Ad|Gifted. This review is very long because I received quite a lot of lovely things. The giveaway is finished now, but if you would like a £5 voucher towards your first purchase of Adagio Teas please send an email to debbie@mumstheboss.co.uk
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by the very lovely people at Adagio Teas, and asked if I would like to review a few samples of their products. Naturally, I said yes – we are very fond of tea in this house. My husband is more of a ‘builders’ brew’ man, but my daughter and I love trying out new blends and fancy tea accessories.
So I said that we would love to receive a surprise parcel, then I sat back and waited. The website says that orders before 6 pm are despatched the same working day, so I didn’t have to wait long at all to receive my samples.
And I got a very big surprise indeed…
You can buy individual tea blends on the Adagio Teas site, but what I really love about this site are the Tea Sampler packs.
In each pack, you get three or four different teas based around a theme, as set out on the box. Altogether you get between 20-40 cups of tea in each box. These are just fabulous as small gifts for tea lovers – maybe even a teacher gift.
As you can see from the photo below, we received quite a few tea samples in our pack – over 40 different types of tea to try – I’m in heaven!
When I first opened the box, I thought we should try to sample them all before writing the review, but I’m afraid the task has defeated us. Plus you would probably get bored and lose the will to live before you got to the end of my tale…
So I’m going to review a couple of the boxes below, and then do a few more reviews over the next few weeks, which I will link in at the bottom when I have completed them.
The IngenuiTEA teapot
Not only did I receive some lovely tea samples in my box of delights, but also this nifty little teapot. The IngenuiTEA range of tea makers comes in 3 sizes: Normal, for one cup at a time, XL for a large mug or a glass of iced tea, and mine, the IngenuiTEA2 which makes just about 2 normal sized mugs of tea.
What makes it so ingenious is the way this teamaker pours, which means that even though the tea is loose inside it, and steeps beautifully, you don’t need to use a strainer.
So, basically, you add your tea loose inside the teapot – this is the White Strawberry summer blend, which looks so pretty and tastes delicious too!
Then you add the water and let the tea steep following the directions on the packet for the ideal water temperature and steeping time. If you are not using clear mugs then you will need to learn how much water you need in the teapot to fill your particular mug.
And then you pour….
The teapot has a very clever sprung bottom, so when you place the tea maker onto your mug, the liquid flows out of the bottom of it, and when you lift it, it stops.
As I hinted above, the one drawback of this is that if you have a normal china mug, it is difficult to see exactly when to stop pouring and you may cause a spillage. But once you have used the InfiniTEA a few times with your chosen mug, you will soon know the correct amount of water to use.
Alternatively, you can buy these gorgeous tea glasses from Adagio too. They certainly make each cup of tea special for me. I used to be a big mug type of girl, but after I’ve had the first great big (medicinal) cuppa of the morning, I prefer these – they make each cup of tea more like a ceremony.
and so, to the Teas Themselves
Here are the boxes and samples that we have managed to test already. I’ll be adding to these as I go along…
1: Earl Grey Sample Box
The first box we dived into was the Earl Grey box, because my daughter and I are both partial to a bit of citrus, particularly bergamot. So the Earl Grey box has four different takes on this classic tea blend:
- Earl Grey Bravo – the Classic Black tea with bergamot, spiced up a bit with the addition of orange peel. This is billed as high-caffeine and recommended as an afternoon tea, although I would probably drink it as a pick me up in the morning. I think the orange is a lovely addition to this classic.
- Earl Grey Moonlight – Earl Grey tea fragranced with vanilla and cream. The site says it’s a great tea to be served with cupcakes. I wasn’t so sure about this flavour combination and prefer the others, but it certainly was what it said on the tin, so if citrus and vanilla is your thing then go for it!
- Earl Grey Green Tea – this would help with my conundrum as to whether to have Earl Grey or Green tea first thing in the morning – it brings my two best tea types together in one bundle. I think the fresh perky crispness of green tea goes fabulously with the bergamot and this could become a morning favourite of mine.
- Rooibos Earl Grey – This is what to drink if you absolutely love the taste of Earl Grey, but for one reason or another you are trying to reduce your caffeine intake. Certainly, while we were on this tea tasting odyssey, the need to balance caffeinated and non-caffeinated tea was definitely an issue.
I’ve been drinking a lot of rooibos after mid-afternoon lately, as I find a get a better night’s sleep if I cut my caffeine later in the day. I prefer a naturally caffeine-free brew to drinking a tea of coffee that has been artificially de-caffeinated.
So here they are – all the Earl Grey samples – dear reader, we valiantly tried them all! As you open each sachet, the scent is just amazing, and as you can see each of the teas looks really special too. I love the addition of the little blue cornflowers and the citrus rinds.
I also love the way that you get very clear instructions on the back of each sachet as to how to prepare each tea for the best possible experience. OK, once I had tried each tea, prepared exactly according to instructions, I have also bent the rules a bit too, but then I’m like that.
2: Berry Iced Teas
Of course, Mother Nature then sent us a curve ball. We were trying to sample as many different teas as possible each day in June, then along came a great big heatwave, which frankly rendered most forms of hot tea completely unappetising…
Thankfully the lovely Adagio folks had thought of this, and there were more than a few iced tea samples in the kit too. The ones which we were first drawn to were in the Berry Iced Tea Sample kit.
The iced tea sample kits are presented slightly differently to the hot teas. Instead of loose tea, in each sachet you get two little gauze pouches of tea, which you can mix with cold water and steep overnight in the fridge to produce your perfect iced tea.
You can tell the differences between the herbal teas (no actual tea and no caffeine) which are in yellow sachets and the white tea blends which are in green sachets. You can also see that the pouches inside vary in size depending on the content of the tea blend, so that you get the perfect blend for each jugful.
When you come to make the iced teas, you will realise that Adagio Teas is originally an American company which has recently expanded to the UK and Europe. Each iced tea pouch makes one quart of iced tea, which Google tells me is 1.137 litres, a bit awkward for jug sizes here.
So you can either improvise and guesstimate, or you can buy a quart-sized glass tea pitcher from Adagio too, which matches the tea glasses beautifully.
Again sampling each of these iced teas over several days, the first thing that really strikes you is the huge powerful aromatic punch when you first open the packet. I’m used to buying my fruity teas as teabags from my local supermarket, but having smelt these blends I’m not sure I will be able to go back.
My favourite of the three flavours in this sample pack is definitely the Berry Blast, a mixture of forest berries, rose hips and hibiscus. Of course, when you sample a fruity tea, it’s never quite as sweet tasting as it smells, but if you’re craving sweet stuff but trying to cut down, then this can go a long way to satisfying that craving.
And as for replacing the need for a warm cuppa when the temperature is soaring – yes this definitely hits the spot!
The jug pictured here is quite a lot bigger than a quart, but after steeping overnight, it still tasted delicious.
3: Lavender Lemon
Even though I received a huge box of samples from Adagio, I have already ordered more from them, as I wanted to gift some of the lovely sample boxes to my sister for her birthday (and I didn’t want to part with any of mine!).
There are two things I really like about this company (apart from the fabulous tea) which will definitely keep me coming back for more! The first of these is the loyalty points scheme, so that each time you order you can earn points and exchange them for freebies. And the second thing is they like to chuck in free samples of things you might like into your order box.
If you order from them right now, as I did, one of the samples you might find tucked in your box is the Lavender Lemon herbal blend, which is one of their summer specials.
I’ve been drinking this tea at bedtime, with the addition of a little tiny spoonful of honey and it is just extraordinary.
I wasn’t sure about the idea of drinking a lavender flavoured tea, but I needn’t have worried. The lavender aroma is very strong as you open the packet, but in the finished drink, it takes second place to a beautiful crisp and zingy lemon flavour.
These two scents and flavours evoke very powerful emotions for me. I’m already conditioned to associate lavender with bedtime as I often diffuse lavender essential oil in my bedroom when I go up at night, or spritz lavender, chamomile and vetiver sleep spray on my pillow.
And lemon for me is the essential scent of summer – the scent of pure happiness. I love lemon flavour on everything – of course, it’s normally found on things that are not so good for you, so to find a really potent lemon flavour in a tea, makes that a cup of instant contentment for me. Lemon I can consume, with no guilt!
When I drink this tea at night I feel the cares of the day melt away and I settle into a warm and fuzzy happy vibe – definitely ready for bed.
I think out of all the teas I have sampled so far, this one is my absolute favourite, and I will definitely be restocking when my sample runs out.
And so, it’s giveaway time!
Well done for making it to the bottom of my ecstatic ramblings (and if you skipped my review to get straight to the giveaway I don’t blame you)
So what do I have for you? I have a free IngenuiTEA2 teapot for one lucky reader along with five sample boxes from Adagio Teas.
The contest is going live on this page on 11th July, and will run for two weeks, for UK entrants only.
To enter, I will be asking for a comment below, with extra entries for sharing this post across social media. Please note the comment will only count as an entry if you register it in the Rafflecopter box as well.
Whichever flavour you choose in the comment below, I will try to get it added to your prize if you win.
oolong teas of china as their my fave kind of teas x
Definitely the lemon they all look so nice
Earl Grey Teas because it’s my favourite
The Earl Grey which is my favourite
I would like to try the sweet tooth tea box .. it sounds delicious
Honeybush Teas, as it`s a type of flavour I`ve never tried yet it sounds so lovely
Honeybush – sounds decadent – it’s a new flavour to me
Honeybush tea sounds amazing!
I would love to try the pillowtime teas. I sometimes struggle to relax and sleep and these sound amazing
I love Earl grey as my afternoon tea at work, but I love chamomile for bedtime as it is really soothing.
The berry iced tea sounds amazing
So hard to choose – Earl Grey is so refined, Iced Berries would be amazing if this weather lasts, and Lavendar Lemon sounds lush!
Jasmine tea because I’ved never tried it before
The Earl Grey sample box – because I love Earl Grey tea
I think i’d most like to try the teas of India and Sri Lanka although all the types of tea sound lovely.
The Red Rooibos Teas simply because Rooibos teas are my favourite. My hand always goes to the Rooibos sachets without me even thinking about it when I want a cuppa.
sweet tooth teas to see if I could wean my husband off the sugar he puts in tea
For me it has to be the Jasmine Tea, but they all sound wonderful.
Red Rooibos because I love the flavour
Earl Grey as I love the taste of bergamot which gives the tea its signature pungent punch.
I think i would enjoy trying the Teas of India and Sri Lanka box
christmas teas sounds very nice for xmas very festive
All of them?! Seriously, they all sound lovely, but the nut & spice one would be my top pick.
I love Earl Grey so those sound good but I’d also love to try the Chai selection as I love a good chai and the Tropical selection sounds amazing too.
Green matcha tea, my absolute fav!
Genius! I love Early Grey tea the most.
The orchard ice tea sounds delicious and perfect for cooling down in this hideous hot weather that we’re having 🙂
sweet tooth teas sounds up my street
Health Nut teas, would like to keep healthy
I’m struggling to sleep at the minute so the would love to try the pillow time teas
Earl Grey Moonlight sounds lovely
White Fuzzy Navel is a strange name but would try
Id love to try the pillow time trees as I really struggle to wind down at night so it would be great to include these in my bedtime routine xx
I would love to try one of the berries boxes
Berries teas….love the fruity flavour
The Tropical gift sampler sounds very tasty, yummy! thanks for the chance
The Chai teas – Ive only ever tried a vanilla chai before which i really liked, so i would love to try some new ones
I’d love to try the Iced Tea Sample Kits. That’s something I’ve never seen before and sounds really interesting.
Coffee addict tea sounds intriguing.
The Earl Grey sample box
I’d like to try the Jasmine teas, as I love the smell of jasmine
Christmas tea sounds lovely
Christmas teas
I have a thing about Jasmine right now, so the Jasmine tea caught my eye straight off! Love the smell more than any other xx
The Berries Teas look good – would love to try them as they are new to me
Pillow time teas to help me sleep
Tropical teas, it sounds so refreshing x
I would love to try the good for you tea box sample to help with my digestion and bloating
I’d choose the Christmas Teas as not only is it my favourite time of year but also chestnuts, candy apples, candy canes and gingerbread are all wonderful flavours which I’d love to try.
Honeybush sounds so calming to me !
i’d go for herbal garden given the choice
Herbal Garden for me x
Definitely the berries sounds very interesting and tasty too
Would love to try the Energy Boost teas . . . something I could really do with at times!
Orchard Herbals would be my choice.
berries box sounds lovely.
Nut & Spice teas would be my choice. Thanks
id like to try the Iced Tea Sample Kit
Love earl grey
Green teas of China
Orchard Herbals sound lovely!
I would love to try The Sweet Tooth tea
I would love the Energy Boost Tea samples because I certainly need some energy this summer with so much to do in the house and garden!
Energy boost teas, hopefully it will do what it says
I’d like to try the Black Teas the most.
The Early Grey sample box
That’s a hard one – can’t believe how much choice there is! I think I’d most like to try the pillow time teas because chamomile is probably my all time favourite, and I’d love to expand my repertoire – I love a caffeine-free tea before bed 🙂
Sweet Tooth and Orchard Green Teas 🙂
Have just had a look a the website and the flavour range is incredible. I’d go for Turmeric Bliss, Masala Chai. As the weather is warming up nicely, I think Peppermint or anything citrus. Those loose leaf teas look wonderful. Jade Snail?! I am also loving all the accessories, especially those teapots….sorry have got carried away.
Teas of India & Sri Lanka. Memories of travelling there is the reason.
energy boosting teas
Health Nut Teas sound interesting!
I would choose nut and spice as my husband likes spicy teas.
The Lavender Lemon Herbal blend is one I would like to try as I have never even heard of it before to try it.
Nut and spice sounds yummy
It would have to be sweet tooth teas!
The Jasmine tea as it can be so refreshing and if takes me back to having it on the plane when we were travelling.
sweet tooth teas to try and cut down my sugar
I love Earl Grey, for some reason it makes me feel special.
premium teas of China I think, interesting variety
This prize wants me to like tea and I think I would enjoy them 😊
Energy booting teas sound divine!
I’ve got close to 200 different teas at home, of which about half are loose leaf, I’d love some Dragonwell, a friend from Hong Kong recommends it but I don’t have any!
I’d love to try the Berries Tea. Perfect for when you want a refreshing drink
Earl Grey for me
Earl Grey, my favourite 🙂
it’s a hard choice, but will go with green teas of China and coffee addict tea, has I love my coffee and green tea
Health Nut because now I am getting older I have started a bit of a health kick
I’d like to try the Pillow Time teas to help me unwind at the end of the day x
l would love to try the tropical as l have never tried them and would love to drink something different l love fruity flavours.
I am usually pretty boring when it comes to tea always picking English breakfast. So I think The teas of Japan sounds amazing and a challenge!
Berry iced Tea sounds great
I’d love to try Black Teas of China, they sound exciting and (pardon the pun) I think they’d be just my cup of tea. I am a big tea drinker.
I would love to try the sweet tooth teas, it might help me with my sweet tooth hahaha. Thanks for the chance
The Earl Grey Teas would be my choice as its my favourite!
would love to try the christmas teas
I would like to try the jasmine tea which is my favourite kind.
Would love to try the teas of Japan. They sound different and delicious.
I would love to try the Good For You teas
Hi,
Nice article! I am usually pretty boring when it comes to tea always picking English breakfast. So I think The teas of Japan sounds amazing and a challenge!
Berries tea?