Home – 2:00 PM
The Great Cupboard Excavation
Untasted teas remaining: 18
I wanted a nice palate-cleansing Japanese green tea after having a couple of very flavored black teas that I didn’t enjoy. Plus Japanese green tea is one of my favorites, so I’m always happy to relax with a cup of it.
This one is a blend of sencha and tea flowers. The flowers are really lovely, they’re whole and sort of bud-like, and they open nicely when steeped. To me, the dry leaf looks like it also contains some kukicha. But that’s not mentioned in the tea description, so who knows. The sencha leaves are somewhat large and flat, rather than being dark and needle-like.
The steeped tea is light and almost golden in color. It’s quite sweet and light and clean-tasting, which to me would make sense if there is indeed kukicha mixed in. There are mild vegetal and grass notes, with a bit of spinach and perhaps a ligher, sweeter vegetable like peas. There is just a little hint of umami as well.
I’m surprised that it’s not very floral at all, although I’m not sure what tea flowers would taste like. I can detect just a tiny bit of floral at the end, but it’s certainly not similar to jasmine as the description implies. If anything, I would say it’s closer to a sakura flavor. But still very light, I’m not sure I would know there were added flowers just going by the flavor.
Overall, it’s a very light Japanese green tea. I see now that the suggested water temperature is 194°F, so I’ll have to try that next time to see if it brings out more of a floral flavor.
Flavors: Floral, Grass, Peas, Sakura, Spinach, Sweet, Umami, Vegetal
