Adagio Custom Blends

ashmanra’s monthly sipdown challenge
January 2023 → a tea that is hard to pronounce or spell

After reading my previous note for this tea, I doubled the tea leaves to see if it might make a difference. I enjoyed it before, but I didn’t seem wowed by it. Using two teaspoons instead of one takes it over into wow territory for sure. This is one I would order again, no doubt. I don’t taste the almond or cinnamon really, but the raspberry is extra. The base tea holds its own too. In this case, it looks like it’s a blend of Adagio’s Almond, Raspberry, and Vanilla Oolong teas. To further break it down, Ceylon black tea and Taiwanese oolong.

This tea fulfills my January sipdown prompt for a tea that is hard to pronounce or spell, since I am never successful at doing either of these things when I’m looking for this tea. Maybe this will be the year I finally try Doctor Who!

Mastress Alita’s Monthly Sipdown Challenge
May 2022 → A “geeky” tea

I think this tea is meant to be a Doctor Who reference, but I’ve only ever seen a couple of episodes so I don’t know what it means. I’ve always wanted to get into the show, but there are so many seasons – and doctors – that I never know where to start. I keep hearing that the upcoming season with the new doctor has great potential, so maybe I’ll just start there? It does have Yasmin Finney who was in Heartstopper which I absolutely LOVED. I feel I should try it for that reason alone. Any Doctor Who fans here? Where should I start?

The whole time I’ve had this tea, I thought it was an oolong. It does have oolong in the blend, but it also has black tea. So I steeped it today as if it were one of my normal black teas. It’s an enjoyable raspberry-flavored blend. Not anything too extraordinary though.

Samurai Travelling Tea Box – Tea #47

Finished off the cute little tin of this one yesterday, actually steeped up as a big old teapot of tea! It has been a looonnggg time since I last made a Western pot of tea but, as I mentioned in a tasting note I posted during the freeze, a good friend of mine here in MTL and I are starting a podcast all about tea and different kinds of geeky fandoms and our instagram account for the podcast “went live” earlier this week so I was feeling especially inspired to pull out some of my nerdier teaware and brew this Star Wars tea in a Star Wars themed teapot!

I think I’ve probably tried the teas from Adagio that compose this blend in at least a dozen, if not more, variants through other fandom blends – they don’t taste bad but the flavour is so distinctly “sweet, nutty and brown” (ie. chocolate/caramel and generic) that no matter what combination they seem to be used in with other teas they all sort of taste the same. In particular, this combo really reminds me of another fandom tea that I like a lot – Apache Tracker, from the Welcome to Nightvale sampler.

Photos:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDb8fVugErI/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDb-8_AjC6M/

As for our podcast, I’m really excited about it! When we get closer to releasing episodes, I’m going to make a discussion post for it with more details and a longer overview of what it’ll be about – but the tldr is that it’s a podcast exploring different types of fandoms and the teas we (my friend Marika and I) think that they go well with! Each week, we’ll look at a new fandom and a specific “piece of content” pertaining to it and the discussion will be about our experiences with this fandom, first impressions, anything relating to the content we reviewed that really stuck out to us as meaningful and the tea we paired with it and why! It’ll be a mix of things that we know inside and out, than one of us is sharing with the other, and that we’re both experiencing for the fist time!

I hope people will enjoy it, but regardless it’s just going to be great to geek out with one another and learn about some new things!

Samurai Travelling Tea Box – Tea #4

This is one of several samples that I asked Shae to include in the box – simply could not resist trying a tea with the name Clotted Cream, that sounds devine!

Visually this is just black tea without added ingredients, aside from the flavouring that has been layered over it. Steeped up, the colour is quite deep and red tinged and the flavour smooth. It’s certainly creamy, and reminds me a little bit of the Birthday tea from Adagio that they included as a sample during your birth month, but it’s also a little bit flat (age?) and lacking in body or depth of flavour.

It was easy to finish the mug, but it wasn’t exciting or memorable. I imagine, however, that this would be a very good “canvas” tea for anyone looking for a simple tea to add milk and/or sugar and other sweeteners to. Would be quite adaptable.

March Madness Sipdown

This was paired off against T2’s Matcha Jaffa Swirl.

I usually reserve my Buffy teas for when I’m watching BTVS, but this one came up in the randomly selected teas for this bracket so I just went with it. It’s still just an alright tea; loving the chocolate mint flavours still but the chamomile flavour continues to be too aggressive in the cup for my tastes.

There were things I didn’t like about Matcha Jaffa Swirl as well, so it was still a fairly close decision between the too – but ultimately this tea was not the one to move on.

Earlier in the week I sipped on Capricious Princess, which is another of the BTVS fandom blends from Adagio that I’ve been exclusively drinking during my French dubbed rewatch. This is the Cordelia Chase blend, a mix of green tea and chamomile w/ mint and chocolate. While I found the chamomile a little too strong for my tastes, I did really love the balance of cooling mint and sweet chocolate notes. Even the green tea, while present, didn’t ruin the flavour combination for me. It’s not a favourite, but drinkable – and I was very worried about whether I’d enjoy this blend or not so I’m glad it’s an alright one…

I think, like so many people, Cordy was never one of my favourite characters but I really appreciated her character growth over the course of the series (and on Angel), and she’s grown on me with each rewatch. I also really like the voice actress for the French dubs; her voice is less jarring to me than, as an example, Angel or Xander…

If I were to design my own tea blend for Cordelia, I think it would be quite different. I would want a lot of visual accents to the tea such as marigold, cornflower, safflower, etc – things that superficially make the tea look very pretty but that do little to nothing to contribute to the actual flavour. The base would be a greener oolong; something that would reveal more nuance and layers with subsequent resteeps. Finally, I think maybe just a touch of raspberry? Raspberries can be sweet, but also sharp and sour – but I’m not sold on that as the flavour I would choose…

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBnlcciAWC9/

I LOVE this tea. I’m still very new to explaining flavor profiles and undertones and such, but this is such a pleasant blend. While naturally sweet, it isn’t overbearing, the rose petals help balance it with just a touch of bittersweetness as an aftertaste.

If you are a fan of Steven Universe, this is truly a perfect embodiment of the titular character! The caffiene level was also quite enjoyable.

This is definitely a blend that I will be purchasing the larger 3oz bag when the sample tin gets low.

I personally add roughly 1 tsp of beet sugar crystals and a splash (1 Tbsp?) half and half.

Picked this blend of all the chais to compensate for the lack of spice in the Spice Imperial I started off the day with. It is an overwhelming combination of spices, but that’s what I was looking for right now so I’m sipping away happily. At first, the Thai Chai was dominant and I got mostly coconut and lemongrass, but as my cup is cooling the rest of the spices come out more, mainly cardamom and ginger with some cinnamon too. I think I can even detect the chocolate and vanilla right at the end of the sip. Yeah, this is what I wanted. Spice overload.

Tea latte again, but tonight I steeped the leaf for 4 minutes instead of 6 and the caramel and honeybush notes aren’t as strong now. It’s mostly almond, with some hazelnut notes and woody and cherry-like honeybush in the background. I prefer it this way, nutty instead of just sickly sweet. Upping my rating just a bit from 70.

The last tea latte went down so well I decided to make another one, and settled on this because I needed a caffeine-free option and thought this would be a good choice. It wasn’t bad, but I think I used too much leaf (3 spoons instead of 2) and it’s already such a sweet blend that when added to so much milk it became pretty cloyingly sweet and syrupy. Still tasty, but it took me a while to get through, and the almond and hazelnut notes were overshadowed by the caramel sweetness and some cherry-like notes from the honeybush. I think I prefer my tea lattes with a bit more of a kick!

VE Day 2020

I’m drinking this because of the name more than any desire to actually drink it. It’s not bad, but I always struggle with deciding how to drink this one. Black, the apricot and vanilla come through beautifully and are actually quite delicious in the initial sip, but then the black tea base comes and overpowers them and sits heavy on your tongue. I find that a lot of the adagio blends suffer because of the black tea base they use. Typically, I add milk to temper the heaviness and the astringency of that base, and I did that this morning too. The problem is that the delicate apricot and vanilla don’t really put up much of a fight against the milk, and as soon as a drop is added they fade into the background. With milk, this is a very cloying cream-heavy blend, with just a hint of apricot at the end of the sip. If only the Adagio fandom blends used a higher quality black tea base – or even (gasp) offered more than one base – this could have been really, really nice.

I never order Adagio’s fan blends because they’re super overpriced for the amount of tea you get, but I’m certainly happy to try one in the tea box! The main flavor here is a tasty nuttiness – maybe hazelnut? You can also taste the black base, which is pretty soft and nice. It’s not super chocolatey despite all the chocolate ingredients. I actually quite enjoyed this blend, but I’d probably be more likely to buy their mocha nut mate since that seems to be the most prominent component of this tea, and it would be way cheaper. The second steep was still very strong and delicious. I had that steep with milk, and I like it both ways very much.

I got my first ‘Rona shot last Friday! Yay! Where I live supply exceeds demand, people are being offered the shot and declining, and so they are letting pretty much all groups get the shot. I had no ill effects other than a typical sore arm.

Last time I drank this tea I said I should try it as a sweet latte, so tonight that is what I did. It is rather pleasant out so Ashman and I sat in the rockers and chatted. You guys are so inspiring with your sipdown challenges and here I am ordering tea and feeling guilty! This was attempt to sipdown the second to last tea in this set. I am almost there.

I heated some milk and added my tea blend and sugar straight into the pan with the heat turned low and set a timer. I give lattes like this five to ten minutes, depending on the blend. I strained it into mugs and added a heaping helping of whipped cream and some sprinkles. It was good, and Ashman especially enjoyed it. I did like it, but this one is actually a little milder than I like for my rich lattes. Even though it is a rooibos (blech) it also has honeybush which I like very much, so this is one that I find palatable as a regular cuppa, too.

Okay, so there are a ton of teas that I have not added to cupboard. Some of them are small amounts, some of them are not listed on Steepster and I just don’t feel like adding them. With the quarantine, I am trying to sip down small packs and get my cupboard cleaned and organized, both online and in real life.

I don’t like most red rooibos, but I DO like honeybush. This has both. I figured this blend would have enough flavoring to mask the unpleasant cough syrup flavor. Happily, I was right.

This is really strong on the caramel flavor and is sweet and smooth. I added nothing to it, but if you wanted to go wild with milk (or cream) and sugar, I can tell this would be an amazing latte.

It says there is hazelnut, and it is a bit nutty, but I still feel like caramel dominates. I am drinking it hot right now, but made a liter of it lightly sweetened to serve as iced tea tomorrow.

I might try it soon as a totally unhealthy, rich and sugary latte.

The last tea from my trial week of Adagio’s CommuniTEA subscription (from yesterday) and another fandom blend! I’m actually really impressed with the ratio of fandom teas in this week – 3/7 were fandom blends!!

Of all the teas I had this week from Adagio, this is EASILY the one I was most excited about. The reason for that is that I was actually familiar with this blend BEFORE this sampler – I’ve had this, along with the creator’s entire Stranger Things assortment, in my cart so many times when building fandom tea doomcarts on the their website and I got REALLY close to ordering it as well when the most recent season of Stranger Things came out, to watch along with the series. Ultimately it was dollar conversion that stopped me from ordering – the Canadian Dollar sucks, man…

The dry leaf smells amazing though – very “strawberry banana” smoothie in terms of vibe and now that really has me wondering why I can’t think of any strawberry banana teas, because damn that’s such a good idea. Why aren’t people on the strawberry banana smoothie tea blend train? Can we kickstart that train? I need to try more strawberry banana teas…

And, y’know, this tastes really nice too! I can definitely taste the Honeybush Banana Nut in this mix the most strongly – possibly because it’s the tea in this mix that I have the most familiarity with? It’s complimented with a nice bright, ripe strawberry note and a little bit of a fruitier stonefruit undertone. I’m pretty comfortable sticking with my strawberry banana smoothie comparison, though some more creaminess could really strengthen that. I imagine it would be nice iced, too.

Now, is this accurate for Barb’s character? Honestly, I don’t know – I feel like we didn’t really see enough of her to get a true sense of what her blend might be. #justiceforbarb

This is probably the only one of these CommuniTea blends I would reorder as well; not only does it taste really good but I feel like I have an attachment to the character (observant instagram followers of mine may know that I have a Barb Funko POP that features pretty prominently of many of my stories filmed at my tea desk) and it also feels unique/different from other teas in my stash right now!

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-4Y9NvgIIP/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKy9C_yWev0

This was the Adagio CommuniTEA selection for April 8th – I’m a little behind in tasting notes.

I was excited to see another fandom blend in the mix, and even more excited because this is a character I know. I mean, I don’t know her the same way that, like, actual hard core batman fans know her but I have peripheral knowledge of this character!

One of my favourite things with the fandom blends is breaking down the idea behind the conceptualization of the blend; why were the teas/flavours/ingredients used selected? What makes this raspberry and chamomile blend the blend for Poison Ivy? Admittedly, I think this is a missed opportunity to not use a green tea based blend – that seems like an obvious direction, no? But like I said, I don’t know the character too well, so I’m not sure if there’s significance to what was selected that I’m just missing…

As for the blend itself, it’s not bad – I’m sure that I would like it more if I liked chamomile but that’s a big aspect of the flavour profile in this tea and I’m having a hard time getting past it. Aside from the pronounced chamomile flavour, this has an almost sour raspberry flavour, like the nostalgic “Sour Raspberry” candy flavour that I grew up with. It’s almost a little weird having chamomile juxtaposed with something so sharp and tart, but it still kind of works in a weird way!? I’m not totally sure what the ‘Rooibos Bonita’ in the blend is meant to taste like, but I’m really only getting chamomile and sour raspberry/apple notes…

It’s not a tea for me, but I feel like it’s still a well constructed blend overall.

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-uDbpaA5Qs/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhfs1CzzUPM

This is the tea selection for Adagio’s “CommuniTEA” sampler for today, April 6th…

I didn’t realize that they included fandom blends in this sampler/activity and I really like that inclusion – it seems like an even deeper/richer way to involve their own community and give exposure to some of the wonderful people who put together these really thought out collections on the fandom half of the site.

This one is from a creator I’m not familiar with, but I do love some good Greek Mythology, so after making my cup I did immediately go look the creator up to see if they had more mythology blends – turns out they do, and some sound pretty interesting conceptually so I’m making a BIG mental note of that.

Apollo is one of the Greek Gods that I don’t know as much about, aside from the basics: brother of Artemis, God of music and dance as well as the sun! So, it makes a whole lot of sense to me for this blend to be really bright and lively, and heavy on the citrus flavours! I can 100% see the intention and deliberate selection that this creator put into their mix. The dry leaf smells super good too – you know the “effervescence” that sort of sprays out when you crack a can of Sunkist? That sweet, zingy and bright orange note? That’s EXACTLY how this smells!

Steeped up, it’s a bit mellower but that lovely juicy Sunkist orange/tangerine note is still really prominent, I like how much it pops over a white/green rooibos base a lot. It feels full of life! I also taste some other citrus elements, like grapefruit. It’s really well balanced and summery, perfect for Apollo! It also makes me excited to try the White Tangerine sample that I picked up, because I think it’s that juicy and bright tangerine note that I’m really honing in on. It’ll be excellent to taste that without it being cut by other teas…

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-qAEidgVyt/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=530sEJ16PQY

Geek Steep S2E5 – Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling

This is the tea I drank while watching the episode for this geek – I think it’s probably pretty obvious that I chose it because it is a Buffy inspired tea. Like, it’s super on the nose. Here’s the crazy part though – this is one of, like, eight BTVS teas I own and I owned all of them back when we did our first episode and I just… completely forgot!? I feel like that’s a hardcore sign I own too much tea, but regardless it’s just funny to me that we went an entire episode last season missing out on the potential to drink Buffy tea while watching Buffy…

Anyway, it was a good tea and not a bad pairing – it’s a spiced pear which is pretty delicious all things considered. I do kind of wish that I’d flipped my recording and “geeking” teas though because I did think this was a little too soft/light and not really vibrant and fruity enough to properly capture the feeling I get inside every time I watch this musical episode.

That said, I don’t regret choosing it!

Last tasting note of the night/from my queue…

I had this one last week, while doing my French BTVS rewatch, and I thought it was alright. I put off writing the tasting note because I wanted to continue the exploration of what my Buffy themed tea would entail, and I couldn’t actually come up with a concept for her that I liked. So, I’ll have to keep thinking and hopefully the next time I drink this tea I’ll have a better idea of what direction I might want to take it.

I don’t know that I necessarily “get” the direction for this blend either, even though from a flavour perspective I’m HELLA on board with a spiced pear type of flavour profile. The dry leaf smelled amazingly like pear too, which was exciting. I know I’ve actually had this pear white tea in several Adagio fandom blends and I think I usually like that note a lot, so when Adagio reached out recently and let me pick some samples to try I did deliberately choose the Pear White because of blends like this one that use it – I’d love to experience it without it being cut with other blends.

The steeped cup does have that yummy dewy sweet floral pear note that I enjoy, but it’s a little over taken by more dominating spice flavours. It’s a little weird, I instinctively want to compare it to DT’s Ginger Pear because that’s the spiced pear blend I have the most familiarity with but I didn’t find them similar at all in my memory. A direct comparison could be interesting, but I doubt I’ll try it because I’m trying to really keep these teas (the Buffy ones) special by ONLY having them when I watch episodes…

Something about the overall flavour reminded me of Christmas though!? It was super nostalgic in a way I couldn’t place. I’m sure it was one of the spices, maybe like a nutmeg/allspice if that’s one of the ingredients in the spiced blends in this mix? It was just that same warming and cozy holiday tea vibe, though! It was a touch thin, I’ll try to remember to steep it stronger next time and maybe that will help me really nail down why this gave me that Christmas-y feeling of Deja Vu.

Cold Brew!

Had this one earlier in the week while I was working on some podcast outlines – Marika and I have been doing a lot of podcast prep and recording this week, getting ready for the return of Geek Steep and I’m getting really hyped for it!

This didn’t taste quite as fruity as I remember and, as such, a lot of the flavour was made up of the white tea in the blend – very crisp and a little bit vegetal with some creamy cucumber pulp and hay notes to it. The little bit of fruitiness that did come through was just a little bit peachy, and it complimented the more dominant white tea base very well. I still don’t think this is a good “Xander” blend conceptually, but it’s a nice stand alone tea and I found it refreshing and nice to sip on while writing.

Another Buffy inspired fandom blend as I continue my rewatch of the series in French!! I rewatch this series at least once a year, but often rewatch my favourite seasons several times (3, 6, and 7). It’s not that I’m not enjoying this rewatch with the French voice over, but something about it feels less “bingeable” to me – maybe because I have to focus so intently on the episode in order to catch what’s going on and read the subtitles, so I can’t multitask as much!?

I was trying to think, as I drank this tea and watched the show, what my ideal “Xander Harris” fandom blend would be like – I had a clear idea of the direction that I would take the Angel blend, but I struggled with how I would approach this one. It’s going to seem like I don’t like any of the characters (that’s because I’m saving the blends for the characters I do like for last), but I actually am not a fan of Xander – I was the first time I ever watched the show, but the more I rewatch it the less I enjoy him. I find him pretty misogynistic, unsupportive of his friends for a lot of the series, and a ton of his early season focus was about him being a whiny baby about not being able to be with Buffy and then unappreciative about his relationship with Cordy…

In fact, here’s a whole article about why he sucks:

https://poplurker.com/2018/05/31/8-reasons-why-xander-harris-is-the-worst-part-of-buffy-the-vampire-slayer/

He does show some growth throughout the series, especially in the later seasons, but it’s a slow process – so maybe I would choose a young sheng pu’erh for a Xander themed tea as the base? Something that starts off really unpleasant, but that has the potential to develop into something nicer. Maybe toss in some green tea as well, because of how bitter it can be and to capitalize on the phrase “green with envy” as a way of expressing his general jealousy. Maybe some peppermint; both to continue the green theme, but also because of how “cool” Xander both wants to be/thinks he is. The one thing that I do think this blend gets right (in terms of capturing the character) is the blueberry – I think having something blue, because of how whiny/mopey he is, feels appropriate.

So there you have it – sheng, green tea, mint and blueberry.

As for this tea and how it tastes!?

Well, I don’t think it captures Xander Harris but I do think it’s pretty pleasant. The cup I steeped felt a little thin/weak, so in the future I would up the amount of leaf used by a little bit but there was a really nice balance between sweet berry and tart berry overall. I think the blueberry is the strongest flavour element present, and while I could detect that there were other contributing fruit flavours at play, I would not have been able to pin point peach or apricot as those contributors.

I imagine it would probably be nice iced, actually!