Shinobi_cha

Maybe it’s been a while since I’ve had houjicha, but the aroma that came from the teacups was excellent, and mostly, a lot stronger than I expected. Usually I have to put my nose in the teapot to take in a nice aroma— here, it felt like the whole kitchen had been filled (at least momentarily) with a delicious roasted aroma.

And this houjicha is perhaps the best example I’ve had of a tea that has been successfully roasted to the point of caramelization. The first cup or two I drank hot, but used the majority of the kettle I brewed to make a big pitcher iced. It is delicious either way, but I almost think I prefer it hot, since the aroma is even better. Either way, this is definitely some of the best I’ve had.

As for Ippodo as a whole, this was my first order, and everything about them is really impressive. The way they wrap the teas, the info. packets they provide about brewing, about the company and products… they are all excellently and professionally made. You can tell they put a lot of care and thought to every detail.

If I could describe this tea in one word, it would be creamy. And not just for the first infusion, but at least the first three. It continues to have a thick mouthfeel in every infusion.

It is a very pleasing tea, that feels like a mix between a white, oolong, and even green. The taste is subtle, but combined with the creaminess, it is very enjoyable. The first infusion has the best/longest-lasting aftertaste, but with long enough steeps, the tea holds up very well. I think while I wouldn’t go back to buy 50g of this, I’m glad to have sampled. This was the last of the samples from RTR. I definitely have enjoyed their teas and when I’d like Darjeeling again, they’ll be at the top of my list.

So far, my experience with RTR’s teas has been great. They’ve almost all been delicious, above average (as far as I know, which isn’t a lot), and their descriptions are really accurate. They don’t go over the top in telling you the 50 different flavors you’ll find in a tea, and yet, none of their teas are one-dimensional, either.

I had to order a sample of the 2nd flush of the Temi, since I ordered the 1st flush, so that I could compare the two.

I’m not sure I can pull out the baked sweet-bread aroma, but as soon as I decanted, the teapot smelled richly of caramel, and even a bit of chocolate!
The taste of dried plum is also present (zwetschge schokolade gefaellt mir sehr), and ‘layered’ is a great way to explain it, as the notes of caramel and plum appear and disappear throughout the sip. I wouldn’t call it sweet, but somehow, it is clearly caramel.
The 2nd steeping seems to be bringing out the chocolate aroma, as well.

Between this tea, Thurbo 1st flush, and Tumsong 2nd flush, I have three great Darjeelings I’d enjoying having around. To my surprise, two of my favorites are from the ‘lowest’ quality harvests! It’s fun to discover something new.

This really is reminiscent of a Wuyi Rock Oolong.

It’s sweet, woodsy, and like dark fruit (think plum without being sour at all, or almost like peach). The texture was thick. Their description of it having a “mineral quality” is spot on… it is very enjoyable.

Personally, this isn’t the one I’d choose out of the lot from RTR to have around (since I don’t usually have but 1-2 loose black teas around at one time anyway), however, it is really good. Perhaps the most complex and longest lasting of all the ones I’ve tried (even the 3rd steeping was pretty flavorful).

First shincha of 2012!

I’ve never had Maiko’s offering, and finally had to try it.
It has lived up to the hype, too. Long, nicely rolled, uniform leaves.

The cup is refreshingly bitter, sweet, and leaves a wonderful aroma in the mouth. I can hardly write more because this is my first cup… thankfully, I hope, of many more to come!

If I were to judge this tea by the look of the leaves alone, I would put it toward the top.
The leaves are not as beautiful as Verdant Teas’ Laoshan Black, but that is what they are probably aspiring to. I’d almost say that this tea aspires to be Laoshan Black (though, I can’t say for sure, since I’ve only had the latter in a blend, but still got a good idea about it).

Nonetheless, I find it to be a solid, enjoyable black tea. It is slightly earthly, perhaps a bit floral, and only a hint of astringency that is of course enjoyable in a black tea. It seems to be one that would be a good base for blends, etc.

Today, I went ahead and made a full pitcher of it iced, plucked 6 lemons from our tree in the backyard and squeezed them in, added some brown sugar, and voila, fresh ‘Arnold Palmer’. It was a perfect balance of earthy, sour, refreshing, and slightly sweet.

Of all the teas I recently got from RTR, this is the one I chose to actually get 50g of, rather than just a sample. People here seemed to really like it, and I wanted to have at least one Darjeeling around for a bit, rather than only samples.

After several cups, I found this works best with a 1g/1oz ratio….at least, today I went with that and it definitely yielded the best cup thus far.
I bet it would be hard to get this tea to be overly astringent, or even bitter at all.

It has a very refreshing astringency, a flash of juicy-sweetness, and definitely a hint of pineapple (I was paying attention for these things, since it was mentioned several times). It has a nice aroma and is really a great black tea.

I’m probably rating this the highest of the teas I’ve had from RTR so far, but, I’m not sure if it is my favorite. That would probably go to Thurbo 1st flush (or to their Tumsong 2nd flush, surprisingly). However… I still have two more to try, so we’ll see!

I have very little experience with white teas (not none, but almost)… however, here goes…

The tea buds themselves look amazing. They are large, covered in fur, and a pretty silvery color. They don’t give off a lot of aroma, but you can detect something sweet.

I dumped about 3 tsp worth (probably 3g, which looked like a ton) of leaves into the warmed teapot and set the lid on it for a moment to deal with something else. When I was ready to pour the water over them, I opened the lid again to smell, and it was amazing – just like grilled asparagus or another grilled veggie! It wasn’t smokey, but somehow it had a grilled-like-veggie aroma. That was probably the highlight of this tea for me, actually.

Later, once I had poured the tea into a cup, I could definitely also detect dried apricot (as they describe) as well. None of the grilled-veggie flavor or aroma made it into the cup. The flavor of the tea itself was very mild. It was indeed smooth, but even after drinking through the 6g sample, I’m not sure I could describe the flavor very well, because it was extremely light.

Overall, while it is subtle, I enjoyed it enough simply because of the aroma that came from the warmed needles and the liquor. This may be a really enjoyable white tea for someone… but it wasn’t an experience that made me wonder how I missed white teas all this time.

This was a delicious black tea (from Nepal), very similar to the other Darjeelings from Rare Tea Republic.
I think I noticed, as they described, rosewood, and a definite sweet-fruity taste as well.

However, what surprised me is that it really does taste a little like butter! I wasn’t really sure how that exactly would come through in a tea, but it did. Between the smooth, fruity-sweet, and butter quality, this was among my favorites from RTR. I wished I had more like 1oz (at least) instead of just this tiny 6g sample!

Definitely noticed the flavor and heady aroma of rose in this tea. It was pretty intense in this floral quality, kind of like an IPA, without the bitterness.

It left a very nice, semi-sweet rose and almost vegetal aroma as an aftertaste as well. I use the word vegetal here for lack of a better term – not like sencha – but it’s probably what they call ‘evergreen’ in their description. To me, it was related to green vegetables, but not like pine.

It was also a bold Darjeeling, so that’s probably from the fact that it is autumnal. It would definitely make a good breakfast tea, too. Not my favorite of the samples from RTR, but I liked it.

Now this is a true Darjeeling. The texture is awesome – incredibly smooth and even somewhat thick. It is so noticeably and enjoyably smooth it’s hard to drink slowly.

The aroma of grape (muscat) is definitely comes through, and I really like it. That is seems to be what Darjeeling is famous for, and for good reason. The flavor is very sweet in the middle of the sip too, a sweetness like honey.

This tea wasn’t an eye opener like the Tumsong 2nd flush, and may actually be slightly less complex . . . but all the same, I was just too busy enjoying it to think through it more than that! This is one of those teas you could drink all the time and never get tired of it.

Being that green tea is my favorite, I typically expect 1st flush teas to be the best. At the very least, the little that I’ve read has given me the assumption that the best flush is the first, followed by the autumn, whereas the summer is kind of there at the bottom.

This tea happily changed that assumption for me.

It has a refreshing apple-like aroma at the end of the sip, and it reminded me strongly of the way I imagine apple hookah smells (without the smoke). Similarly, it had an intense quality that I will describe as the way rosewater tastes, without the rose/flowery aroma. RTR describes this tea as having a strong jam and sap aroma, or pine needles, and perhaps that how they describe the same flavor I’m calling rosewater.

I very much enjoyed this sample, and this would definitely go into consideration as a good daily tea, if I decide at some point to drink black tea more often.

I would probably make a terrible tea buyer/taster.

Funny to say that, after writing reviews on teas for quite a while now, but, it’s always taken me a good while to really wrap my head around a tea and get a good idea of all the nuances. A while meaning at least 1oz. There are exceptions, where I’m able to tell on the first sip, but that’s not often the case.

From this sample I was only able to get about 2 pots, which for my abilities, was a limiting factor.

Anyway, as described, there was definitely a hint of mango in the aroma initially. Reading RTR’s description, I imagined ‘green pepper’ was going to be like ‘black pepper’ only the green kind. However, instead, it was much more like green chili peppers (think hatch or bell). Very unique and interesting, actually. It had a bit of a pleasant sourness throughout – again, in a nice way, not in a puckering astringent way. After it cooled a bit, a stronger fruity-sweetness became clearer, and that fruit sugar taste remained a bit even after I finished.

Overall, this was an interesting black tea, and was enjoyable.

On a separate note…
I ordered a ton of samples from RTR, but one of them I ordered a full 50g instead of just a 6g sample. By accident, they sent all the teas as 6g (understandable – if you see an order with a bunch of samples, get on a roll fulfilling it, and miss the fact that just one of them says 50g). I emailed them, and within 2 days I had an email saying they had shipped the 50g to me overnight… so in the end, I ended up with a bonus 6g. Thanks guys!
Great Service!

What’s fun about this tea, like the others I’ve had from Verdant, particularly the Yunnan Gold and Yabao, is that it shares some kind of sweet-earthy character that must come as a result of being grown in Yunnan.

I’ve had this twice now, probably enough left for 1-2 more pots, at most. It came as one of two January teas-of-the-month. The first infusion or two have been slightly weak – I think less because this tea isn’t interesting, and more because I haven’t been completely cold-free since the beginning of the year.

That being said, this tea has a very determined sweetness, that continues to grow with further steeps. I made it to four (western style) steeps, and the last was the sweetest and left strongest aroma aftertaste by far. It was really nice! There was a bit of a tang present throughout, as well.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a bit more out of the first steep or two next time.
Anyway, I think this is an straightforward green tea that anyone would enjoy.

As mentioned in the description, the first steeping or two has some astringency/drying feeling at the end of the sip.
But, by the 3rd/4th, the taste is a slightly-fruity sweetness (just subtle, not intense).

The aroma of the steeped leaves, which I remember also coming from other organic senchas (O-cha’s Warashina Supreme comes to mind), is a bit fruity and is probably my favorite part about the tea. Otherwise, this is a fairly standard, mass-produced, average sencha.

Found this at a local Nijiya market. They carry mostly organic green tea, and while I don’t usually seek out organic, it is nice to compare it. So far, I don’t think organic farming (for Japanese green tea) has reached the standard for flavor/etc. that non-organic has, but maybe (even hopefully) that will someday change.

As far as I have learned, the okumidori varietal, that this tea is made of, is usually for shaded teas, as it has a more distinct sweetness. Because the packaging is entirely in Japanese, I had no idea whether it would be an asa- or fuka- mushi, and I hoped it would be the former, but guessed it would be the latter (coming from Chiran, Kagoshima, and all the teas I’ve seen coming from there are super deep-steamed).

When I opened the tea, I found that I had guessed correctly. While I wanted a light-steamed tea, it was nonetheless interesting to consider what this varietal (which I’d never had before) would give being deep-steamed.

Anyway, I’ve experimented with a few brewing parameters, but found brewing it more like a gyokuro to have the most satisfying effect – for the first steeping, using between 140F – 150F for 1min 20 seconds.

In previous brewings (using a higher temp and shorter steep time), I found that the second steeping always had an overly strong vegetal quality that wasn’t balanced by sweetness, bitterness or any other flavor.
Using this more ‘soft’ approach, I found it to have a very nice sweetness at the end of the sip, and a delicious aftertaste that increases over time.

Unlike some fukamushi senchas that are strongly fired for the roasted aroma, this one seems to have been simply dried, which is why I think the sweetness of the okumidori can come through. I am no expert, but it probably doesn’t need to be as deeply steamed as it is.

This is a decent quality sencha, which I upped a bit, because it does come out very nicely when brewed at a low temp for a longer period of time, which seems maybe unusual for a deep-steamed sencha.

I could be wrong, but this tea seems to be not composed of just buds, but also some leaves. At least, when I compare it to Rishi’s Golden Needle, after that has been brewed, it appears to be only buds (there are no open leaves at all…). Whereas, after brewing this one, the leaves seem to open, and there is also a good amount of broken/leaf parts present (nothing small, but it isn’t as homogeneous as Rishi’s GN).

I don’t know if that translates to the higher astringency that I’ve been getting from this tea, especially on the first infusion (and somewhat the second), but it does have a noticeably stronger astringency present than two other Yunnan Golds that I really enjoyed (Rishi’s and Life in Teacup’s). That being said, there is something earthy about this one that makes me really feel like it is from Yunnan (unlike the others)…. it is something about the aroma that reminds me of pu-erh, which is really cool. This was a unique experience for me – having a tea that helped me to understand regional characteristics, because of what it has in common with a completely different tea, but from the same area.

By the third steeping, the smoothness and honey-sweetness that I love or have come to expect about this kind of black tea does come out. I enjoyed the sample size that I’ve now finished, but this particular version of Yunnan Gold didn’t impress me quite the same (as others that I’ve found from different vendors).

After getting used to this tea and having an idea of what to expect from it, it didn’t excite me the same way some Japanese greens do each time I prepare them, but it was very nice to find a green tea that I enjoyed this much from another region.

The first steeping always has a nice honeysuckle sweetness; it isn’t a strong flowery aftertaste, but the initial part of the sip tastes like honey that is soft and sweet like the smell of honeysuckle (maybe orange blossom honey?).

Further steeps are greener, more like chestnuts, or snap peas. It was a good one.

While I really like ginger in all kinds of food/drink (sweet, savory, etc), I found the ginger in this blend to be overbalanced. The name is very appropriate – this is quite spicy (fun!), and the cup has more depth in it than if you were just drinking thai ginger alone so I think it’s accurate to call it a blend (like chai).
However, it is mostly spicy ginger that I get, and when I blended it with a few different teas (yunnan golden buds, Laoshan Chai, etc.), it took over.

I enjoyed each cup that I had, but the Laoshan Chai was just so much better (for me) that I’d actually buy that one again, but wouldn’t choose this. It might have been me though, as others seem to have tasted the orange and fennel, and found it nicely balanced. I could imagine all three of those flavors going really well together.

Trying a sample of this tea again, as it has been quite a long time since I last had it (again, the previous times were small samples). I think I enjoyed it a lot more this go around!

Sweet snap peas, soft veggy-quality, and a little less of the intensity of the sweet+bitter that Den’s Sencha Zuiko has (both come from the same tea farm).

Some people will certainly enjoy this one more than the Zuiko, especially if they favor a ‘softer’ sencha (less potential for intense sweet and bitter). It’s just a matter of personal preference.

While this isn’t the best sencha powder I have had, it is quite enjoyable. Just be careful not to go overboard on the amount of powder, a slightly rounded (not heaping) spoonful (the spoon is included with the tin!) is perfect for a 6-8oz cup.

It is slightly bitter, fruity, a little earthy, and grassy. Even when it is overly strong, it isn’t bad, I’ve found it always drinkable, which is saying a lot because powdered green tea can easily become overwhelming. However, at the right balance, it makes for a tasty cup of sencha. Not to mention it is quite easy to make.

This came in the December tea of the month club from Verdant.
What a unique tea . . . my first reaction was to think how strange it was, but by the fifth steep, I found I enjoyed it a lot.

The dry leaf of course didn’t look anything like tea, and smelled interesting, a little like hay. I brewed it western style, but in a kyusu. The first steeping was probably the least flavorful. Like hay, cedar, or dry pine needles. I expected some sweetness, as the tasting notes/suggestions said it is added to other teas to add sweetness, but the first steeping didn’t have any. It actually reminded me of sheng, because it caused the same drying sensation as I’ve experienced with young sheng.

The next four steepings were good, and even, getting better with each one. The drying sensation was no longer there, the hay became slightly more floral, and overall it began to be very juicy and slightly astringent. It was exactly like white grape juice, actually (without the sweetness). However, there was a sweetness present – not in the sip, but these last steepings left a very nice returning sweetness in the throat. That was easily my favorite part about this tea.

This tea is great it just for the aftertaste (which remains for quite a long time, too).
I can see why you would want to add this to another tea – it won’t have a significant impact on the other tea’s profile during the sip, but it will intensify the aftertaste noticeably, as well as add a juiciness. It would add more depth and interest to the other tea, without overpowering it. I look forward to mixing it with their Golden Buds (as suggested) to see the result.

I received a generous-sized sample of this in my first order from Verdant. About a month ago, I was able to do my first tasting (gaiwan brewing) and again got to have a cup via gaiwan brewing a couple of days ago. And I still have about 3g left, which I will try the western method.

The description of this tea, as with other teas from Verdant, is very accurate. What is really neat about Verdant’s descriptions of their own teas is that the flavors/aromas they describe are specific, but usually flavors or aromas that aren’t too out-there. Meaning, most people are familiar with those things and could actually imagine how they taste.
So when I’ve tasted their teas, I feel like I’ve been able to identify with their description… which is nice! Either they take good notes and their teas are just that good/distinct!

Anyway, this tea does start off sweet… not like the sweetness from fruit or vegetables, but more sugary-sweet. Rock candy isn’t too far off. It’s not an intense sweetness like gyokuro, but it is quite good. There is a floral aroma too… I would have guessed it’s like orchids, and that too, matches their description.

From steeps 3 and on, and especially later ones, it becomes very juicy, and the initial taste that hits your mouth is very much like lime. I think it is this lime-like flavor, which is just a bit astringent, that makes the tea feel juicy, or mouth-watering.

Somewhere out in steep 5 I felt like I was drinking apple juice. It came out for just one cup and was gone by the next, but it was a delicious surprise.

On the brewing I had a month ago, I distinctly remember somewhere later (maybe steep 7) the cup tasted just like smooth, sweet cream. It only lasted for one cup, but it was really nice!

I think I’ve gone about 10-12 steeps each time..maybe more. It could probably keep going, but for me at least, it had lost interest. I don’t feel compelled to buy more of this tea for myself, but I’m really glad to have tried it.

I may add more, or adjust the rating, since this is just my initial impression, however, without further adieu —

The dry leaf smells nice, definitely citrusy.
The leaf after infusion is really interesting. It is very savory, like spices from a dry rub marinade…do I detect lemon pepper? basil? sage? I think so.

The citrus from the yuzu is very nice; it is an enjoyable tart and a bit sweet, rather than sour. The kukicha is not overly strong, but is sweet and very approachable. This is a very fun tea, and like the other flavored options from Den’s, they seem to have done a very good job of adding a good flavor without taking from the excellent tea base.