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This week I decided to get a friend of mine to write a post on her new experiences on tea, Kelly Strickland of kellystrickland.net

- Kelly

Like all other adagio tea kits, the platinum tea chest is worth every dollar. I bought it on an impulse, enticed by the teas that came in the kit as well as the craftsmanship of the chest. And upon recieving the chest I was eager to see what teas were in the chest, as my experience told me there were going to be differences in what was online an what I recieved. I was supprised to see that I got most of the teas that came with it there were two alterations, I didn’t get the silver needle or the Wuyi Oolong. Which was ok because I enjoyed all ones they put in their place, the Red Bloom decorative tea and the Yunnan. There are five packages of six different types of tea for a total of thirty bags, each with it’s own story and unique flavor. I haven’t tried all if the teas yet, I’ve tried four of the six and I’m already impressed with my purchase. Anyone who enjoyed their starter kit ( see my past review) and wants a second adventure with a nice variety, this kit is for you. The wooden case sells for $19 so adding thirty bags of tea for another $20 makes the tea less than a dollar a cup, and a great deal.

Adagio’s hand woven Red Blossom tea is a dark tea (boiling water, 5 min steap). This tea starts as a compact ball and as the name suggests blossoms into a peach colored flower that is as pleasing to the eyes as the tea is to the lips. It’s a rich dark tea similar to an orange peoke with a cross of a dark oolong. This tea is definately a re-buy and I’m sad that I only bought 5 bags (1 blossom per bag).

The Revision3 Tea Sampler Kit from adagio is an 8 tin sample kit. It contains 8 custom teas from 4 of personalities of the diggnation crew. Kevin, Alex, Hippie and Prager have all taken time to make custom teas for Adagio and all of the crazy tea drinkin diggnation fans. All have durastically different smells and different tastes.

Hippie Glenn’s teas tend to contain camomile and taste flowery due to the strong taste of it. Which made both of them unplesant to me.

Kevin’s Red Death Rooibos is simply a rooibos with his name on it, which seemed like a bit of a rip off. On the other hand, Kevin’s other tea, Mintastic, was very peasant as my first mint based tea, and I will    probably purchase it separately next time around.

Similar to Glenn’s, Alex’s teas are strong smelling, but in a better way. One of Alex’s teas Exectus, contains chunks of apples and blood orange, which are very plesant smelling and tasting. His other tea, contains candy cane and peppermint, and is named “Tea Bag of Holliday Goodness”. I can’t comment on this one yet, as I have not tried it, but I can say that it smells like it will be an interesting cup.

David Prauger’s tea mix’s are very contrasting, one is an almond oolong mixed with dark choclate (The Man Behind the Green Curtain), which is odd, because it’s not a green tea. The other is a coconut pouchong and white monkey mix, which IS a green tea and is named White Monkey Sinensis. The almond oolong is a very tastefull tea, it was my first oolong tea, and I thoroughly enjoyed the hint of choclate that lingered in the background. The White Monkey on the other hand wasn’t as special as I would have expected, but I can’t say anything bad about it either. Perhaps it is simply my skill level of steaping tea, but I found it to be a very ‘green’ tasing tea with little taste other than the taste of a generic cup of green tea. I’m going to give it another try in the furture, but right now; its not a rebuy.

One of the first tea’s I tried out of my sampler set was the Gunpowder tea. It gets its name from the obvious pellet appearance of the tea. It comes rolled up in small balls that resemble ammunition,  I thought it was interesting, so I tried it.

Upon steaping the tea, I discovered that there is more than one reason that it has its name; it tastes like smoked green tea. Originally I was turned from it altogether, but it shortly grew on me as simply a strong tea. I give about a 6.5/10 on the taste, so its not horrible. I also think that mixing it with other tea’s may make an interesting cup. So when I’m done reviewing all of my original tea’s I may just get funky and try some mix’in and match’in.

The Adagio Starter Set is exactly what the name suggests, a starter set. It comes with a ingenuiTea (inguenity) teapot, a newbie’s guide to tea (entitled “a guide to tea”), and 4 tea samplers based on your pick from the 4 available types.

I chose the green tea set, which was supposed to come with citron green, genmai cha, gunpowder & hojicha. Which would have been nice, if that’s what I got, I didn’t notice the “Teas subject to change.” part at the bottom of the page, I got all except for the hojicha, which was replaced with some green pekoe (reviewed soon).

But this isn’t actually a tea review. This review is for the sample set itself, SO lets start the review. 

If you break this package down, its actually great!

Lets compare the set’s price, to the price of its parts.

The starter set contains the following pieces.

• Teapot (16oz) – Cost $19




• Tea Sampler kit (6 tins ) – Cost $14 (2.34 ea.)




• “a guide to tea” – Cost $5

Total Cost for above: $38

The actual sample set has all of the above except for 2 less tea tins ($4.68 value) so to be fair in comparing exactly what you get in the kit lets remove that amount.

New cost: $33.32 (for comparison)

Cost of full sample set: $19

Subtracting A from B, you end up with a solid $14 savings. That’s the price of another tea sampler set!! To someone like myself who is new to the whole idea of brewing my own tea, this is a GREAT buy.

I recommend this to anyone interested in a new spin on an old beverage (the book explains just how old). It also sets you up so that you only need to buy the leaves afterward, and the book will give you an idea on how to make that perfect cup, as well as explain what tisane`s are…..

 Have you tried any of the tea’s in my new kit? Any pointers for tea’s I should try? I want to know!

What are your thoughts?

The past year or two I have had a minor interest in tea. Mostly the common brands, generic greens, orange pekoe, earl greys ect…. A few weeks ago, some of my co-workers began drinking some green tea, and my interest was again sparked. I had some of their tea, and found that I was able to tell different brands were better than others and decided that it was time for me to take my interest to the next step.

Enter Adagio. I had remembered the guys from Diggnation talking about this website name Adagio, and that they had made their own custom tea’s. I stumbled my way over there and found a VAST variety of tea’s of all sorts. After searching around for a bit, I found a nice starter kit for $19. It came with their signature steeper (if thats a word), a book about tea and 4 tins of tea of your choice of green, black, herbal or flavors. I chose the green from my experience back at the office and also got the Revision 3 tea sampler, some bagged citrus green and an extra filter for the steeper. It all came to about $50(US), which as my first adventure into the world of gourmet tea, is not too bad.

The citrus green was the first thing I tried. It was in bag’s and had directions written on it so it was the easiest thing to try, which leads me to my first tea review.

Citrus Green Bags

Price: $10 (15 bag box)

As my first ‘real’ tea from Adagio, this was not a disappointment. I opened the book that came with my starter kit and saw simple directions to the full leaf teas that I also bought, but this just seemed simpler.

Upon tearing open the rather larger than expected package of tea, my nose was hit with a wonderful aroma of the usual green mixed with a pleasant touch of lemon and lime, truly enjoyable.

I added my water, which was above the recommended temperature (not the best idea, but it still worked).Steeped for the recommended 3 minutes, and took a taste.

Refreshing.

I was introduced to a new world of tea. Not too much different than the run of the mill green tea’s you buy at a store, but I could definitely tell that this was something to this tea that made it better. Perhaps it was just the new-ness of the situation, but the expanded tea bag made me realize that the normal tea bags I had been using to date, were of obvious lesser quality.

Final word: This tea is something that I will be purchasing again in the future, its rich aroma and hint of citrus flavor make it appealing to the palette. I suggest this tea to anyone starting out in the world of tea and wants something just a little more.