I think I mentioned it in another tasting note a week or so back, but I bought a bunch of Buffy The Vampire Slayer teas from Adagio as a treat for myself to enjoy/drive some motivation when watching BTVS in French – something I’m doing to help familiarize myself and bring my comprehension up with the language…
I own every season, but my first/second season are on downloaded discs and don’t have multiple languages so I started my rewatch with the third season since my disc copies of that one have French dubs with English subs. I’m fine with that – the first two seasons are the worst ones anyway. I’m only a few episodes in because I’ve been doing an episode a night when I get home from work – but it’s actually still really enjoyable, even in French. I hate the voice actor for Angel though – his voice is FAR too deep and it sounds like the voice actor is trying much too hard to be sexy…
As for the Angel tea!? Well, it’s fine. I don’t actually like Angel very much as a character in the first place, but I suppose the flavours that the blendor has selected feel appropriate. It’s like a chocolate covered strawberry profile, with a black and oolong mixed base. Seems to take inspiration for more of Angel’s romanticism and fact he’s Buffy’s main love interest. If I was blending an Angel tea, I think I’d play more off the balance of light and dark or “good and bad” that his character has; that’s more interesting to me. Something like a blend of white and black tea bases with white and dark chocolate chips and rose petal accents. Feels true to the character, would probably taste ok, and has decent symbolism.
The taste is mediocre – the strawberry is there but VERY light and the chocolate note leans a little artificial and waxy. Not bad tasting on the whole, but mediocre – as many of these fan blends often are. That’s fine; it’s more about the fun you have while drinking the tea! And this is a nice sipping tea while curled up – so average is just fine for the context.