Adagio Tea Review

While I’m quite interested in tea, I tend to stick with the teas I know I like and not really branch out. Part of this is because finding good teas in my area can be hard, and when I do find halfway decent teas they are expensive.  Through the internet I heard about adagio.com and their teas.  For black Friday they had free shipping, and I had a $5 credit, so I went to town buying samples.

I bought in total four sample bags, and then received one for free after sharing my purchase on facebook.  Samples are $2-3, each is labeled to makes 10 cups of tea, but I believe it could make up to 15 (though I haven’t measured).  Each sample bag is 0.8 oz, and is a big bigger than my hand. I think this is a decent deal, because at the grocery store if you buy tea bags of a good quality you get 15-20 bags usually for $4 or even a bit more. This way you get looseleaf tea and a large variety to choose from for a similar price per cup.  Each bag is labeled with the name of the tea, its ingredients, and the advised steeping time.

The teas I got are: Ceylon waltz, pu erh spice, irish breakfast, earl grey lavender and, lapsang souchong.

I chose these teas specifically because I wanted I few I knew I would like (Ceylon, irish breakfast), One I thought I might like (lavender), and two types of tea I have never tried and didn’t know if I would like.

Ceylon Waltz:

This is an unflavored black tea from the Ceylon region. This I brewed like I would any other black tea, for about 4 minutes and drank with half a teaspoon of sugar and a bit of milk. It is very good, but not anything exciting.

Pu erh spice:

Pu erh is a special type of tea that I aged and fermented to give it a smooth taste. This blend also includes cinnamon, ginger, and orange along with other spices. I brewed this for 5 minutes as recommended. This tea was surprisingly good. I drank it with sugar and milk and was surprised that I could taste the spice, but it wasn’t overwhelming. It was warming, but not spicy; it was milder than any chai I’ve had.

Irish breakfast:

This is a black tea blend including assam and Ceylon teas. I found it to be a bit stronger than the Ceylong waltz and a bit more “warming”. This was a great, but again not too exciting tea; a great black tea option.

Earl grey lavender:

I like earl grey, and this is it blended with lavender buds and a “cream flavor”. I found the lavender taste to be pretty strong, and I think a bit clashy with the bergamot citrus. I think the lavender would be better added to a plain black tea. Overall, it was ok, but I could not see myself drinking a whole pot. It gets overwhelming after a while.

Lapsong Souchong:

This was the tea I was most dubious about, and rightly it turns out. I have heard of this tea a lot on TV, movies, books etc. but hadn’t really know what is was. The website said it was a type of smoked black tea. Even though this kind of disgusted me, I vowed to try it anyway. When I first sniffed it, I was overwhelmed. It was like sniffing a campfire! It took me a while to work p to drinking it, and the brewing experience was a bit not so good. The smell gave me a bit of a headache. When I actually drank it though, it wasn’t so bad. In fact the taste was fine; bordering good, but the smell was still overwhelming. I don’t know if I’ll drink it again. I would like to note though, I don’t think anything was wrong with my sample or with adagio, I just think I don’t like this type of tea.

Overall, I’m quite happy with my adagio experience, and am curious to try out more teas. It was definitely cheaper waiting until they had free shipping, and when black Friday rolls around next year (or if they have another promotion) I might just have to but more. I still haven’t tried an oolong or rooibos tea yet.