Capricorn

So I was looking for a black tea have following my cup of 52Teas’ Coconut Cream Pie tea and my gaze happened to fall on this tea. The two are quite similar, at least the descriptions would suggest they are, so I thought it might be neat to compare them both. This is just a quick and dirty evaluation, I don’t think I have the patience to do one of the long, detailed reviews Takgoti does. ;)

What I notice about the dry tea is, while 52Teas’ tea has lots of big coconut shavings, this tea only a has a few measly little shreds scattered through it. It doesn’t smell quite as strongly of coconut either.

The trend continues with the flavours; not as much coconut, but a bit more creaminess and also a touch sweeter, I think. One point in Capricorn’s favor is that it seems to take to milk better than the Coconut Cream Pie tea. The ‘bases’ of the tea taste different too, which I suppose only makes sense as Capricorn has an Irish Breakfast (Assam) base and 52Teas uses a Nilgiri base for their teas.

Which of these two teas do I like better? They’re both very much drinkable and pleasent, but I’m leaving toward prefering Coconut Cream Pie over this one because of its stronger, richer coconut flavour.

I believe this blend was sent to me by JoeCool ages ago. Sorry about the delay in trying it, I had put it in a tin, and it managed to get tucked away deep within my stash… and as I have mentioned before, I am trying to get my stash under some semblance of control… so I just came across this blend the other day…

It is a very flavorful blend. The Irish Breakfast is bold and bracing, and the coconut and vanilla give it a nice, creamy touch.

I like it.

Not so sure about this one. Its smooth and doesn’t have a bitter taste but I’m not really tasting the coconut. . . I’ll give it another try since I just bought a bag. . . Its good. . .just not blowing me away or anything.

I enjoy this blend. The dry tea leaves have an amazing sweet vanilla smell. I don’t really smell or taste the coconut much though. I really wish the coconut was more pronounced because I adore coconut but this tea is still pretty good. I would agree with some of the other reviewers, it seems to be Irish Breakfast with just a hint of flavor (but I’m a tea newbie so my palate is still new and relatively undeveloped).
I like to let this tea cool a bit because it seems to develop a sweeter, creamier, vanilla flavor after some time has lapsed. And it’s especially tasty with a little bit of cream/milk and some sugar.

A sample from Nichole!

I made this today simply because of the name. I am tutoring some young ladies and they requested that we use the book Tintenherz (Inkheart) for our passages. The antagonist is called Capricorn so I just had to make it, even though one of the girls hates coconut.

We had Triple Berry Blend as well so there would also be a tea that she liked! We had Lindt Blueberry truffles and they brought Belgian Butter Crisp Waffle Cookies, and it was my first time having those cookies. Recommended for tea time! They were purchased at Lidl but may be available other places as well.

The coconut hater did try this tea like a champ, but disliked it as expected. Her sister and I found it good hot, but when my cup grew cold it was rather astringent. It really tasted like moderate strength black tea with a lot of heavy coconut flavor, and I didn’t pick up the other things in the blend.

I didn’t expect to like Triple Berry Blend because of the hibiscus and rose hips, which I usually only take cold and sweetened, but I thought it was pretty good. I definitely didn’t mind drinking it. It wasn’t sour enough to cause a permanent pucker anyway! I am not going to do a separate review for it because when I look for it on the Adagio site nothing comes up with this exact name, so I am guessing it is discontinued. My no-coconut student enjoyed it very much with sugar.

Adagio tossed this in as a lagniappe on my last order and honestly, if I’d known this was what they wanted my birthday for I probably would’ve made one up (I’m not generally a fan of coconut in my tea).

It smells politely unassuming in the tin, but the buttery coconut notes in the aroma come to the forefront upon brewing. Thankfully each sip is heavily buttery and not so much on the coconut…so it actually makes for a super enjoyable cup. The first steep definitely reminds me of nothing more than a black tea version of butter coffee, in all the best ways.

My southern ass approves. :D

Home – 5:30 PM

The Great Cupboard Excavation
Untasted teas remaining: 13

Last one from Adagio. This was a free sample tin that they added to one of my orders.

It’s a fairly one-note coconut tea. The coconut is strong and it’s a bit sun tan lotion-y. I can’t really taste the black tea much, and get just a little bit of hay flavor from the white tea. I don’t really taste vanilla at all. It’s smooth and not at all bitter.

Meh.

Packaging

The imagery for Capricorn is weird. Goat-fish? Oookay. So the artwork for the Capricorn tea is surprisingly graceful, given what the artist has to go off of. We have an androgynous person with white hair (hood?) and goat horns, and they’re holding (?) a brown fish tail. They’re on an earthy brown-auburn background with flowers and leaves.

Leaves

The leaves are very aesthetically pleasing. It’s a lovely mix of greens, browns, and yellows (which is impressive, considering that the base teas are black and white) in the right proportions to give a very earthy, organic feel. In my review of Libra, I lamented that the rose petals were dry and yellow, but here I like the yellow color a lot better.

I find the smell of this absolutely fascinating. I was expecting something autumnal, based on the packaging. Instead, the dominant smell is coconut. But it’s not remotely tropical smelling. It’s coconut in an extremely earthy way. I’ve never really smelled coconut in this context before, it’s really quite lovely. I’m thinking that the vanilla is what really smooths this out.

Tea

The smell isn’t nearly as BAM! Coconut as the unsteeped leaves are. Don’t get me wrong, the dominant smell is coconut. But it’s quite a bit more muted, letting some of the natural smell of the tea leaves come out. The vanilla seems to be missing now.

The tea itself isn’t as complex as its constituents. The dominant flavor is just the black tea. It seems to be tempered somewhat by the white tea, but it’s more in a less-black way than a half-black-half-white way. The aftertaste is a lot smoother than the initial black-tea flavor.

Several other reviews I’ve read of this tea suggest it’s a milk-and-sugar kind of tea, and I can definitely see that working. Unfortunately, I don’t regularly stock milk or cream, but the next time I buy some, I’ll definitely give this tea a try again.

A copy of this review is available on my blog, along with a couple of pictures: http://lizkuba.com/tea-review-capricorn-by-adagio/

When I went to order this tea, it was unavailable as an individual purchase but available as part of the “earth blends” set – because, as any good Cappy knows, you’re an earth sign!

The tea itself seemed a little intimidating at first, because most black teas and I have a contentious relationship. However, the white tea and vanilla buffer/mellow it a bit, and the coconut (more so than the vanilla for me) adds just the right amount of sweetness. I let it cool down a bit before I drank it and it was simply refreshing and slightly energizing – this might be my new morning cup of tea!

Overboard TTB.

I can see the coconut in the mix. But I can’t taste or smell it. Disappointing for that aspect. Otherwise it’s just another vanilla black tea blend from Adagio. There are so many of those that they all seem to just blend together now.