Adagio's Yunan Noir is a black tea grown in the Yunan province of China. The leaves are hand-rolled, curled in to what is called a "black snail" shape. It's a lovely black tea for people who like their blacks unflavored, complex and deep. It's a black tea and tastes like a black tea, but there are so many different hints of flavor worked in under that. There's a bit of honey and cinnamon in the finish, with a couple of other layers I haven't yet pieced out. This is a tea worth spending time on, drinking slowly and appreciating.
Adgaio's Blackberry black tea is pretty much precisely what is says on the tin: A good quality black tea flavored with blackberry. It's not heavily fruity. The blackberry is an underlayer to the black tea, providing a little bit of sweetness and a little bit of tartness. It's not spectacular, but it's a great basic drinking tea for the mornings when I need the caffeine but I want some flavor.
Adagio's Red Bloom is a black tea rolled into a ball around a red flower. It unfurls as it is brewed in hot water revealing either a lovely floral display or a mini-Lovecraftian tentacle monster, depending on how your brain works. I just finished the latest Laundry Files book, so no points for guessing which one occurred to me this morning. Unfortunately, while these blooming teas are amazingly fun, the taste of Adagio's Red Bloom is just good, not great. It's a high quality black tea, but all of the complexity seems to have gone into the visuals, not the flavor. Make no mistake, this is still vastly better tea than, say, Lipton or Tetley, but it's nothing incredibly special. I've been spoiled by some of Adagio's other spectacular blacks (see Yunan Noir above).
So here's a request for Adagio -- find a way to use your Peach Oolong to create a Yellow Bloom, or incorporate a slightly "red"-flavored tea into the Red Bloom (raspberry, strawberry, etc.).
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