Today is overcast and wintery looking. If I lived somewhere it snowed, it would look like it was about to snow. It’s not really that cold out, but a bit chilly. If it was just a little colder it would be pretty much all the winter we get here.
With that sort of weather, at this time of year, this blend seemed appealing because it smells to me like what people in Texas used to call wassail when I was growing up. I don’t think it’s really wassail because I’m pretty sure real wassail has alcohol of some kind in it. The kind we used to have at friends’ houses was pretty much heated up apple juice with spices in it.
In the sample tin, that’s what this smells like. Mostly cinnamon and some apple. I thought about preparing this on the stovetop, but I was too lazy today to try that. I have enough of the sample to give it a go a bit later. So today I just steeped according to Adagio’s directions. The steeped tea smells like a heated version of the dry tea.
Unfortunately, though, I wasn’t able to get a whole lot of flavor out of this. Apple isn’t really present for me in the sip, though I do taste it in the aftertaste. Mostly I taste cinnamon. Not much tea flavor either. This saddens me because I enjoyed the other Adagio chai samples quite a bit, and this one sounded so good.
I wondered if it would be better with a drop of milk and some Splenda, but that didn’t change the flavor a whole lot other than muting the cinnamon just a bit.
I’m tempted to put a bit of the Turkish apple fruit tisane I have from Upton in with this and see what that does. Haven’t decided whether to do that instead of trying it using the stovetop method. Or I suppose I could put the Turkish apple into the mixture and prepare it stovetop. I don’t have enough left to try it both ways, so I’ll have to pick one.
Flavors: Apple, Cinnamon