Next in the Adagio flavored white sampler. Steeped according to package directions for the initial foray.
The tea base looks very similar to the one for White Tropics, like a mix of white peony with some silver needle perhaps as well. The smell in the tin is very different. No sweetness, making the White Tropics smell cloying by comparison. It smells a little like dirt, frankly. There’s a note of what must be the tangerine flavoring that gives it a hint of generic fruitiness.
In the cup, it’s a pretty yellow, leaning toward an apricot color. I can’t smell the tangerine in the cup, just the subtlety of white tea.
Now to the taste. The BF, who tasted White Tropics with me this morning, says this doesn’t have much taste compared to that. I agree, but I think we mean different things. By comparison to the White Tropics, this is a much more pleasant cup to my mind. Just as the leaves in the tin, the taste here makes me look back on White Tropics as cloying to the point of stomach unsettling by comparison.
On the other hand, I’m getting only the tiniest hint of citrusy high note here, and I wouldn’t say it would be identifiable as tangerine if I didn’t know that was what it was. It’s most apparent in the aftertaste. Much more enjoyable than White Tropics, but kind of a miss on the tangerine front.
ETA: After it cools some, the tangerine flavor comes to the fore. It’s still very subtle but discernibly tangerine-y. Also, though I didn’t notice anything distinctive about the mouth feel while the tea was hot, when it becomes cooler, a soft mouth feel becomes noticeable.
