Nina's Specialties

I was super excited for this one but now that I had it, I am disappointed.

I used to love sencha green tea, well I still love it. A long time ago, I used to drink Tetley’s bagged sencha green tea, and loved it. Then they stopped selling it in my area so I searched forever to find a decent alternative. So fast forward a few years, I was out on a family vacation and stumbled upon a small family owned tea shop in a small town. I asked if they had any sencha, they served me a delicious, buttery, creamy, brightly coloured sample of sencha green tea, so I bought (what I assumed to be) a package of the same sencha tea.

Upon opening it today, I was disappointed, many of the tea leave were broken and there were a lot of “sticks and stems” mixed in it. There is not much smell to the dry tea. Now to be honest it has been languishing in my cupboard for about a year and a half. I kind of forgot about it, then I wanted to finish my other opened green tea first before I opening this one. But it was in a well stored and sealed package though.

The brewed tea is pretty lacklustre. I kind of anticipated that as it is not as fresh as it could have been, but there is also no sencha taste. I mostly get a metallic type taste. A slight vegetal sweetness. The colour is very pale darkish yellow brown. I usually get a bit of a salt taste with sencha tea, but not getting that with this one. It is not like any other sencha I have tried. To be honest, it is not like any Japanese green tea I have ever tried. I am going to try it a few more times. I am at work so my steeping method may not have been great. But I am pretty sure any variations in steeping is not going to change the stems in the tea, or the lack of sencha taste.