Adagio Custom Blends

Inspired by one of my favourite Supernatural episodes, Mystery Spot. For me today is indeed actually Tuesday, but since Heat of the Moment didn’t play this morning I can at least be reasonably sure that tomorrow will be Wednesday! This blend has prominent blueberry notes, a hint of jammy strawberry, and lots of caramel cream. Delicious, much like the breakfast options (and Sam’s choice of short stack) at the diner.

Here’s to the most important car – in fact, the most important object – in pretty much the whole universe. It wouldn’t be Supernatural without a blend for the Impala – just as much a character as the human characters themselves.

Dean’s Baby is an earl grey cream with lots of lavender; sweet, smooth, and distinctively floral. There is just the faintest hint of orange also, but it’s by no means a prominent flavour. I do enjoy that this blend has a more robust base than a lot of EGs, and so stands up to milk perfectly which enhances the creaminess even further. The creator says that the flavours were inspired by the impala as a both a “zesty spirit and a comforting home” which I get, but to my mind these flavours would be better suited to a character like Mary or Mrs Butters. Baby needs more of a leather flavour at the very least, and left to myself I’d probably have gone for something pu’erh based.

This is a pleasant blend to drink, but my search for the perfect fandom Baby blend continues!

On to Dean’s blend today. This makes a great morning cup, being strong and malty with its assam/Irish breakfast base. There’s lots of chestnut, which adds a rich sweetness, and just a hint of smokiness from the gunpowder. All of this perfectly accented with notes of cinnamon and apple pie. Really pleased with this one; it captures the essence of Dean’s character AND tastes delicious to boot!

Working through my Supernatural themed custom fandom sampler from Adagio! Heaven’s Missing An Angel is inspired by Castiel, and is pretty perfect for him – strong, sweet, a touch rebellious. At its heart it’s an earl grey cream, but with loads of chocolate chips and an added twist of almond. I swear I can taste a tiny bit of orange too. It’s very smooth and a little decadent; a really nice dessert tea (or after-work treat, in my case!) The only downside is that the chocolate chips make the mouthfeel quite oily, but overall I’m really pleased with this one and would definitely purchase more.

Prominent hazelnut and cinnamon, milk chocolate, and a drizzle of smooth caramel. Totally delicious, and feels very appropriate for Sam’s kind, loyal, and empathetic nature. Straightforward but tasty, and a good everyday option. A likely repurchase with my next adagio order.

Fruity, juicy cranberry with a hint of tartness atop heaps of red peppercorn and subtly intertwined chai spices. Although primarily a black-based tea, the green rooibos adds a hint of hay-like vegetal sweetness. A really interesting, fairly unique blend which sits well with the theme of the episode. Not your usual Christmas tea, and one I’m definitely glad I chose to sample.

Ancient sample packet and I was feeling adventurous. So many chocolate teas have that alcoholic/medicinal thing going on in the background, and it was noticeable right off the steep. (Age may have had something to do with that … I know I’m getting more medicinal as I get older!)

However, a little milk and a squoodge of honey covered up the flaws nicely.

knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2025 – Day 2
Theme: Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
Song: Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee

One of Marjorie’s own custom blends! Honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan. This has a bit too much of Adagio’s black tea in it for me, which I don’t enjoy. It tends to have all the downsides of Ceylon but not a lot of flavor, and it upsets my stomach. Otherwise, it’s mildly pumpkin spiced with an undertone of rooibos. I don’t notice the caramel or butterscotch? Just not a good match for me today.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=O1x-hOOrl5E&si=Q4_T0I0v39IoQWUx

Confession time – on my first journey through the world of tea, Adagio somehow flew completely past my radar. By the time I even heard of them, I was a bit of a tea snob, in fact, and so I’d never ordered anything from them. This time, though, the journey was kicked off by another member of the Gravity Falls fandom, who made a number of unofficial custom blends around characters from the show, all of which I decided I ought to sample all eleven of them. There was only one I flat-out disliked and I considered most of them above average, but only three drew me in enough for full-tin purchases. This is one of those teas.

For those unfamiliar with the show, Stan is the tritagonist of Gravity Falls. He’s the great-uncle of the two central characters, has become their caretaker during their summer vacation in either 2012 or 2013, and is a former jack-of-all-criminal-trades (Sovo Night, who blended this tea, described Stan as “a man who’s held many names and heard his own the least”) turned operator of a tourist attraction, along with hosting the county fair and occasionally dances for the youth of the town – all, of course, in the interests of getting yet more money. He’s a massive personality who I cannot properly describe here – I’m working on a monograph on the subject, actually – and whose tragic backstory is about one-fourth of the reason the show even has a plot, which therefore makes him also quite a lot of the reason why it has such a large adult fanbase despite being, er, originally made for Disney XD.

It’s clear enough how the elements of the tea are meant to reference Stan’s personality. Ginger – he comes across as quite prickly and has an extremely hot temper, so much so that he nearly ends the world by accident due to it. I couldn’t find any references to Wuyi black teas when I was adding the ingredients to this description, but they and Yunnan make up a blend Adagio calls “Mambo” – fitting enough for a guy who spent a decent chunk of his life in South America and also can break out the dance moves every once in a while. Lapsang Souchong could refer to one of two things – either the recurring theme of fire as a destructive force which surrounds Stan in general, or the fact that he apparently liked smoking cigars a lot, before having a couple of twelve-year-olds dumped on him for three months made him feel obliged to give up smoking, drinking, and the freedom to “swear for real” all at the same time – teaching them to be card sharks and run scams, that’s fine, but he wouldn’t want to encourage substance abuse or bad language in children. And as for caramel…‘burnt sugar’ isn’t the worst analogy in the world for the man. Sweet kid, but life put him through it, which both resulted in sweetness sometimes manifesting in a different way than it originally did and also made him a lot clingier.

All that, though, is character analysis, not tea analysis. The flavors seem to work pretty well together as a description of Stan, but do they actually taste good together?

Yes.

I have the vague idea that I have mixed caramel or vanilla with lapsang souchong myself, back in the day, and that it was good, but it wasn’t quite like this. One can just taste the smoke and just taste the caramel, but they come together in such a way, presumably along with the base notes and the ginger, to taste…well, the first thought that comes to mind is that it tastes fun. Fun is not, of course, a proper tasting note, so I’ve tried to analyze it properly and come up with things close to various sweets (I started off on ‘candy corn’ and moved to ‘maple syrup’ before settling on ‘butterscotch’) but the overall impression is just of…fun! Which is good, because now I have five ounces of it.

knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 21
Theme: Sugar Plum Fairy
My pick: Thé de l’Abbaye from Dammann Frères

This was an extra bonus tea that Marjorie sent for today!

It sounded good, but somehow tastes exclusively of musty hay and dirt to me ha ha ha. I feel like maybe I just don’t get along with Adagio’s white base… Anyway, not pleasant lol.

Tried a sample of this little Adagio custom blend: half decalf orange and half honeybush chocolate. As much as I love chocolate and orange together, I expected something swoon-worthy. No swooning, but I was a distracted sipper; multitasking, so it may not have gotten the attention it deserved. Got the orange, got the honeybush, but the chocolate didn’t hold up its leg of the tripod.

knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 10
Theme: Peppermint Twist
My pick: Peppermint Cream from Bird & Blend

Today, Marjorie sent me a custom blend that she made on Adagio! It’s a blend of vanilla rooibos and spearmint, accented with lemon verbena and cute rainbow sprinkles. Simple, but a very pleasant blend. I do think it needs more vanilla, but there’s a soft vanilla flavor, and it’s nice combined with the sweet spearmint. The rooibos, thankfully, is quite mild and not at all medicinal.

Not amazing, but made for a cozy evening cuppa. :)

https://www.instagram.com/p/DDa7SXSueLe/

Imagine you’ve gone for a walk in autumn. It’s cool outside, but not cold.

Wrong!

By the time you get home you’re very much chilled to the bone. The moment you get inside you grab your favorite sweater and throw it on. Warmed from the nearby fire, the gentle heat seeps into your skin, aided by the weight of the sweater itself, it becomes the feel of a warm hug from every direction.

This is one of those teas that you can’t really describe with just flavor, it needs the mental image as well. It does taste a good bit like chocolate banana bread, still warm from the baking.

Full-bodied and decadent, it has ‘mouthfeel’, almost like you’ve taken a bite of something. With the natural sweetness and depth of honeybush underpinning the dessert flavorings, the only thing you’ll want to add to this cup of tea is a refill!

For tonight’s round of “Dare Ya to Dairy,” a sample of a custom Adagio blend that is nearly identical in nature to Foxtrot, minus the mint, plus a little lavender. Contains both honeybush and rooibos, although I couldn’t distinguish between them, even before adding milk. If you like your herbals a little more floral, this might be for you.

Nothing fits a One Piece binge like a fandom tea blend based on one of my favourite characters! This is a pleasant lemon tea but the lemon taste is blended with other flavours pretty well. The green chai part of the blend brings a nice warm spice to the lemon. So if you want a loud lemon flavour this probably won’t be for you.. but if you want more of a soft spicy lemon this might be a good one for you.

Strange VariaTEA TTB #38

Still working through some random “one cup left” samples from the TTB that I threw into my desk drawer at work. This one is…odd. While steeping, my office mate remarked that it smelled like the holidays! And it does…the cinnamon aroma is STRONG. But despite the scent, I barely taste the cinnamon. Honestly, I barely taste much of anything. It’s very smooth and slightly earthy with just a hint of that cinnamon coming through and maybe a bit of nuttiness. I don’t really pick up on the strawberry at all. It went down easy and certainly wasn’t unpleasant to drink, but I was expecting a lot more flavor based on the scent and the number of flavored teas included.

I took today off work so I could just bindge Halloween movies and teas all day today, and the first on the list was Nightmare Before Christmas. There are so many Halloween movies I love, but this one is just deeply nostalgic for me. Bonus points that I had the perfect tea to pair with it…

Not typically the biggest fan of EG as I have stated many a times, but I do tend to like the flavour a lot more when combined with spices. So, the combo of brisk and citrusy bergamot with cozy sweet cinnamon and just a hint of almond? I don’t know how much I felt it paired with the movie itself, but I did enjoy the cuppa!

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CzE927Gulv0/?img_index=1 (2nd Pic)

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpUevK17OD0

Realistically, though, I paired this with the entire soundtrack.

Also, I just wanna share what is still one of my all time favourite AMVs – I binge listen to this so hard during the month of October. It’s the Marilyn Manson cover of This is Halloween synced with clips from the anime Soul Eater. Even if you’ve never watched the anime, I feel like it’s an AMV anyone can appreciate. It’s so creepy, and the fact the creator was able to so perfectly find scenes to line up with all the lyrics has never stopped being impressive to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qztch6_Uhuk

Note to self: don’t oversteep this one. Let it go too long and it was like licking a black walnut shell. Honey didn’t help. However, properly attended, it’s a nice choc/vanilla blend.

Another treat that I probably wouldn’t have chosen for myself, but I think will be fun to play with. It’s a custom blend using Adagio’s Irish Breakfast, Vanilla, and Chocolate Chip teas. The dry leaf smells pastry-accurate in the bag.

Took some to work, so that means it really didn’t get a fair first run because (a) I wasn’t thinking about it very hard and (b) the first cup was accompanied by a pretty potent cup of cherry yogurt. However, I think the Ceylon teas in the blend give it the little sharpness you taste in the Boston Cream cream—a nice touch.

CLOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Its near the end of the ingredient list, but all I can taste or smell is clove! All the other ingredients looked so appealing.

Ugh, just ugh. At least the orange is imperceptible, so it doesn’t make me think of decomposing oranges.