Gyokuro Asahi

I have a picture in my head of what a green tea tastes like. Gunpowder tea, for example, tastes a bit like it, sencha tastes even more like it. Now I have discovered Gyokuro and it seems to me to taste more like a green tea than any green tea I have ever tasted.

It’s delicious, and incredible how you can get so much flavour without tasting bitter. The experience is like a rainforest. You pull the infuser out of your pot or cup and some impossibly vibrant coloured stalks are showing through the mesh. The infuser drips with yellowish exotic-looking liquid. It smells full of life and energy and you can almost hear the animal calls and rustles that you would hear if you were in darkest Paraguay.

It’s a rainforest in a cup. Impressive for a leaf from the opposite end of the world

I visited Tea Palace for the first time in a while the other day and made a purchase. The owner recognised me from the last time I was there and she remembered what I had previously bought (no mean feat as that was a few months ago, and the shop is always busy). After a chat about green teas, she gave me a free sample of the Gyokuro, which I’d read about but never had before. Looking it up on the net later, I was more than pleased as it’s not cheap and has a very good reputation indeed.

As for the tea itself, it really is a good delicious cup of tea – I thoroughly enjoyed it and worthy of its plaudits. I’m not sure about how to brew it though as what’s on the Tea Palace website differs to other sources which states that this is a difficult tea to brew and needs a temperature of about 60 degrees C. Despite that, I brewed it as I would other green teas and it works well enough.