Long time, no reviews from me. I tend to experiment more in the winter and drink less tea in the summer. I just haven’t seemed to develop a taste for iced tea to carry on this addiction during warmer times. I still do appreciate a cup or two in the morning however.
So on to the Mambo sample from Adagio. The smell of this tea before brewing it has a strange almost mint-like spiciness… I wonder how this will come through when brewed? The label claims this is a mixture of Yunnan Jig and Wuyi Ensemble. Both teas from Adagio I have drank before, I don’t remember this smell coming from either, but it has been a while since I drank the Wuyi.
This is my second steeping and I added some additional tea before brewing which is a technique I have found works well with several Yunnan teas (Yunnan Noir makes an awesome second cup this way). The first cup was brewed for 3 minutes with about 9 ounces of water and a teaspoon and a half of tea. The second cup was brewed for 3 minutes with the same amount of water and 3/4 of a teaspoon of additional tea.
The aroma of this tea is quite nice part buttery, part grassy, small part sassy (very slight smoke?) and spice-like. I think this last bit (smokey spice) is what my nose was smelling before brewing.
Taste is a well constructed fairly mild black tea with some slight grassy notes. All in all a good drink that I shall put in the buy some more when you get a chance pile that will let me experiment more with tea amounts and steeping times.