of pumpkin spice but tasted like sweet pumpkin with a ginger kick.

Check out my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2018/10/24/pumpkin-gingerbread-trifle-from-a-quarter-to-tea/

Why with the sugar DAVIDsTEA?! At least it is not stevia but this is just too sweet. Between pumpkin and carrot, naturally sweet foods, why add more sugar? So I am stuck with a tea that smells kind of spicy but that coats the tongue with sweetness. The cinnamon doesn’t help either. I just don’t get it.

Drinking the second half of my smoothie from yesterday and I seem to be getting more rooibos today. Not my favorite.

Sipdown (320)

So, I don’t love cacao teas and I was a little anxious about this one so I decided to hide it a little in a banana smoothie. Except I think I did a little too good a job because the smoothie was all vanilla and banana and not much chocolate. This smelled really chocolaty when steeping though so it took me by surprise to not really have any of that in the smoothie. I maybe got a little bit from the sasparilla but that’s about it.

Latte Sipdown (321)

I got impatient and decided to finish this off. It’s about time too because as a latte this is quite weak. I blame age.