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For about the last year and until I joined Steepster a couple weeks ago, I’ve been on a tea hiatus. I took my tea supply down to almost nothing — by which I mean, I had one black tea, one oolong, and a couple of herbals in my cupboard … and that’s all. My goal was always to come back to tea-drinking but to be more intentional about it and enjoy it more by starting with a clean slate.

Well, the slate is clean! Now comes the fun part! I call it “Operation Build My Cupboard”: order a couple samplers from a given supplier, sip my way through them, and pick the best few to reorder. The goal is to create a collection of teas that’s limited to the ones that I most enjoy. I’ve started with Adagio because their samplers are single-serving and affordable. Forty-three samples came in the mail today. I’ll let myself reorder a maximum of five, the best of the bunch. Wish me luck!

Okay, so here’s the first note: Berry Blast. (Terrible name! It sounds like a sports drink.) This tea smells impressive while steeping. It’s jammy and sweet, but with a slight tang in the background: it smells like when you’re making a blueberry pie and you’re cooking down the filling and you’ve just added the lemon juice. Mouth-watering!

The flavor is a little different and, unfortunately, not quite as satisfying. The tartness overpowers the berry flavors, which are more on the order of a diluted juice than a thick jam. Of the berry flavor that does come through, I taste more blackberry than blueberry, which surprises me given that there were so many blueberries in my one-teaspoon sample! I was hoping the flavors might balance out as the cup cooled, but they didn’t. The hibiscus just became more pronounced.

I enjoyed this cup, but I wasn’t in love with it. Probably not a contender for re-ordering. On to the next cup!