White Cucumber

This tin is so hard to open. I’ve already had to vacuum up little leaves off the floor. :(

DH says the dry leaf smells like Christmas. Well, I’ll see him his Christmas and raise him a pickle, combining to make a sort of pickle potpourri. If they, you know, made pickle potpourri…

But hey, I’m not judging. Yet.

The liquor smells more potpourri and less pickle. I smell something like cinnamon. No, more like Red Hots (or Hot Damn). I am insane. (Or not because I made DH try some and his first question was “Is this a cinnamon tea?”) But underneath the Red Hot, I smell cucumber. Ooookay. As it cools, I smell more cucumber, less Red Hot.

The taste is… kind of nifty. The main flavor is very cucumber. Juicy, musky, good cucumber. The Red Hot flavor is hanging out a little underneath the cucumber – pretty much a reverse of the smell – but it moves to the front as I hold it in my mouth.

Mentally, these tastes don’t seem to go but in actuality it works. It’s flavorful but not as overpowering as the smell would indicate so that’s good. Not sure if I want a Red Hot cucumber tea though so rating subject to change.

ETA: 2nd steep @ 7mins. The flavor isn’t as strong but pretty much all I can taste is diluted Red Hot. DH says this tea should be called Big Red. I concur.

I’m really not getting cucumber out of this.
I mean, I taste cinnamon, and something vaguely vegetal. But I tend to associate a sort of watery crisp freshness to cucumbers, and I don’t get that same feeling from the tea.

The flavor is weak; maybe I didn’t use enough leaves. I’ll have to mess around with it some more.

This is certainly an… unusual tea. I was really craving a crisp white, Golden Moon’s Persian Melon to be exact, but I have a policy where I try to drink new teas before dipping into old ones and I still have several from my Adagio order to go through.

I’d read all the reviews before purchasing this and new it wouldn’t be exactly what I wanted, but I guess the name was just too tempting. I’ve been really, really wanting a cucumber tea recently: I picked up some cucumber lime Gatorade when I was sick (I know, it sounds disgusting, but it was the most refreshing drink I’ve ever had!) and wanted to replicate that taste with tea. Well, this isn’t exactly cucumber. When you open the bag there’s not even a trace of it—it smells just like pickling spices. Kind of gross and offputting, but a lot of Adagio’s teas either have a weird artificial smell or a bland scent that doesn’t translate to the actual brew.

It brewed up very colorless, and I was worried the tea to water ratio was wrong, but it tastes fine to me—this is just an unusually pale white, I suppose. The pickling spice smell was pretty much gone and I thankfully can’t taste it that much. What I am getting is a really overpowering sour note on the front of my palette—I have no idea from what, there’s no lemon in this blend and it honestly tastes like someone put wayyyy too much lemon juice in my mug. The cucumber is there in the middle—for a second this tea is heaven, crisp and sharp and fresh, but then at the end of the sip there’s that damn pickling spice! This tea is a real tease, so close to what I wanted at some points but the rest of it is kind of unappetizing. I think this would be much better iced and I am going to try cold brewing it to hopefully cut some of the sour notes—maybe mix it with a lime tea. It’s definitely far from perfect, but if I can get those cucumber notes to be more prominent I don’t think I’ll really regret purchasing it.

Yes! I ordered a good 18 samples of Adagio’s teas when we got our UtiliTEA kettle (which is fantastic – if only Steepster had equipment reviews!), having never tried that brand before and being enticed by the low price of admission, and thought just about every one I’ve tried so far was thoroughly boring, good but not great and that’s just unacceptable in a DavidsTea world. Every one of those were blacks and oolongs (the latter my favorite variety and therefore the lion’s share of the samples I ordered) until getting to the delicious vanilla green, and between that and this white cucumber I think my judgment of Adagio might be changing.

A vaguely unpleasant scent from the leaves set my expectations pretty low, but the vinegary notes vanished in hot water to make way for a very recognizable white tea scent. To be honest, if you had me smell the liquor without knowing what it was, I’d guess this was a plain Silver Needle – albeit an old one, but still pretty quality stuff. There’s a very pleasant vegetal edge that more than makes up for the discouraging nose from the leaves.

I normally steep white teas one or two minutes and no more. Adagio’s instructions on the types-of-tea leaflet you can expect to find in any shipment encourage you to steep theirs for as much as seven (!) minutes because the flavor needs that time to come out, which just sounds downright heretical to me. The cucumber white’s bag recommends a more modest 3-5 minutes, so I shook off the innate resistance to doing so and gave the infusion a solid four. Fortunately, that time didn’t end up making my cup bitter, and I’m intrigued to try a few different times with this tea.

In fact, the flavor is really, really good. I’m a big cucumber fan so I was expecting to at least like the tea despite how odd it sounds, but I found myself loving each sip more than the last. I’m not sure I would describe the flavor as cucumber in a blind taste test, but it definitely tastes crisp and vegetal on top of the fantastic mild earth tones that mark white tea. The liquor is more golden than most whites, likely due to the long steep.

My cup’s been cooling down as I sip it writing this review, as hot beverages are wont to do, and the scent and taste both are getting stronger and closer to the tea’s name. I still love each sip more than the last, as I mentioned in the opening of this review. Color me impressed; I’m excited to get to Adagio’s other whites shortly.
-Cash

From two swaps, I managed to request samples of this tea.

Ooops. (Anyone want some? PM me to arrange a swap)

Well. Hrm. I don’t think the scent of the dry leaves are disgusting as others have commented. Odd, but not disgusting.

Initally my brewed leaves smelled exactly like cinnamon. An the liquor smells like it.

The taste… is confusing. I think it tastes a little like soap. But strangely, pleasantly so. I think the cucumber flavor, which is definitely there, reminds me very much of all the various cucumber scented lotions and soaps, while still tasting nice. Except.. well.. it still tastes like soap. Pleasant soap, but soap. Don’t get any cinnamon flavor. Although I’m getting a little soap flavor burn afterwards, which others might taste as cinnamon.

I don’t think I’m fond of this. I was hoping to be, as I like cucumbers a lot. Sigh. MEH! Low end of the meh scale. How sad.

The dry leaves smell rather like pickle juice – a little off-putting at first. The tea brews up to a delicate golden hue, with a sweetly refreshing taste. This is definitely going on my favorites list!

thanks to TeaEqualsBliss for including this in our trade! First, I must say the picture above that goes with this tea is so clear and well done. You ca see all the fuzziness to the white tea leaves. I actually don’t even like the fuzziness to white tea but that picture is impressive. I was worried about this one when I saw the name. White tea. Cucumber. Uh oh. I don’t love either of them. But luckily the flavor is mild… a mild dill pickle! But also is genuinely cucumber. It definitely tastes like cucumber. I usually associate white teas with drying my mouth, but this one didn’t! So it wins there anyway. I’m actually glad this one isn’t worse! But I don’t think any cucumber white tea could impress me too much. Not a bad blend but am I crazy to think it would have been better with a stronger flavor? More dill pickle?

I don’t think I’ve ever logged this one but tonight I just want something… different.. I will admit that I hate the aroma of the dry leaf. It smells like vinegar. Very off putting.. But good news is that the vinegar aroma disappears after it’s brewed. The flavor is nice. The cucumber is very natural tasting and it blends well with the sweetness of the white tea. There is a nice vegetal note. It’s quite relaxing, actually.

number 40: The last tea from “Another travelling tea box.”

I may have done a dumb thing by prioritizing my tastings. I’m left with a weird-sounding cucumber tea as the last tea I taste. The funky smell of the dry leaves doesn’t help. Oh well, here goes nothing.

The smell is basic dry tea, but toasty. The taste is a bit strange, probably the cucumber. The taste is clean, with a good finish. No hint of the unappealing dry tea smell. There is certainly nothing wrong with this tea, but it doesn’t really appeal to me. Part of this may be psychological, but mostly I am mentally comparing this to the many Bai Mu Dan teas I drink regularly, and for the same price they are a lot more interesting.

We are up to sample # 16 from TTB-A
Leif was really curious about this one. I thought it would be boring.
Turns out, we both enjoyed it. :)