Aquarius (The Zodiac Series)

Great blend! I really enjoy this black tea hazelnut and vanilla. The hazelnut is more noticeable than the vanilla, but I think it is a good balance!

One of my favorite blends for breakfast. Very toasty and warming.

I had yet to try—or acquire—Harney & Sons Florence before penning my previous two tasting notes for Adagio Aquarius. The similarities are worth mentioning: hazelnut and cocoa nibs. I would say that this blend by Adagio is less strictly Nutella-esque. The flavoring seems to be lighter.

Another obvious difference is that this blend contains oolong, while the H&S is straight black base. However, upon examining the contents of my tin, I discovered that the oolong pieces, while undeniably present, are in very low proportion relative to the black tea. Well, that is, until infusion!

The spent oolong leaves expand to take over, making this tea seem much more oolongy than the dried blend would suggest. I love that about oolong—how it expands like some sort of creature from science fiction (a benevolent one!)—especially now that I have discovered that I do not have an oolong issue.

The oolong in this blend appears to be TQY (or TGY), although this is not specified. The dark green gnarled nuggets look fairly familiar to me, and I’m pretty sure that this is the only nugget-shaped oolong used regularly in blends.

Anyway, the presence of oolong notwithstanding, I went ahead and added cream because the hazelnut and cocoa nibs demanded it! Maybe I should go brew up some Florence right now to make a closer comparison of these two teas…

Well, okay, if you insist!

My sign! When I first drank this tea I wasn’t impressed. It didn’t seem to have any real flavor, it just tasted like generic tea. Then I let it sit on the shelf for a few months and then I tried it again. That’s when I realized that I drank so much coffee with hazelnut and vanilla creamer in grad school that those flavors just seemed like default morning beverage flavor. Now that I’ve given myself some time without drinking things with those flavors, I’m reminded how much I like those flavors and I can appreciate this tea a lot more. I like it a lot as a morning cup of tea, especially if you’re having something like a chocolate chip muffin or scone or other delicious breakfast pastry since I think hazelnut and vanilla go well with that kind of chocolatey dessert-for-breakfast kind of flavors.

I’m on a Zodiac quest. It started today w/ Aquarius.

*First Steep: Hot. 4.5 minutes.
I’m enjoying the flavors in this tea. (Similar to a Teavana favorite.) It is smooth, nutty, sweet without adding sugar/sweetener. I definitely like the hazelnut and vanilla oolong. It’s blended very well. A great coffee replacement… even a great dessert replacement. The flavor goes a long satisfying way.

*Second steep: Hot. 6 minutes.
My 2nd cup (tumbler-full) was much more bland. Too bad…

Adagio teas are very affordable. I’m looking forward to the next 11 days. The Aquarius blend is setting the bar pretty high.

Leaves

The leaves are rather boring looking: it looks just like a plain black tea with some cornflowers thrown in. But the smell is divine. It’s wonderfully hazelnut with just a little something extra thrown in – vanilla and chocolate. It’s not complicated, but it’s not completely one-note, either.

Tea

The smell of the tea itself is pretty similar to the leaves, albeit a bit more dilute. The flavor completely fails to deliver, though. I don’t get anything other than plain black tea in the flavor. How disappointing. I guess if you’re a fan of Adagio’s base Ceylon you’d enjoy this, but don’t expect anything more than the plain Ceylon flavor to be present.

For a copy of this review plus some pictures, check out my blog: http://lizkuba.com/tea-review-aquarius-by-adagio/

One of my everyday blends. This is a basic black tea with notes of hazelnut and vanilla. The flavors come through in the aroma more than they do in the taste. Still, it’s a strong tea with a coffee-like profile. The vanilla softens some of the astringency, but it remains fairly bitter on its own. (I wouldn’t recommend it to people like my sister, who avoids black teas in favor of naturally sweeter ones.) I imagine this tea would go well with milk or sweetener, though I haven’t tried that yet. It works well as a dessert tea (especially when paired with chocolate or pastries). Today’s steeping was a bit weak, but it worked fine for the caffeine boost I wanted.

I got this one from Arshness. I think it was described as being coffee like. Definitely reminded me of coffee. I should have thought of this before I brought it to work with me, without thinking to bring anything I like in coffee.

I tried it straight, and it was strong. Good, but strong, but not how I wanted to drink this. I really wanted to add sugar and whole milk, which I don’t have in the office. Instead, this got equal (the box of little sugar packets was empty, although the guy came to fix that, right after I dumped Equal into my tea. Go figure.) and powdered creamer. It really reminded me of a flavored coffee now. Fortunately, the Equal and powdered creamer didn’t ruin it. It made me feel younger, actually, because that’s how I often drank coffee before it started tearing up my stomach.

I want to try this one as a latte, and an iced “coffee”. It’s a good thing Arshness sent a great sized sample. Thanks so much!

Drinking Aquarius again tonight. I was going to try another TTB tea, but I honestly really wanted a comfort tea. So I go to my favorite latte mix. Aquarius. Mmm. So hazelnutty and delicious. It’s later than I usually let myself drink black, but I don’t care. It was wanted too badly tonight for me to deny it. Tomorrow I’ll drink more TTB teas. :)

Backlogging – This is the only new tea I had on vaca this week. It was okay. The hazelnut is the predominate flavor but overall the tea seemed a bit flat. Needs more depth of flavor to be really good. Not bad, though.