Kat Send Message

It’s been 9 month since I was last on Steepster’ve had a rough couple of months, where I didn’t really have anywhere to live, and then where I had to start teaching, which has sucked my soul into oblivion.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about getting involved with Steepster again, but then I was humiliated that it had been so long. I have reached the (excuse my language) fuck it moment and decided I’d post. I’ll probably have a few tealogs in rapid succession.

Anyway, I love this tea. I wish it wasn’t seasonal. I wanted something like David’s Tea’s Santa’s Secret (I’m really into David’s Tea right now, for what it’s worth). But this tea from Adagio was cheaper and I had a lot of rewards points.

This tea is as good, in my opinion. I know other people disagree, but I just think it works as well. The two teas are different. Santa’s Secret is a lot softer and rounded, while this Adagio blend is sharply peppermint-y. That might be the black tea base on this one, as Adagio’s black tea bases can be very acidic.

But I like the sharpness of this tea. It is like instead of sucking on a peppermint, one bites into one and chews it— that level of aggressive candy cane taste. And it tastes like a peppermint candy, for sure. It’s round and sweet that pairs with the mint. The taste of cured sugar is definitely here.

And I really like this tea. I really, really like it. Adagio’s flavored teas are soooooo hit or miss, but this is a huge hit for me. I bought 6 oz, which will certainly hold me through the winter.

And it’s cheaper than Santa’s Secret! Which is also really good, by the way. I don’t think anyone would need both, so this is kind of a cheaper and slightly more pungent option.

Sooooo, Adagio, can we get candy cane pieces in the blend options now? Please? I know this won’t be a permanent tea, but…

I’m almost done, I swear!

Anyway, I picked up a few bags of this at the New York Coffee & Tea Festival, and it is one of two grocery store teabags I found at the festival I liked.

At first, though, I found this tea way too sweet. I don’t taste much tea, but the more I drink it, the more I like it. It is a very sweet tea, but it is interesting. It’s very cake like and also quite lemon. The lemon flavor also manages to taste like lemon without tasting like cleaner or soap, which is lovely.

This is a decaf tea, and I have been drinking it at night. I’ll miss it then, as this is my last bag. I have no idea where I can actually buy this tea. It’s a Canadian brand, and I haven’t seen it around. If I do, I’ll probably grab a box. It’s not life changing, but it’s quite pleasant.

I’m so bad at spacing out tasting notes. I go days without posting any, and then I post more than one. It’s a terrible habit.

So this is my second cup of tea for the day. My first cup of tea was a really great cup of tea. This is a really great cup of warm juice. Dry, this tea is one of those teas with a lot of dried fruit and additives and not much tea. I only bought 2 ounces of this, so I didn’t have a tin, and I had to fish around the little pouch in order to get a mixture of both tea and dried fruit in my scoop. I see the dry tea in this. It’s a dark black leaf, and it is there. It expanded a bit in the tea bag I’m using to brew while my teapot is out of commission. I see it. But I don’t taste it. Not at all.

In fact, this cup of tea does not even resemble a cup of black tea. It brews to a light orange color. It really does look like juice.

With all of that said, I actually quite like this tea, which does surprise me. I don’t tend to like fruity teas, although I guess I do like tropical kinds of flavors. This is sweet. I do get mango notes, and I’d say that’s about all I get from it. However, it is satisfying in a — I want something sweet way.

I probably won’t drink it often, but it’s good, I guess.

I stopped by Kusmi teas on Friday. I had seen the store, but I had never gone in before, and I regret that this was my first time. The store is beautiful on the inside, as are the really lovely tins, which stack. All of the teas were available to smell, and all of them smelled amazing.

Kusmi teas has a pretty interesting history, and I’ve enjoyed reading about it. It started in Russia and ended up in France in 1917, I think. I also didn’t realize that the small tea store I knew about was the only one in the States.

Anyway, enough about that and more about the tea. I kind of mentioned this before, but the packaging is lovely. The tin is very attractive, and the tea is inside and sealed inside plastic. The tea itself smells both like lemon and bergamot. The lady at the store said that Anastasia was definitely an Earl Gray, and it is, but it’s also very lemon flavored in a very perfect way. I have been looking for a lemon tea, so I was really excited about this particular fact. I had been smelling a lot of teas when I went into the store, it’s right near David’s Tea, and I think my ability to discern between teas at the time was somewhat limited.

It brews to a beautiful light brown color with a red undertone. It looks like a mild black tea, which is exactly what it is. The tea itself is maybe a bit too thin for me. I wish there was more tea, however, I cannot fault the tea itself for this, as it is beautifully delicate in a way which I believe it is supposed to be. The lemon flavor and the bergamot flavor shine through and they really work together to create a bright and citrus-y body to the tea. I love the flavors of this tea. I find Earl Grays to lack citrus qualities sometimes, which I know is a strange thing to say, since they are by nature citrus. Anyway, this is very citrus bergamot.

Overall, this was a fantastic purchase. This tea is really great, and I am very impressed with it.

Maybe I got a bad batch of this. But it is GROSS.

I like flavored Pu-Erhs, and I like all the components of this tea. My boyfriend, however, prefers fruity teas and prefers Pu-Erh bases to black bases. I bought this to serve to him. I probably won’t actually serve it to him, because it’s gross.

So, this tea is very earthy, and not in the way that I like my Pu-Erh to be earthy. This tea tastes like I accidentally ate dirt that was on my hands—like what happens when you are a kid. It also tastes like grass. I like earthy Pu-Erhs, but this is a kind of earthiness which is off putting. I’m shocked I don’t like this base, because I like Adagio’s Pu-Erh Dante quite a bit.

And then, it gets worse. It took me awhile to figure out what the sweet fruit taste that is on top of the weird tea base. It struck me with a great deal of force. It tastes like Crunch Berry cereal. Almost exactly.

So, there’s a weird, malty-sweet fake berry taste on top of a weird grassy cheap Pu-Erh. I wish I liked this more. I really wanted to. But…

Wow, for once, I’m actually being diligent about my tea log. I feel special.

Anyway, my favorite Adagio flavored tea, in fact, the only one I’ve ever really loved, was the Guanabana, which has been discontinued. I’m sad about that, and I still am. This tea, though, is similar, and for that, I’m glad I tried it. The Passionfruit tea has all the attributes I liked in the Guanabana without the weird kind of over-ripe fruit taste that was so prevalent in the Guanabana. Unfortunately, I loved that aspect of the other tea.

However, this is still one of the best Adagio flavored teas I’ve tried for me. The fruit flavor is bright without being too fruity. It’s definitely sweet, but the sweetness is a kind of sour sweetness which compliments the quite astringent Adagio flavored tea base. This does taste slightly unusual, although it’s not so unusual as to be bizarre or even too tropical.

Ultimately, I like this tea. It’s a tea I might some day buy again. It’s not the Guanabana tea, but it does satisfy an itch I’ve had for awhile since said tea was discontinued. I wish I could detach how I feel about this tea from how I feel about that tea, but I can’t, and I’m sorry for that.

I’m still trying out a bunch of lemon teas, as I’d like to find one that suits my fancy perfectly. This tea is not that tea, and I prefer David’s Tea La La Lemon better, I think. I don’t have any more of that to compare this to side by side.

However, I drank this twice today, so I feel like I should review it. I recently had to replace my tea kettle, and I bought the Adagio Utilitea kettle as a replacement. It works great so far, although it is kind of hard to pick out specific temperatures as opposed to levels of temperatures, if that makes sense. Anyway, since I was already buying the kettle, I threw in some tea samples to go along with it, Lemon Soleil being one of them.

I had my first cup today, and I brewed the tea for three minutes at boiling. That was too hot of a temperature, I think, as the tea was very bitter. The lemon taste also tasted very artificial, almost like lemon cleaner. I brewed the tea again for three minutes at around 190 degrees, and it was profoundly better. It was a lighter tea base, and the lemon flavor tasted less oily and artificial.

Still, though, it didn’t make me LOVE this tea. I think I could learn to like it okay, and the fact that it’s a lemon tea, which I do love, and that the price point is so significantly cheaper than the David’s Tea blend may make me buy the Adagio tea again. I’m going to keep looking.

So, this is a sip down kind of, so I thought I’d write up my final thoughts on it. I brewed a really nice black tea this morning, but the cucumber tea from yesterday leached into my pot and ruined it (not the pot, the tea!). I managed to wash out my teapot with soap and also the infuser basket, and when I brewed this, it turned out right. I over brewed it a bit, unfortunately, but it’s still good.

Oh, yeah, and I think my tea kettle is broken, which is going to make my life a hassle until I replace it. It just isn’t working this morning.

So I made this tea with water heated from the stove. I’m drinking it while eating these delicious vanilla scones I made. I like this tea. It’s become my go to tea. I pretty much drink it all the time, because it’s light and normal and easy to drink. I don’t think I’ll be replacing it now that it’s gone, but I did drink a lot of it when I had it.

I still have a few teaspoons left, but they’re inside my tea-to-go bag, so I officially cleaned out my tin. I’m having trouble getting the sticker residue off the side, but otherwise, it’s good to go.

I do want to find a lemon tea I like better. But for now, I’m done with this one. It was a good first David’s Tea purchase.

I really didn’t need more tea, but guys, I love cucumbers. I’m like passionately in love with the taste of cucumbers. So when I saw this was coming out, I knew I needed to try it. So, I dragged my lazy butt out of bed today and made a trip downtown to buy a few grams of this to try. Luckily for me, this was one of the samples they had brewed in the store. When I tried it, I fell in love with it. It’s extremely light, impressively so for a black tea, and tastes strongly of cucumbers. The taste is sweet but distinctive. I get very little of the melon flavor, which is good, because that was the aspect of the tea that turned me the most off in its written description.

This is a tea I would never recommend to someone else, as it’s that unusual tasting, but it’s a tea that I know I love. I’m really glad, because Adagio’s cucumber white tea is undrinkably unpleasant, and I was worried this tea would fall into the same category, which obviously, it does not.

This tea is going to be great iced, I think. It tastes like cucumber water, mostly, or cucumber martinis, both of which one drinks cold. I may try to save some of the pot I made just now (I had to brew some as soon as I got it home, even though it’s way too late in the day to be drinking black tea) and chill it in the refrigerator over night. I may not have the discipline.

I ended up purchasing 100 grams on the spot, and I have no regrets.

I wanted something sweet today, so I brewed some of this. I usually really love sweet teas, but I haven’t been enjoying them recently as much as usual. However, I like this. At first, I thought it was a bit too sweet, and I still kind of feel that way, but the sweetness is complicated by the taste of the tea which is appreciated. My biggest complaint about this tea, and it’s a small one, is that there are almost no vanilla notes in this tea for me. I only taste the caramel, which comes across quite strongly. The backbone to this tea is the tea, which is a rustic tasting earthy tea. Even though the tea is sweet, the tea is present, which is probably the best aspect of this tea.

Overall, this is a great tea, but still wasn’t exactly suited to my preferences.