Featured & New Tasting Notes
I’m not a huge rooibos fan but I LOVE this particular tea. It has sort of a creamy, vanilla/amaretto flavour to it and it makes my tastebuds squee in delight.
It’s filled with beautiful blue, red, and yellow flower petals, though I have no idea if they actually lend anything to the taste. It does make for a colourful, cheer-inducing tea to look at.
My reward for a lot of work and well under 8 hours of sleep for the past 5 or so days was a big saucepan of this.
It smells so spicy, yet sweet. It’s homey, yet exotic. It warms you up but tickles your taste buds ever so slightly. When it’s simmering in the pot, the aroma rises, sweeps out, and perfumes the entire room.
I’ve found that, once the milk has begun to froth and you shut the stove off, it gets better the longer you let it sit, but I often can’t wait longer than 10 minutes. The milk adds an almost malty quality to the scent. The tea itself is rich and creamy, with a hint of sweetness [I use two tablespoons of sugar] and a puff of heat from the spices. Unequivocally delicious. If teas were blankets, this one would be a chenille throw.
Usually, I make enough of this to stick some in the fridge and drink later, because this is equally good chilled. But today, I needed to consume every last drop. So I did.
Best reward ever.
There is nothing that feels as warming and loving as a pot of real chai made with milk and sugar instead of water. I’ve reboiled my spices and tea in more milk when I ran out and it worked great.
I’ve never had chai chilled – never even crossed my mind. Yet now I’m dying to try it with Adagio’s Thai Chai.
Yea, you made some chai!!! I totally agree that a good chai made the traditional way is like a chenille throw. I love my chai hot, but we did have some left over in the fridge too that was tasty chilled.
@Carolyn I can’t seem to make my chai any other way. I tried doing it raw once and all I could think about was how good it was with the other stuff. It’s the only tea for which I crave additives.
@Auggy Ooooh you should. It’s sooo good.
@LENA F. Yay indeed! I needed it. In fact, it might happen again before the week closes. I’m grumpy and I’ve got a lot of stuff that needs doing.
oh wow! I want some of this right now! i’m going to have to wait until later, though.
Thanks to Lena for the ‘krab’ tea!
3g/6oz/175/2:30 – Smelling this and thinking of sea food, I can totally see the crab comparison. Or maybe lobster tank – that sort of salt + crustacean smell? Something like that. The initial taste has that same flavor, too, but while I can see it, it’s probably not my first thought. My first thought is “oh, Chinese green”.
My description for a lot of the Chinese greens I’ve tried includes briny. This one gets it a tiny bit but as it cools but what really surprises me about this is that as it cools, instead of the brine taste getting stronger, there’s a delicate sweetness to it, especially in the tail, that shows up more. And that pretty much makes me love it because I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a Chinese green. So woo hoo!
And thanks Lena!!!
I seem to have my innards back under control (fingers crossed) and I have also managed, it seems, to get rid of that godawful bad taste in my mouth. Good thing, that, because I’m sick and tired of peppermint infusion!
I’m sticking my neck out and trying some real tea. Hopefully I won’t regret it later.
This one was my first ever flavoured oolong (that I can remember), and it’s quickly become a favourite. It was lucky I found it because I was buying something else from the site at the time and just randomly started clicking around to see what else they had.
It smells absolutely divine and it tastes equally as lovely. I like it better and better every time I have some of it. It’s just what I need for a post-sick comfort tea.
Why did the leaf smell fruity when I opened it? Seriously fruity. That’s so weird. Tastes fine though. Maybe a little sweet. I wonder if it was sitting next to a flavored tea in the pantry – this is one that I just have a small sample of so it is in a plastic bag. Weirdness.
It’s good though. Because of the weird sweetness (which maybe is aftertase from my gum? Would Extra spearmint do that?) I’m getting a bit of a chocolate taste. It’s a tiny bit flatter in flavor than when I’m at home but that’s because I either use bottled water at work or nasty nasty tap water. I’ll choose flat tea over undrinkable nasty tea any day.
Well tea’s really good at absorbing oders so I’d guess that the gum or something similar might be the problem. The smell and taste I get from Yunnan is primarily smokey, while granted I don’t have a lot of experience with this type of tea your’s sounds pretty far off.
Hah! Yep, I think I had it next to a blackcurrant flavored tea, both in thin plastic sample bags. Oops! But the faint sweetness actually works with it so I’m going to mark that down for future reference but keep on truckin’.
A co-worker brought this back for me after a trip to the UK. I love strong black teas, and the UK bagged teas I’ve tried are always so much fuller than the miniscule US ones. A good, solid everyday blend. I have to be careful not to oversteep this one, but it can be saved with milk if I do.
This is an incredibly good tea, though I’m not really sure why. I steeped it for 4 minutes, per NMTeaCo’s website. The initial smell I got was classic barber shop, some kind of hard candy, and a little bit of old man cologne smell to it. Very strange.
Upon tasting it I found a pleasant light flavor, with hints of mandarin orange in there. It isn’t a dominating taste of orange, which is good, considering that it was encased in orange peel. Still tastes a little old man cologne-ish, but I guess that’s the aged pu erh at work, right? There’s a very light yellow tint to it as well, a bit different from most greens I have brewed in the past.
Overall I really do enjoy the subtle-ness of this tea, even if it has barber shop/cologney overtones to it. It has some kind of charm to it, that inspires me to drink it; weird. Definitely a tea to try, I’m going to give this guy a 90 Rating on the TeaCast scale. Just excellent!
This blend took a few months to grow on me.
I often buy Adagio’s blends on a whim. When I first tried this it was not what I was expecting, the vanilla flavor seemed far too strong, so I put it away & didn’t try it again until I ran out of my favorite oolong. Now I drink it at least twice a week. Sometimes you need to go into things without any expectations. Maybe my taste buds changed, but now I really enjoy the vanilla.
It is OK. I steeped for 4 minutes and added raw sugar and a little milk. I was expecting more of a chai, even though it doesn’t say that.
I don’t really care much for mint flavours on their own. My colleagues drink this mint/liquorice root concoction that they claim is delicious. I disagree. You don’t even get the two flavours at the same time. First it’s minty mint and then the liquorice root doesn’t come through until you swallow, which to me seems like trying to have two different sorts of tisanes at the same time. Like they couldn’t decide if they wanted one or the other. But that’s not what I’m having now so I’ll shut up about it.
As mentioned I don’t really care much for mint. I have it so I can mix it into other stuff.
But then, on days like these where I’ve apparently eaten something or other that I shouldn’t have, it’s the only sort of tea or approximation of tea* that I can stomach. The very idea of anything else, even my normal favourites just make me go bleeeeargh!
So I’m having plain peppermint infusion now. I’m not enjoying it really, but it’s the only thing I want.
*Herbal infusions are of course NOT tea. Herbal infusions never HAVE been tea. Herbal infusions never WILL be tea. Herbal infusions have never even as much as seen a tea bush and are therefore no more tea than cocoa is coffee.
I feel the same way about mint, but I have a tin of spearmint for those days where my stomach can’t handle full on tea and then I usually mix it with a cream-flavored black. Mint is more medicinal than happy.
I reserve my Moroccan Mint for when I’m feeling frazzled and need to hit the refresh button. Or the wake-up button. Or hit both buttons frantically until I break the machine and then go cry in the corner. It’s not for everyone, though.
Mint by itself is kind of a one-hit wonder. Try mixing it with a green or black tea. You’ll still get a heady hit of freshness, but the tea will add a satisfying complexity.
Licorice root is better for coughs and sore throats I find, although apparently it’ll coat and soothe irritated digestive systems aswell.
Have you tried mixing in camomile with your peppermint?
Aug3zimm & Cynthia Carter: I’ll save those suggestions for later, when I’m feeling better. At the moment I can’t have tea primarily because I think my stomach would revolt against me, and secondarily because when I’m sick it just doesn’t taste good.
Takgoti: I’ve never had Moroccan Mint, but it pops up everywhere regularly. Maybe I should get around to trying it one of these days.
Jillian: I don’t have an chamomile at the moment, otherwise I’d totally try that. I’ve used liquorice root successfully before with sore throats, though. It might have been somewhat placebo, but as long as it works I don’t care if it’s psychosomatic or not. Just a small bit of parted lengthwise liquorice root in the cup, boiling water on and in combination with strepsils. That totally works.
The apple flavor is a little too subtle for me, but this is still a nice, drinkable tea, and perfect for a cold morning.
