Decaf Apricot

My evening cuppa listening to my Girl Scout Troop plan for a campout we are having this weekend. I am wondering if the 6-10 inches of snow in our forecast will slow us down any…. I did pack my tea for the weekend first!
Lightly sweet and I can definitely taste the apricot. Lovely and relaxing with a little sweetener. (I am seeing a pattern here….tea greatly adds to my relaxation. Awesome!)

Spent the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon writing hard in a room with no windows…emerged hoping for a shot of real light (I am convinced that I run on solar batteries), and discovered….blecccccch. Iron gray skies. So, to soothe my sagging psyche, I made myself a sunny little cuppa, left it all five minutes as prescribed on tin. Nice, except folding laundry and drinking it simultaneously sorta sucked the medicinal value out of it.

This is a decent example of green tea lightly flavored with apricot. This smells as good as it tastes, which is pretty darn close. It’s not one of my favorites, but I do enjoy the pleasant taste of juicy apricots mixed with quality green tea (which tastes just slightly grassy). I always recommend to brew green tea less than other teas, so I never brew this longer than 2 1/2-3 mins. I do like the decaf factor, especially in the afternoons.

This tea begins well. A full and rich peach-apricot flavor covers the faintly apparent taste of plain black tea. But as you continue to sip, the whole experience is overcome by bitterness. Soon, all that remains is a bitter and astringent aftertaste, and then your tongue and mouth begin to feel dried-out. Not recommended.

This (Aug. 1) entry from Adagio Teas “Week of July 27” box of samples is unsurprisingly somewhat more robust than the Apricot Green sample (Aug. 2) in the same gift box. I taste-tested the Apricot Green first, since I wanted the milder tea to hit my palate first.
This one being the black tea, even though decaffeinated, had a stronger tea flavor right from the start. Adagio uses the same “other” ingredients in both blends: apple pieces, natural apricot flavor, apricots, and marigold flowers. Yet this black tea is quite gentle; the lack of caffeine renders it a not-so-different version of the green.
Adding a bit of sugar to this tea does not result in a “oh! there’s TEA in here too, not just the apricots” feeling that happened when adding sugar to the green tea. Because the black tea had more of a presence from the beginning than the green tea does, all the sugar did was to sweeten it (duh).
When I sniffed the first-opened packets of tea, I actually liked this one better; the black tea gave it more odoriferous effect. The Apricot Green smelled more like being in the fruit section at the grocery. Yet in the drinking, I actually preferred the green.
Both are very nice cups of tea. But even though I usually live for decafs, since I’m affected by the caffeine, and usually prefer the flavor depth of black teas—I have to give the edge here to the Apricot Green.
I won’t “Not recommend” this tea, since I did like it. Just not enough to push it into an outright “Yes”.

Samples Only TTB
It’s nice to have another decaf that I like but I am not overwhelmed. Sometimes I think that I don’t do a good job shaking/mixing the package of tea. It doesn’t seem to have as much apricot flavor as others are tasting. I like it well enough but I am not excited.

Samples Only TTB
Another tea that I understeeped. Dang, I’m off my game today. I could taste the apricot more in this one than I could taste the orange in the decaf orange so thats a plus. I’m discovering I’m not a big apricot tea fan though so this one gets a pass from me though.

Samples Only TTB

Not bad. Is Adagio’s Ceylon decaf mixed with mild Apricot flavor. Comes out a very apricot color and smells apricotty. It tastes ….apricotish.
I don’t dislike it, but it isn’t jaw-dropping. If you love apricots, you should like it.
I like apricots alright. Take my rating accordingly.

I forgot about this and waay oversteeped it, so I’m not going to give an official rating just yet. The tea smelt really good, but didn’t taste like it had any sweetness even though I added sugar, no doubt because the tea had gone bitter. Eh, next time.

This tea just makes me feel warm-fuzzy-happy (I actually said “nom nom nom” the first time I tried it). Someone else noted a weird tongue-feeling, and I did experience it one of the times I made it, but it’s not enough to make me stop drinking it. I’ll probably try to keep a sample size on hand since it is a nice evening option. NE