19 Tasting Notes

80

I was pleasantly surprised by this tea. There’s nothing too complicated about this one. It’s just a plain black tea with some light tropical fruitiness going on. It’s pretty high up there on my list of favorite flavored teas.

Flavors: Tropical

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20

Extremely disappointing. I was expecting a kind of dark sweet fruitiness, somewhere between plum and currants. But all I got was hibiscus and tart. I ended up throwing the sample pack away, it was so unappealing to me.

Flavors: Hibiscus, Tart

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100

This tea is amazing. It’s got this wonderful, almost buttery mouthfeel that is incredibly smooth. The flavor is somewhere between green and black – it’s got the lightness of the green without the vegetal notes, and the boldness of a black tea. The only down side is that it is very unforgiving with variations in water temp and time, and quantity of tea leaves used.

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 4 min, 30 sec

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80
drank White Strawberry by Adagio Teas
19 tasting notes

When I saw this described as a strawberry creme-saver, I knew I had to get some. Well, A++, exactly as described. When I opened the pouch, it was like POOF! STRAWBERRY CREMESAVER IN YOUR FACE. It’s a very pretty blend, and Adagio’s image of it matched my sample pouch very well.

The tea steeps surprisingly dark for a white tea, though I’m guessing it’s mostly due to the inexplicable rooibos. Some of the strawberry smell is lost when it’s steeped, but it’s surprisingly present in the flavor. The cream is lost in the flavor, though. I think it’s overpowered by the bite (it’s a soft bite, but bite nonetheless) of the strawberry.

I would love to try this with real cream at some point in the future, but cream just isn’t something I stock regularly. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to buy some more.

Flavors: Cream, Strawberry

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 30 sec 2 tsp 10 OZ / 300 ML

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70

Here we’ve got a run of the mill black tea with a few red safflower petals thrown in. There’s a few pieces of fruit; I originally thought it was pomegranate, but it’s actually raspberry.

Speaking of raspberry, the leaves smell of raspberry, but in a really dark, full kind of way. Not smoky, exactly, but full bodied and complex. It’s interesting to smell raspberry like this without a chocolate addition of some sort. It must be the vanilla and creme that are giving the tea its interesting profile, though it’s hard to pinpoint those flavors individually. I like the smell quite a bit.

Unfortunately, that lovely raspberry smell is completely absent from the tea itself. It’s now 99% bergamot, which is very disappointing.

The flavor profile matches the tea’s smell, too. It just tastes like a diluted Earl Grey. A bit of sugar teases out some of the raspberry flavor, but it’s still covered up by the bergamot.

A copy of this review can be found on my blog, as well as a few pictures: http://lizkuba.com/tea-review-sagittarius-by-adagio/

Flavors: Raspberry

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 4 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 250 ML

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80

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drank Gentian-Jade Beauty by ESGREEN
19 tasting notes

Just a quick tasting note for now, then I’ll do a better/real review when I drink it again.

Alright, so I’m a bit of a hipster. I have this thing where I have to be different. I drive a weird car, I live in the hipsteriest part of town, and I have a habit of buying bras in brands no one has heard of from random online companies in the UK. I’m fairly new to the tea scene, but I guess it’s going to spill over into my tea life. I decided to order from ESGreen because they had cheap sample sizes and have a great rewards program. So, naturally, I chose like six teas that no one on Steepster has reviewed yet.

I was reading up on Gentian a little before I bought some (because buying some random flower I’ve never heard of from a company no one’s ever bought from to ingest sounds like a good idea), and I saw most tea is made from its root. And its root is apparently really bitter. As in, they make bitters from Gentian root. So I was a little iffy going into this.

But I was pleasantly surprised. The tea was full yet light, the barest hint of vegetal-ness plus a sweet tone that became more pronounced as the tea cooled off. I drank several steepings of this tea, which rarely happens, I usually get bored after one cup.

So, fascinating tea. I recommend.

Flavors: Sweet, Vegetal

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65
drank White Symphony by Adagio Teas
19 tasting notes

This tea isn’t doing much for me. Kind of a generic white-ish tea. Someone else mentioned it was vegetal to them – not a description I would have come up with on my own, but I can get it now that it’s been pointed out.

I got pulled away from my desk shortly after I steeped the tea, so it might be better at its steeping temperature (rather than ~120ish). When I try it again, if I like it more, I’ll upgrade the rating.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 4 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 10 OZ / 300 ML

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70
drank White Monkey by Adagio Teas
19 tasting notes

I am a big fan of white tea, but I’ve been wanting to branch out to green tea for a while now. After reading the descriptions of a few, this was one I settled on.

It’s light. Really light. If you’d just handed me the freshly brewed tea, I would have said that it’s a slightly grassy white tea. The liquor is very pale, and the flavor isn’t robust. I can definitely see how someone coming off of a more traditional green tea would call this bland or flavorless.

It’s not doing a lot for me. I won’t have a problem finishing the sampler pouch, but I doubt I’ll buy it again.

Flavors: Vegetal

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 2 min, 30 sec 1 tsp 275 OZ / 8132 ML

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95
drank Taurus by Adagio Teas - Duplicate
19 tasting notes

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Profile

Bio

I’m fairly new to the tea scene, but I’m finding my niche. I particularly like caffeine-free teas. I started with rooibos but I’m ready to start branching out to herbal and/or decaf teas.

Location

St Louis, MO

Website

http://www.lizkuba.com

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