"adagio" news and stories

When getting into high quality tea, the options can be a bit overwhelming. You can read all the right information about tea preparation, teaware, and all the different types of tea, but knowing what flavors you like and what teas you'll lean toward is an ongoing process that can get pricey if you're buying high quality tea and buying it four or more ounces at a time (typical purchase quantities).

The answer to this dilemma is something that I have a lot of fun with: tea samples. They're relatively cheap (allowing for great varety for the same price), they're a small commitment (low guilt if you just pitch the ones you don't like), they don't take up a lot of space (I have a drawer full of them), and they're easy to mail (if you don't like a tea, cheap postage will send it on to another tea drinker!).

In fact, they're so convenient that I still buy samples of tea that I do like, because I drink through my tea supply slowly (due to the huge variety of tea I have) and the unopened packets stay fresh. I also frequently send samples of my favorite teas to friends (a bundle of tea samples makes a nice gift).

Are you looking to get into making loose leaf tea blends, but don't want to spend the money buying large quantities of numerous teas and then blending everything on your own? There are a few companies these days that are willing to do the work for you.

Adagio.com and Design a Tea currently have the most well-know options for creating your own custom blends online. They arrive at your door already blended, labeled, and ready to steep, but you should keep in mind that while you're getting a custom blend without all of the work a custom tea blender has to do, you're sacrificing some of the advantages. These companies will offer a limited number of teas to choose from, you can only blend a certain number of teas, and you won't know until you've paid for and received the tea if it's a success or not (and tweaking the blend will involve an additional purchase each time a change is made).

Keeping those things in mind, making your own custom blends can be a lot of fun. The differences between the two companies I've mentioned would be quantity, price, and options. Adagio allows you create a unique tea tin label with your own image, they award Adagio points if anyone else buys your custom blend (redeemable for a certain dollar amount toward tea!), they allow up to three teas in each blend (allowing you to choose the proportions), and you receive a 4 oz. tin of your tea. Design a Tea allows one choice of tea with up to two added flavorings, there is an option for customized label text, and they provide more options in terms of size and quantity (they will also package your blend in tea bags for you).

If tea isn't your thing, I also stumbled across JL Hufford Build-Your-Own Espresso. Looks like fun for coffee drinkers!

We continue our gift guides with some ideas for the person in your life who is addicted to legal stimulants. Namely, coffee and tea!

I've been seeing ads for Gevalia coffee and coffee makers for years but I've never tried either (let us know in the comments below how they are). They have a lot of gifts like coffee, coffee makers, chocolate, and biscotti. B & D has a good selection of gourmet coffee at their site (as well as 20 holiday drink recipes). Gloria Jean's has a lot of great holiday coffees too. How about something from Charlie Bean?

The February edition of TeaMuse, the newsletter from Adagio Teas has a decent little history of chamomile. Adagio's business is selling tea, so of course they have plenty of good things to say about chamomile, but, nevertheless, I still found some interesting info. For instance, Roman chamomile supposedly got it's name because a 19th century botanist found it growing in the Roman Coliseum. Also, the article cites a study from the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry showing evidence of chamomile's effectiveness as an anti-inflamatory and ulcer- and cold-fighter. Of course, those folks were drinking five cups of chamomile tea a day.

[Photo: Nick Vagnoni]

Source