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Ricky, you’re going to hate me…in addition to all of that Adagio stuff, I now have three bags of Mandarin Matcha, a huge 4 oz bag of Matcha from Mighty Leaf, and a huge bag of Matcha Latte/Frappe mix from ML. :O [Note: I’m not bragging about this…I’m complaining about how much of a freaking dummy I am to have bought so much extra tea!]

I have to say, I’m pleasantly surprised by this tea! First of all, it foams! Well, I know, most matcha foams, but I had gotten used to the Mandarin Matcha which unfortunately doesn’t foam no matter how long/powerfully you whisk it. [Mandarin Matcha is still tasty, though! I hope 52teas adds it to their restock list]. Anyway, I prepared this usucha (thin) style: 1 1/2 large scoops in 4 ounces of water.

The tea is pretty darn good for something so cheap! It’s not particularly bitter, although it’s not very sweet either. Very easy to drink down, and not powdery, even after being set down for a little while. Rewhisking easily made another thick layer of foam, which is nice.

So, how does it taste? Unfortunately, not like much. I’m getting mostly bitter greens, and a hint of the sea. Not a lot of sweet or savory action going on. Sometimes that’s okay, though, especially when you’re just looking for a caffeine fix!

I don’t know how to describe this…it’s like roasty flowers, but in a good way. I’m not getting honey from this, sadly. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve had other teas that tasted a lot more like honey than this one without meaning to. But anyway, even though I can’t quite pick out the individual flavors in this, but it’s good. Finish the whole cup off in less than a minute good. Keeping my mind off the huge stack of readings I have to do by tomorrow good.

Oh wait. Shoot. Did I just lose The Game?

Today was my first time trying matcha as a drink. I was a little disappointed with the color of the tea—dark, olive green, instead of radioactive looking—but I gave it a pass since it’s blended with pulverized dried orange. I prepared it very thin and weak, just so I could get a feel for what matcha is like. Didn’t taste bitter at all to me. It seemed sweet, and maybe the littlest bit sour/astringent/bitter. I couldn’t get it to froth (I didn’t use much matcha) and my water was too cool, I think. The cup was powdery and unblended as well. I’m leaving the rating off until I can try non-flavored matcha and can prepare this better.

Oh, I am loving this tea. White, green, sugary, peach…fresh, simple, clean, sweet. I accidentally let this cool down and it was delicious…the first iced tea I’ve had luck with! I swear, it has the same taste as those peach ring candies! I’m really pleased with this sample and will be buying it full size!

No notes yet.

After all these posts on EB today, I thought I’d pull this out of the tea box. Tried it with honey this time, and it is fab.

Eponymous tea! I’ve been looking forward to drinking, er, Shanti, for some time now. Ick, this feels weird, referring to it as “Shanti”. I know the Jessicas and Elizabeths and Jennifers of the world are used to this, but I’ve never met another Shanti before in my life, so this is exciting. Maybe I should take a page out of the GOP’s playbook and start referring us as “Shanti the Person” and “Shanti the Tea”? Or perhaps “Shantea”?

Mmm, these leaves smell mysterious and opaque. I know opaque isn’t a smell, but bear with me. You know how colors like lavender and periwinkle are always opaque and milky looking? Well, if that opaque quality had a smell, it’d smell like Shantea. It’s a very cozy, comforting smell.

Whoa. The smell coming from the liquor is smoky. Kind of like cigarettes, to be honest. And under the cigarette smoke, there’s the—OMFG I JUST SNORTED TEA UP MY NOSE. Well, that’s a first. Ow!

Where was I? Oh yeah. Smells like smoke and just barely like some kind of salted vegetable. Sipping now…Smoke! Smoke smoke smoke! There’s quiet a bit of bitterness, but it’s a good bitter. A drinkable bitter. A dull, non-astringent bitter. It fits in with the smoke nicely, and I think the tea would taste worse if it wasn’t there. The smoky, dull, opaqueness of the tea is actually making me a little sleepy. The more I sip on this, the more I taste sweet grass and hay. And gasoline, maybe. And, wow, now I’m getting flashbacks of the smell of the farms along the highway in my rural hometown in central California. It doesn’t even taste like smoke to me anymore, it tastes like driving home. And now I’m feeling all nostalgic and homesick and want to take a nap. Thanks a lot, Shantea.

This brewed up very light. The liquor smells like honey, rather than “fruit and freshly cut grass” to me. The tea tastes mild and like fruit and honey. This is definitely a sweet rather than savory green tea. I might have over steeped it (strong setting on the Zarafina), as it tasted a little astringent to me. Second steep of the same leaves was even more astringent/bitter, with no sweet fruit or honey taste. Overall, the first steep wasn’t bad, but it’s not something I would repurchase full-size. Next time I’ll try a shorter steep time.

Well, that’s odd. I tried the Gemini blend (White Monkey, White Peony, and White Peach) which smelled strongly like sweet peach, and then opened my tin of regular White Peach today, and the peach smell is totally different from the peach smell of Gemini. This smells like delicious, fresh peaches, whereas the Gemini blend smells exactly like those peachy-o’s peach ring gummies. Two very different but definitely peachy flavors.

The taste? Well, it’s light and peachy, and completely different from the Gemini. Instead of an almost-overbearing sweet cloud, the peach in this tea is light, fresh, and better “blended”. By blended, I mean that the peach doesn’t just come in at the tail of the sip, like in Gemini—it’s there throughout the sip. There’s this weird sense of foreboding I get when I drink the Gemini, because I’m end up thinking too much and always notice when that peach cloud sneaks in. With the White Peach, it’s always there. It also has this interesting, “juicy”, refreshing, thirst-quenching quality that is really appealing. Because they’re so different, I can’t say I prefer one over the other. I think if I’m in the mood for refreshment, I’d reach for this one, and if I’m in the mood for sugar, I’d go for the other.

I’ve been craving chai all day, and so I tried this out for the first time. Ugh. This was even worse than that chai concentrate I had this morning. I can only taste the spice in the aftertaste. This tastes like milk mixed with roasted yam. For anyone who’s wondering, this is a mix of Irish Breakfast and Masala Chai. The only spice I can taste is cinnamon, faintly. Now I’m disappointed and grumpy since I haven’t managed to get a good cup of chai all day.

(edit: LOL, was so pissed off I initially rated this an 8. I’m raising it a little, since this was only my first two times trying to make this.)

Meh, on the borderline of yucky. This is almost too sweet (and I like my sugar with tea and cream). Hardly any spices. Actually, this tastes like sugar cane flavored milk with a hint of tea and honey. Yuck. While I was pouring the mix into my cup, it smelled like Arizona sweetened Iced Tea….:O
I haven’t had it in a few years, but I remember the Tazo chai mix being much, much better than this.

I’m a Gemini, and I like this tea. On my little tea journey, I’ve learned three things: green-black or green-white blends are often better than their parts alone, I prefer teas with gentle hints of flavor, and that clumsy people like myself should avoid black teas (you know, boiling water and all).

Given all of that, this does seem like the perfect tea for me. And the balance of green and white is just right, which I can appreciate. It tastes very slightly vegetal, but with a fog cloud of peach that sneaks up and over it. Really delicious. My only criticism is that the peach is a bit strong for me. But I’m ridiculous and prefer my flavored teaz in the form of tea with natural notes of peach, rather than a peach flavored tea. Reading the reviews, a lot of people were disappointed this wasn’t peachy enough, so I think I’m just very sensitive to flavoring. Also, white peach tea is listed as the third component in the blend, so it’s not even like there’s a lot in there. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble at all drinking this one up. :)

Edit: Lies, lies, lies! Second steep was infinitely better…no wonky flavor clashing, no overbearing flavors, just a nice, light peachiness and tasty green and white tea. Uprating.

I almost had a panic attack while making this. I brewed it up for the first time using my Zarafina, and it came out tasting hardly as delicious as it did when I was making it at home with a tea ball and microwaved, who-knows-what-temp-this-is water. I was getting that icky, cardboard-fruity taste of the ceylon that I was disappointed with yesterday in the Valentines blend, instead of creamy, tea-y deliciousness. The solution? I switched to the oolong setting, and the tea came out delicious and creamy like I remembered. So, I guess I dislike Adagio blacks brewed at almost-boiling to boiling water…how strange.

deep breath So this is my first rooibos tea, ever. No, really. I’ve been a little put off by the descriptions of red tea, ranging from sour wood to pencil shavings to sweet bark, and would not have mustered up the courage to order any on my own. Fortunately, I ordered the zodiac sample set from Adagio, which includes quite a few teas mixed with rooibos. For today, I picked out the Pisces blend, which is a blend of plain rooibos, orange black tea, and “just a touch of chamomile”. Three teas I’d normally never order on their own.

I opened the tin and noticed that is smelled minty. Or like rotten oranges. Or like a mix of vapor rub and blackened rotten oranges. Not pleasant. Also an appetite killer. But I managed to work up the courage and poured the little wood bits into the steeping basket, and let it steep for 5 minutes. Now that I have the actual tea in front of me, it smells less like mint and more like orange. But yucky orange…not citrusy, and slightly spoiled. Taste is thankfully lighter and tastes like mostly like wood and faintly like orange. It’s not horrible, though. While is smells a little sour, it doesn’t taste very sour.

Should I add sweetener to this? Can I add sweetener to this? I pour in a little Splenda. Hey, this actually doesn’t taste that bad. Well, it kind of tastes like Splenda-water with an aftertaste of wood and orange. But it’s not bad. It’s actually kind of good.

But the smell. Oh, the smell. Miss Princess Purrfect aka Wendy the cat jumped up to smell this, the first time she’s ever done that for a brewed tea. And her face, when she smelled this…it wasn’t just offended, or taken back by the steam, like she normally gets when she sniffs hot food. No, her nose actually scrunched up and she looked disgusted. That is the first time I’ve ever seen her make that face. Actual disgust, not “whoa wtf is that” or “ugh how dare you offer me that”. Disgust.

Wendy darling, I empathize. I’ve almost finished the glass, but that smell…I don’t know if I can handle it. Perhaps I’ll get used to it if I steep it another time? For now, though, this goes into my “swap” pile.

Just received my package with a little over $50 dollars in samples from Adagio, so I have lots of new teas to try out in the next few weeks. Yay!

This was the first one I picked out of the bunch to smell, and now the first one I’m actually steeping. The smell is exactly like chocolate covered strawberries, no mistaking it. Not strawberries plus chocolate, fighting with each other, but specifically chocolate covered strawberries. The first few sips of this, I was unimpressed…typical Adagio ceylon base with that dull bitterness it always seems to have. I wasn’t sure how strong the chocolate-strawberry flavor was going to be, after reading *Ricky*’s review (and others), but I could actually taste them quite strongly. Anyway, at first it seemed average, like nothing special. I added a little milk and Splenda, and it was still average. But all of a sudden, I had finished my cup and I wanted more. I actually was craving more! I get bored with tea flavors easily, so that rarely happens. Perhaps the bitterness left on my tongue from the first few sips faded away. Whatever it was, this is good, and a little on the boring side, but I’m glad I tried it.

Editing to add, second steep isn’t worth the effort.

Ah, Aveda tea. If you’ve ever had an appointment at an Aveda salon, you probably have tried this tea. Or, if you’ve tried their Peppymint drops, this tastes like a tea version of those. Now, I don’t like plain peppermint tea, and I don’t like the hibiscus that most companies add to their herbal blends, so this is a great alternative for me. It’s made up of only four ingredients, all of which are organic: licorice root, peppermint leaf, sweet fennel, and basil. Yes, there’s peppermint in there, but I like it. I just don’t like the way peppermint tea tastes by itself, but I like the “cooling” effect it adds to this tea. Licorice root is the primary component (the tea looks like it’s made up of thick chunks of bark). The tea tastes more sweet than like licorice to me—I know it’s the licorice that’s providing the sweetness, but it doesn’t taste like licorice. Ack, this isn’t making much sense…hopefully you get what I mean though. I’m sensitive to sweet and cloying tastes, but I’m fine with this one because it’s the aftertaste that is cooling and sweet, not the tea itself. . The other thing I like about this tea is that it’s hard to oversteep this tea. It never ends up tasting like a cup of liquid herbs (there’s basil and fennel in there, but I can’t taste them). No single note stands out. It just tastes good, and sweet, and refreshing. I’m giving this a high rating because it has never let me down.

Tried it iced this time instead. I think I overstepped it, so it came out bitter. Not really feeling this, which is strange because I like sweet earl greys which are citrusy and flowery and perfumy as well…

Taking a 1-2 day break from tea, because my caffeine levels have been through the roof and I’ve been sleeping at odd hours. Not sure if I have any tasty herbal teas…tasty being the key word.

I added a few cardamom pods to the mix, and it came out meh. “Meh.” I think this is more the fault of the additional cardamom than the actual tea itself.

I’m not very familiar with greens yet, but this is really interesting. Dry leaf smells unexpectedly spicy. Unfortunately I forgot that I was brewing this, so the tea was cool by the time I was able to drink it. The spiciness of the tea itself comes through very slightly, right at the tip of my tongue. Taste is flowery but unique, thanks to that spicy note. Also maybe a slight buttery taste, similar to unsalted butter. I’ll have to try this again and remember to drink it while it’s hot!

I’ve been craving this all day, even after yesterday’s numerous steepings. Why is this so good? Something else I noticed today: I think I can taste apricot in this, along with some sort of apricot-fuzziness-prickly feeling on my tongue when I drink this tea. I actually like it. It reminds me of when I was a kid, sucking down apricot after apricot from the tree in the backyard, and that prickly furry feeling you get when the skin of the apricot hits your tongue. I’m not sure how else to describe it. Anyway, infusions 1 and 2 are apricots and chocolates, and 3 and 4 and 5 are chocolate covered caramels. Not bad. Upping the rating because damn, this is an awesome tea.

Just found a tin of this, which had somehow migrated to the bookshelf! I’ll have to write a thorough review of this some other time, as it is one of my absolute favorites. This morning, mixing it with some English Breakfast (Twinings), milk, and sweetener. Simultaneously floral and cozy.

Bought a sample of this on takgoti’s recommendation. First of all, wow. The dry leaves are incredibly long and dark. These are the biggest black tea leaves I have ever seen (although admittedly, I have not seen very much). The leaves smell so strongly of chocolate, caramel, and coconut that I can hardly believe these are not flavored. In fact, they smell very similar to the coconutty-Chocolate Cream Truffles tea by Portsmouth that I had a few days ago.

So, I’m scooping in a teaspoon into my Zarafina. The leaves are long and twisty, so it’s hard to tell if I really have a full teaspoon of tea in there. Oh well. Setting the Zarafina to Black and Strong for the first run.

The smell of the liquor is more like honey than chocolate, to me, but maybe I just didn’t rinse my cup out enough. I just downed this cup in less than a minute because it was so good. I’m not quite at the level yet where I can pick out all the different flavors in a tea. I tastes honey and roasted yams (?). Or maybe honey roasted yams. Hard to say. It was good though. Really, really good.

Second cup: While pouring this into a cup, I could strongly smell chocolate. And now that I’m sipping, I can definitely taste it as well. Oh, heaven. Here we go. Definitely getting coconut and chocolate, similar to the tea I mentioned earlier, and maybe a little caramel. Now that I’m looking at the liquor, it seems quite a bit darker than the first cup. Adding a tiny bit of sweetener.

Sorry, got sidetracked. Found my kitty unapologetically eating my dinner. >:o

Ah, caramel, there you are! On cup three, added a little more sweetener. Okay, this honestly tastes like a chocolate-caramel candy bar. I am so glad I tried this. I was an awesome introduction to non-flavored black teas.

Editing to add that I let the 4th resteep cool down, and it was even more chocolate-caramelly, and a bit sweeter as well.

Finally, a Harney and Sons tea I don’t despise! Takes honey pretty well without losing its citron flavor. Delicious. Not quite getting orange from it, but definitely tasting citrus.

This tea (dry) smells SOOOO GOOD! (Teen Girl Squad reference, anyone?) Sweet and chocolately, but in a honey-ish way rather than a refined-white-sugar, Nestle chocolate bar way. I’m not really good at picking out coconut flavors (I dislike coconut “flavored” things like candies and pina coladas, but like plain coconut, coconut milk, and thai food) but I suppose that’s in there as well. And yum, cream—perhaps that the coconut? If I didn’t already know what flavor this is, I would guess some chocolate-honey-cream combination, which I suppose is pretty close.

Alright, let’s get down to sipping…
The liquor itself isn’t sweet, and is even a little bitter. The bitterness works, though—it just reminds me of chocolate, which is yummy when it’s a tad bitter, right? Surprisingly, honey doesn’t work with the tea very well—it drowns out the tea’s flavor.
Second infusion – lower temp, less bitterness, Splenda – good, but not great.
Maybe this tea needs milk? I don’t have any in the fridge at the moment, grr.