Fandom Tea Blend

Designing fannish tea blends is a fanac that became popular circa 2012, Probably the most well-known fandom tea-blender, Cara McGhee, posted what appear to be her first Sherlock tea blends on February 13, 2012. sparked by the existence of Adagio Teas, a commercial website that enables users to design and sell their own teas. Fandom teas can also be found on Etsy.
==Adagio Teas==
Adagio Teas is a commercial looseleaf tea company which gained popularity in fandom circles starting around 2012 due to their custom blend feature. Fans began to crowdsource fannish tea blends and promote them on sites such as Tumblr, often with custom artwork, and Adagio has added additional functionalities and FAQs to acknowledge that fans are a part of their market. 
As of January 2022, there are over 160,000 fandom blends which can be searched by name, creator, fandom, tags, or teas. The site also provides popular blends, which may have custom banners to promote the blend. Fandoms vary widely and include anime and manga, video games, tv shows, movies, podcasts, tabletop rpgs, and more. Adagio had its own which was mainly active from July 2012 through 2018. 
The most common type of fannish tea blend appears to be a blend made for a specific character. This practice may be encouraged partly because Adagio allows you to 'ship' teas together, thus getting a discount if both tea blends are purchased in one order in the FAQ. The discount is 10% off if both blends in a 'ship are purchased together.. 
===Cara McGhee's blends=== 
Articles from 2012-2014 credit Cara McGhee with popularizing the practice due to her Sherlock tea blends, including NPR , Lydia Zuraw, April 29, 2013 and fan blogs , What's Creative? blogspot, February 4, 2014. Adagio's official Tumblr blog also gave Cara a specific highlight in one of their earliest posts , adagioteas, July 6 2012. "After Cara shone a spotlight on our tumblr blog, there’s a lot of pressure to post something witty. You know, not counting this post.". 
===Adagio's Business Model===
A Mary Sue article from 2012 discussed the monetary aspect of fandom tea blends: 
 
Other fans on Tumblr discussed their appreciation for Adagio's business model, with Adagio's official Tumblr responding a couple years after the original post was made and continuing the conversation with other fans: 
Adagio also responded to fans requesting custom tea blends: 
 
Some tea bloggers in 2017 were provided incentives (such as gift certificates or the teas requested to review) from Adagio Teas to sample fandom blends and provide reviews. The reviews were not all positive, due to the fact that the teas are fan-created. Just a Lil' Lost, May 20, 2017 , crazyteachick, April 30, 2017 by perfectlyperez, August 6 2017} Inside the Magic, June 9 2017 blog post by foxclouds, Nov 15 2017. 
In 2018, a Twitter user accused Adagio's CEO of homophobia, transphobia, and labor law violations by elliottjunkyard, April 2 2018. Adagio released a statement in response by adagioteas, April 3 2018, linking to a statement on their website (no longer available, unable to find on webarchive) (no longer available). Some fans discussed alternative custom blend sites to explore or support due to the accusations by SimplyAllegra, April 2 2018.
===Making Adagio Tea Blends===
Some fans have created tutorials on how to create a fandom blend using Adagio , Tumblr post by fontscosplay, July 2 2013 . Other fans discuss how to promote fandom tea blends once they are created sent to whyonlydream, June 20 2013, with suggestions on how to promote fandom teas
==Other Sites== 
==Example Tea Blends==
* Good Omens: Tea For The End Of The World Kickstarter with a range of Good Omens (TV) character-inspired tea blends as stretch goals
==Resources==
*Fandom Signature Blends at adagio.com
*Slashcast episode #42, Tumblr and the New Direction of Fandom (2013-08-03): the creator of the (first?) fannish tea blend talks about the rise of fannish tea
*The Fandom Tea Party: The Day the Long Arm of Pop-Culture Touched the West’s Classiest Beverage on themarysue.com (October 12, 2012)
==References==
Category:Fan Activities
Category:Food & Recipes