Adagio Custom Blends

Candy Corn is a Halloween classic so how could I resist picking up a Candy Corn tea for this October!? Let me tell you a secret though; when it comes to actual candy corn it’s not a flavour that I enjoy…

It’s a testament to the power/influence of it as a Halloween icon though because I see basically any Candy Corn inspired thing other than real Candy Corn and I immediately want to buy it because motherfucking Halloween! Shockingly, there are probably a DOZEN different Candy Corn inspired tea blends on Adagio so I had a lot of range to pick from. I chose then one that had the most appealing to me flavour composition and not the one I thought was most accurate to actual Candy Corn, which is basically just a mix of fondant/icing that tastes like pure sugar. No thanks…

So this is essentially caramel/orange/cream with black tea and honeybush. I guess I have seen cream and caramel flavour candy corn so it’s not totally off base in the interpretation of the flavour – but orange seems more out there and I would guess is only included because of the actual colour of candy corn. I’m okay with that, though!

The taste is straight forward – literally all of the flavours I just mentioned are represented, including a malty backbone from the black tea and that sweet and nutty flavour of honeybush that is so distinct. I would say the strongest flavours are orange, cream, and honeybush. It loosely reminds me of Candy Corn, but whether it’s accurate or not isn’t really the goal that I wanted from this cup – the important thing is that it tastes good, and it does. I find it a little thin, and the caramel could be better but I enjoy the orange and cream combo a lot – and I get the FUN of Candy Corn for Halloween which is exactly what I wanted.

I also drank this while watching Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror episodes which was a massively fun and nostalgic Halloween evening activity that only made the tea that much better!

Couldn’t resist stocking up on a bunch of Halloween inspired tea blends to sip throughout Spooky Season this year, and I do love a good caramel apple so this was the first one that I tapped into when I got the order earlier in the week!

I had this one at my office, but the idea is to drink these blends while doing fun Spooky Season activities throughout the month – like watching TV shows/movie and pumpkin carving. I did over steep this by a hearty ten minutes because I got caught up in responding to emails, and my inattention to steeping was punished with a hefty dose of astringency. However, the flavour of the blend itself was good and I could see from the taste that with proper steeping I would have enjoyed this a lot. Very sweet, bordering on caramel with hints of apple, cream, and cinnamon. Caramel is an infamously hard flavour to capture in tea – this felt a bit more like the thin and sort of artificial/generically sweet caramel like might see used as a Sundae syrup? On the cusp of nailing it, but just a bit off.

I look forward to brewing it properly later this monthl.

I just added this to my cupboard but to be honest it was a tiny amount of tea to begin with and I have had it before so now there is only about a serving left. I made lattes with whipped cream and sprinkles for my husband and myself tonight and this was super good for that.

My lattes for two are generally made thus: twenty ounces milk and three tablespoons sugar heated and three teaspoons tea added. If the tea blend is full of pieces of dried fruit or chips or something, I will add a little extra or make sure the spoon is heaping. Heat (but not to boiling) and leave it at least six minutes but preferably ten. As long as the milk is good and hot you can turn off the burner for the last bit of steeping.

Strain into two mugs and top with whipped cream. My husband really loves sprinkles so I add those cuz he is a nice guy.

This tea has been here for a while. It was a gift to my daughter and she never got around to trying it, but in spite of its age it had great flavor still and nothing had gone “off.” This is something I would definitely consider repurchasing just for cold weather treats. The tea and the spices both come through nice and strong and really since it has so much flavor I could cut back on the sugar. If the blend is heavy on “pieces” rather than tea leaves and flavoring, it sometimes needs that bit of extra sugar to make it flavorful.

Sipdown 68

Cinnamon. A bit boring, but not bad by any means. Definitely a bit better than the 56 I previously gave it.

This smells like a melted red hot. But, the cinnamon is much more mild than I would’ve thought. A bit of woodiness. Overall, the flavors are a bit too muted. Pretty average.

It’s my day off and I’ve been drinking a ton of tea. I’ve been working, but in a reduced capacity up until yesterday. We’ve just gone back to regular operations and I’m feeling very ‘meh’ about having to interact with so many people everyday again. I’ve been looking for another job for about 9 months, and it is so insanely difficult. The amount of effort I’ve put in has been exhausting, on top of the confusion and sadness I’m sure everyone is feeling as a result of the pandemic. I’m also taking an HR Management class right now, and had my midterm yesterday (got a 96% woot!), but that’s another layer of stress. So much stress lately, I’m glad I have my tea.

The name and image on the tin still make me laugh. Sadly I don’t think these little Adagio tins maintain flavor very well, because most of the Halloween teas I bought from Adagio last year are really starting to lose their flavor (way more than any other tea I have, and I have some that are significantly older than a year). Kind of a muted/nondescript cinnamon flavor. Like someone swirled a cinnamon broom around in water.

I’ll admit- I got this tea because the name/image make me laugh. Luckily, this is a really tasty autumn blend! A bit roast, with some squashiness, a touch of spice, and a pronounced sweet almond flavor. Really enjoying it.

Another winner! It has the creamy caramel flavor that I’ve been looking for, combined with mild ginger (not a spicy ginger, just ginger flavor). Added a bit of honey, and it’s quite an autumnal treat (plus the vintage Halloween art is wonderful too).

I’ve tried Adagio a couple times over the last 5 years, and finally stopped about a year ago (with the exception of picking up Brigadoon breakfast) because I disliked almost everything I tried. But, I’m on the hunt for tasty fall teas, and I’m a sucker for vintage Halloween imagery…which took me to the collection that this was a part of. I was intrigued by the hojicha/pumpkin flavoring/spice combination, so decided to try 6 custom Halloween blends.
This is the first one I brewed up…and I actually love it! The spice component is pretty minimal, and the focus is more on the roasted squash quality that comes with the hojicha+toasted mate+pumpkin flavoring. The only thing that would have made it perfect is real pumpkin pieces.

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.