Blending Teas

'Thai' Tea

Lolo's Tea

It all started when we introduced the Signature Blends option on the website. I never really thought of blending my own teas before, preferring the flavors and body of a plain, premium tea. However, since everyone at Adagio was encouraged to come up with a blend when the feature first launched, I went ahead and came up with several concoctions that seem to play well in my head.

For each one I stuck to a theme of sorts; the first of my creations was inspired by the pangs of hunger that struck at me right before I was ready to leave the office. I foolishly was looking at Thai food menus online, in attempts to think of something to make for dinner, but at the same time I was ready to chew off a part of my laptop to keep me satisfied until dinner. The ingredients of coconut milk, lemongrass, and ginger seem to pop out at me- inspiration had struck, and I created a blend entitled 'Thai' Tea. Unfortunately, I believe most of the early sales were made by customers who believed that my blend would be similar to the sugary-sweet goodness of an iced Thai Tea one would get at a Thai restaurant- a creamy and true indulgence. However, there are more ingredients needed to make that, but nonetheless I think my blend holds up to its name; as ginger, lemongrass, and coconut are all important ingredients of Thai cuisine.

My second blend came after a conversation with my grandfather, who resides on the other side of the world; the Philippines. My last visit was nearly two years ago and if I were a richer woman I would be there, enduring the 18 hour flight at least every other month to spend time with my 'Lolo'. If only! After each long-distance phone call with my Lolo, I find myself feeling a bit more nostalgic for my grandfather, who helped raised me. Last time I was over there, we took the customary visit to his plantation which resides on a small island off the mainland of Luzon (the large, most Northernmost island of the archipelago). There he grows a bounty of food: rice, coconuts, bananas, mangos; raises pigs, and employs a small dingy to catch fish off the coast. Though my family and me are reminded of more humbler, simpler living (with the exception of the modern bathroom in the main house, oh and the karaoke 'bar' several acres down) whenever we go visit we find it is a wonderful place seared into my memory as such. In homage, I blended some mango, coconut, and smoky mambo tea to create the blend aptly entitled, 'Lolo's Tea'. On my own, after receiving the blend I added some hibiscus flowers and rose petals a visual effect and flavor and proceeded to tell my Lolo all about the tea.

Scanning the myriad of signature blends that have since been created on the Adagio Teas website, I see that everyone has a unique story to tell. When personalized with pictures of loved ones and a delightful story or inside joke inserted into the title, each signature blend takes on a life of its own. There are pictures of couples, family members, friends; original artwork or photography, and descriptions that harken back to a specific, joyful, or funny event. If you're a returning customer you can easily make your own blend. Do not get intimidated by the idea; rather try starting out with some samples of tea you might have and try mixing up something first. Or, if you're a first time customer, purchase a couple of samples to experiment with. If you decide to purchase your blend (or someone else's) try sprucing it up a little bit by adding some original ingredients such as herbs and spices or pairing it with a signature food dish or meal.

There are so many combinations to be made from the various teas we offer, I'm sure you will be able to blend something to call your own. I encourage you to visit our signature tea blends page and play around.

Voice your opinion about this article on TeaChat!

ilya	After nearly 2 years of internal debate and many heated disagreements, Adagio is ready to launch a new feature called "signature blend". This feature will allow Adagio customers to create personalized tea blends from over 100 different tea varieties. Create the blend, name it, write a description and upload a unique label design. Once created, the blend becomes part of your profile page and is able to be viewed and purchased by everyone. This feature is still in beta as we are tweaking the code and layout of the pages, but we'd love to start getting your feedback and perhaps a few interesting blends. We encourage you to visit the page and please let us know what you think. Please keep in mind that you can edit your creation at any time (via your profile page)
Chip	Wow, that is actually incredible!!! I have heard the idea floating around here for over a year, but to be honest, I thought no tea company would take on that challenge. But you seem to have thought it out really well and then offering someone's signature blend to everyone is a very cool concept. I will have to look for the Signature Blend page in a little bit, it did not come up, just went into the adagio site. Good luck with this, this is really innovative. (Mod edit...the page is up)
ilya	Please note that in order to create a signature blend, you must 1) be an Adagio Teas customer, and 2) be logged in via your account page in order to access the 'create blend' option.
scruffmcgruff	This is indeed very cool, and innovative in a way only Adagio has the cojones to pull off. (Side note- anyone up for creating the fabled white mint oolong blend? )
Wesli	I am proud to say that I have posted the first non-employee blend. Be careful with this one, it's not for the weak.
Mary R	Masculinitea? Brilliant! (Hrm...old Guinness commercials must be floating through Mary's head...) I did play with making that Mocha special, but the only oolongs available for blending were the flavored ones. Ah well. It's not like anyone really needed to be treated to that monstrosity.
LavenderPekoe	Ooo!!!! Where's Kate. Must tell her this is back. She will be so excited! Thanks, Ilya.
fencerdenoctum	Wow am I ever excited about this. This is a definite MUST try. This is why I love Adagio best. The Tea Sipping Swordsman Fencerdenoctum
osadczuk	I don't even have a clue as to what to blend, but I just have to add my kudos to everyone else's. This is the reason I love Adagio. Thank you so much for this opportunity.
skywarrior	Absolutely awesome!!!
ilya	Like I mentioned earlier, the blends are still in beta and we will be adding more features/promotions around them in the upcoming weeks. I just added a promotion that rewards people who create blends. Whenever someone purchases a blend that you create, Adagio will automatically add 10 to your account. Happy blending!!!
Ladytiger	So cool!
Mary R	Oops! When I created my blend, I used the wrong image file. (Someday I will learn to use more descriptive labels than "Picture 4.") Is there any way I can change it? It just looks odd with the smooshed distortion. Edit: Never mind. Y'all must be lurking because you've already perfectly cropped the image for me. Will the Adagio wonders never cease?
ilya	Mary, The characteristics of all blends are editable. Simply go to your customer profile page and you should see an edit button on your signature blend. -Ilya
Mary R	Ahh...that makes more sense. I had headed to the account page instead of the profile page. For people as clueless as I generally am, click this scroll down, then click the edit button in the upper right corner of your blend.
Wesli	What about for those of us who don't have that "Adagio Profile" button?>
Mary R	That's bizarre...why don't you have a button? You should... Argh...I'll never understand computers.
ilya	Fukamushi, The reason you don't have the 'Adagio profile' button may be because you are using a different email address for your Adagio account than your TeaChat account. Once these are synched up, the button should appear within 24 hours. -Ilya
LavenderPekoe	Ilya, Are you planning on adding something that will tell us what is in the teas, or are you leaving that up to the people creating them? I know there are pictures, but some of them look a lot alike. You don't need to give away the secret ratios or anything, just the teas that are in it.
Mary R	Aww...can't we get the secret ratios too?
ilya	I wanted to leave that up to the person doing the blending.
skywarrior	Hey Ilya! Found a tiny bug. Maybe fix? When I entered return after making my super secret blends, it gave me an error message, so I tried to resub. Well, I did that three times, gave up, and got 4 posted of the same tea blend. So, I deleted three, but they didn't quite all delete. You might want to check that out.
forkyfork	I'm confused by the % markers. Say for instance I have a blend that is 50% rooibos and 50% white tea. Does that mean that 2 oz are rooibos and 2 oz are white tea? Or does it mean that 50% of the container is filled with rooibos and 50% is filled with white tea? Big difference, as they do not weigh the same.
ilya	The percentages are based on volume.
ilya	As far as the bug is concerned, I made a minor change to the page before going to bed and introduced an error. Hopefully it has been fixed. -Ilya
daughteroftheKing	Just now discovered the blends addition. This is so great! I can hardly wait to see what everybody else is making and submit my own. Thank you, Ilya and everyone else at Adagio who made this happen.
henley	This has been fun, both creating my own combos & seeing what others have done. Thanx for such a great feature & I look forward to trying some of them soon.
skywarrior	As far as the bug is concerned, I made a minor change to the page before going to bed and introduced an error. Hopefully it has been fixed. -Ilya Great! Thanks!
Jim.	Where do I go to edit my tea? Can I see if anyone has bought it?
Mary R	scroll down, then click the edit button in the upper right corner of your blend. I don't know if you can see how many/who has bought your blend. It would be a cool feature, though.
Wesli	Masculinitea going fast! Buy before Adagio runs out!
Ladytiger	What you really want to buy is 18th Century Pirate. " title="Wink" />
Chip	Shameless self promotion...
skywarrior	I wasn't going to say anything, but boy that Mexican Chocolate tea sounds wonderful!
go green	I think the spring-time green sounds sublime!
Chip	I suspect more and more self promo goin' on?!?!?
Wesli	'Spring-time green' before spring? sounds like trouble.
skywarrior	I agree. Better try the Mexican Chocolate first!
Chip	Tsk, tsk tsk...
Mary R	I'll just kick back with my "Zen and the Art of Moderating" and watch the drama unfold...
Chip	Power corrupts and as we see first hand, absolute power corrupts without "moderation."
Ladytiger	Power corrupts and as we see first hand, absolute power corrupts without moderation. Tsk tsk tsk
Ladytiger	This might not go here, but I thought it was better than creating another thread somewhere else about it. It think it would be helpful if somehow we could know how many tins of each blend that we have made have been sold. This might help create new blend and possibly delete old blends that no one has any interest in.
Wesli	That is a good idea tiger.
skywarrior	I'm thinking (says the tea blender of the #1 blend, Mexican Chocolate )
Victoria	Jumping in late here, but I love this concept! It's fun to create a custom blend and also fun to read about the other custom blends. Although being primarily a oolong lover, I was disappointed to find that only the flavored oolongs were offered for blending. A cost factor I'm sure, but I'd be willing to pay more to access the costlier oolongs. That being said, I used the peach in my blend, as it is closest to the natural oolong flavor. Something that took me by surprise was the email announcement of my tea blend to my contact list. I saw the form there to use that function, but I was very surprised to find that it was also automatically generated. I understand the marketing factor, and it wasn't that big of a deal, other than the surprise factor, but ... I am now hesitant to create any future blends and thus begin spamming my contact list. I would like to see a button to suppress announcements. Hummm I wonder if my friends will try my custom blend?
ilya	We've had the signature blends up for about 10 days and I wanted to let everyone know about a few updates... We have added the ability for people to see how their blends are doing in terms of sales (and thus frequent cup points earned). If you go to your customer profile page, you will see the quantity of FC points each tea has earned you. (so far the best selling blend '' has earned Margaret 310 frequent cup points.) Additionally, we are now displaying the top 8 blends by sales volume on the blends index page. Hopefully it will help the cream rise to the top. Also being considered is the option of highlighting the blends that people take time to create. The ones that include a custom graphic label, clever description and story attachments. We'd love to be able to truly build a nice community around this section and would have people be creative and really think of interesting blends. (please bear in mind that you can update all of your blends via your customer profile page) Lastly, we have added a means to allow people with their own sites/blog to advertise all the blends they create. You can find the code on the ''.
osadczuk	Again, thank you. With the huge number of blends, would it be possible to impliment a search function (i.e. a sort that shows all of the blend that have Earl Grey in them?) And I really would like to see the ones with TLC highlighted, I do adore the stories. R-
Victoria	With the huge number of blends, would it be possible to impliment a search function (i.e. a sort that shows all of the blend that have Earl Grey in them?) Yes that sounds like a great idea, after all certainly some of the blends people are thinking of, may already be created. Or they may like someone else's composition better.
forkyfork	I like being able to see how many points I've earned. Also, I have a suggestion. Since it looks like the top 8 teas are all black, maybe it might be worthwhile to see the top teas in other categories too (green, herbal, etc.) Also, if I make a blend for a friend and then he buys it, does he get 10 cup points for buying it and do I get 10 points for making it?
ilya	Since people can combine any three teas and don't need to choose between categories, we really don't define them as being black or green or herbal. As for the points question, if you make a blend and your friend purchases it, you will both earn 10 FC points.
bunnykitty	Thanks so much for this fun new feature, Adagio! I've been having a ball with it all week! I'm so psyched that I made a few extra points to put toward my next order! I love that you changed it so you can see which teas are selling..it is pretty interesting. I almost fell over this weekend when I saw one of my blends was #8! Of course, it isn't there anymore, but that's ok. I had my moment of fame! Congrats to Margaret, who has *2* teas in the top 8! Girl, what are you going to order with your points?!
skywarrior	Why, more tea, of course! Seriously, I'm surprised by the popularity of two of my tea combinations, but I'm mighty proud of it. Been sipping on come of that Mexican Chocolate tea. I came up with that a while ago because I had the teas available here. So, I knew the blend would be tasty. I think the blends feature is awesome. And now, I know just how popular.
Tsukiko	Hi guys! I'm Heather and I'm new to TeaChat so I wanted to stop by and tell you all how excited I am about the new signature blends. ^_^ There are so many blends I can't wait to try. Also: Congratulations to you, Margaret, on your best-selling blend! Once I get the mulah, I'm going to buy a tin.
Chip	Hi guys! I'm Heather and I'm new to TeaChat so I wanted to stop by and tell you all how excited I am about the new signature blends. ^_^ There are so many blends I can't wait to try. Also: Congratulations to you, Margaret, on your best-selling blend! Once I get the mulah, I'm going to buy a tin. Welcome to TeaChat Heather, nice avatar!!! The sig blends are truly innovative. Since you are new here, check out the newest forum on TeaChat. It is called . There we share what's in our cups and have a daily poll, which we discuss over tea. It's a lot of fun for all. Hope you will join us!
Tsukiko	Thank you for the greeting, Chip! So nice to meet you. I am looking forward to participating in the TeaCup board and the whole site in general. Not quite sure why I haven't signed up sooner. hehe
skywarrior	Hi guys! I'm Heather and I'm new to TeaChat so I wanted to stop by and tell you all how excited I am about the new signature blends. ^_^ There are so many blends I can't wait to try. Also: Congratulations to you, Margaret, on your best-selling blend! Once I get the mulah, I'm going to buy a tin. Thanks! Yes, it is most yummy! Welcome aboard!
Jade Flower	I think the idea of making personal blends is great but the list of blends definetely needs some organizing and structurizing as it grows larger. For example, if I like green teas and can't stand black ones, it's almost impossible to go through all the list checking out each name so that the blend didn't contain what I don't like. It's very cumbersome.
ilya	We are constantly working on this new section and plan on implementing some form of search/filter on this page that will allow people to narrow the choices. Additionally, we will need to begin auto-filtering the blends that are popular from the ones that have been created but never purchased. -Ilya
Space Samurai	Is there a way I could be sent emails everyone time someone makes a new blend; that would be great.
ilya	You can easily opt out of all emails form Adagio via your account page. Unfortunately, the system is set up to be all or nothing, so if you choose to opt-out, you will not be sent any special offers either.
henley	Additionally, we will need to begin auto-filtering the blends that are popular from the ones that have been created but never purchased. Hubby & I own a business so I REALLY understand the logic on weeding out some blends but here's a little food for thought. The only reason I haven't purchased my blend (& some of the others) yet is I just made a large tea order before Cmas & I've currently got more tea than I can drink. There might be others in this same situation, especially after the poll question the other day of "how many teas do you have". Again, just something to think about as I'd hate to know I missed out on some of these great creations.
skywarrior	Special offers?
Space Samurai	I didn't know that, thanks ilya.
ilya	Henley, When we start filtering the blends, we will not delete any existing blends but rather limit the visible ones. You will always be able to see your own blend via your own customer profile page. -Ilya
Aphroditea	I just wanted to say what fabulous artists we have in our community! So many of the image desgins for the blends are just so beautiful and well done. I have to admit that I am jealous - I only have Paint. I do the best I can, but I wish I could put together something like the images for Lady Jade or Bolero or Pirate's Spice, etc, etc! Keep up the great work guys!
Ladytiger	I just noticed that all of the teas are in distinct groups. Much better on the eyes.
FoxMackenzie	Awww...where'd the other half of the top eight in blends go? I was in it I knew I shoulda gotten a screenshot. -Fox
ilya	Changed this page a bit to highlight the blends people created labels for. Creating an interesting blend with a nice description and label is the easiest way to get it featured (hint hint).
jazz88	I'm new to the forum. I just wanted to say that Signature Blends is such an awesome idea! Very well executed as well. @ Aphroditea Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad you liked my Bolero label design. But I'm a professional designer so I should be able to come up with a decent looking label " title="Smile" />
ilya	We really like the Bolero label. In fact, we are considering adding a promotional blend sample tin into select orders and were going to include your blend in the initial run because the design is so beautiful. Will keep you posted.
jazz88	Thanks ilya - I truly appreciate that.
ilya	We wanted to publicly thank jazz88 for all of the amazing labels she has contributed to the signature blends. Take a look at her . We expect them to get a lot of attention in the weeks to come. P.S. Let me know if you do any freelance work outside of your full-time job. We are always looking for good designers.
jazz88	Thanks ilya! You made my day " title="Smile" /> I had to do some client work this morning which I wasn't too keen on and I needed a good excuse to procrastinate - so I created a label instead. I thought that "Pisces" would make a nice gift for someone born in March. Anyway if somebody who actually bought any of my blends is reading this - Thanks!!! I hope you were not disappointed.
FoxMackenzie	Allo allo - Just curious - is there a reason only one of my blends show on the blends list? I have 3 - 1 heart, Prufrock's Lovesong, and Desiderata. I hazarded a guess that only blends that have been purchased might be shown, so I bought a tin of Desiderata to test the theory - I didn't get points for it like I used to and it still doesn't show in the list -Fox
ilya	Fox, Indeed there is an algorithm in place to determine which teas show up on the blends page. With over 1000 blends created, we needed a means to highlight only the popular ones. The formula takes into account each blend's sales in addition to it's lifetime. Rest assured that even if your creation does become delisted from the signature blends page, everyone will still be able to access/purchase it from your own customer profile page. Hope that clear up any confusion, Ilya
jestuart	I saw a few signature blends I really wanted to try, but 4oz is a lot of tea to waste if I don't like them. I understand it may be impractical to offer every signature blend in 2oz samples. Is there anyway the most popular blends could be offered in 2oz sizes?
soapy	Ahh...that makes more sense. I had headed to the account page instead of the profile page. For people as clueless as I generally am, click this scroll down, then click the edit button in the upper right corner of your blend. I had no idea! Thank for the tip!
DangerInRed	I just clicked on a blend called Sip Smart, and up came a fancy profile page for popSirens. Diggnation has this too apparently. Have they always been like that? I did not notice them until now. By the looks of the pictures involved, I'd say Adagio has established some kind of deal/partnership/affiliation with them. Anybody know any more info?
ilya	This is a promo we ran with a company called .
DangerInRed	Oooh, cool! Thanks for the info!