Y’all. Seriously, y’all. I got this at my grocery store. A 20g tin. For $3.00. No, not even for $3.00. For $2.99. I kid you not. Teance has this on their site for $37. (As does In Pursuit of Tea… are they the same company?) It’s not out of date or anything. It’s just really, really cheap. Someone was obviously smoking something when they priced this. I knew this tin was a good deal; that’s why I picked it up. I didn’t realize it was that good of a deal. Anyway, on with the show!
Have I ever mentioned that I’m scared of matcha? I would sell my first born for a limitless supply of shincha (Yutaka Midori, please) yet for some reason, matcha freaks me out. The first time I had it was at a tea ceremony my friend was performing at our high school’s culture festival (文化祭) many years ago in Japan. Ryoko, said friend, told me when she invited me that “even the Japanese don’t like the tea in the tea ceremony.” Stellar recommendation. And the tea served totally matched up to expectations. Ick. I think that’s why I’ve not been a big matcha girl. Then, when I finally found the cajones to try matcha again, it was some that I received in a swap and had been sitting on my counter for months, getting icky and not-green, as I tried to get up the nerve to try it. Unsurprisingly, that tasted icky, too. I did have some iced matcha at Teavana at one point. That was okay. But it was iced… and from Teavana. So that was sort of discounted as a typical matcha experience. But when I say this at the store marked $2.99, I figured I’d give another go. Three bucks for potentially nasty tea isn’t that big of a deal. Which brings me to what is currently in my cup…
OMG, WHY was I afraid of matcha??? This is lovely! It smells like a fresh sheet of crisp, sweet, toasty nori. And the taste!! The taste is so mild and creamy and sweet! It’s like sencha, but dessert sencha instead of pungent dinner entree sencha. I know why people make ice cream out of matcha now – it’s so creamy! I could mainline this stuff!
Okay, okay, it’s never going to replace my love of a deep steamed sencha – I just love the rich pungency too much and this is no where even close to pungent. But this is so good. SO. GOOD. Yeah, it could be more complex but honestly, who doesn’t like sencha taste coupled with smooth, creamy and sweet? Green tea ice cream without the cold or the calories, that’s what this is. This is sencha dessert in a cup. With caffeine. And that caffeine is the only reason I’m not making myself another cup RIGHT NOW. And another in five more minutes. And another five minutes after that.
Looks like I have to make an emergency run to the grocery store. I think they had three more tins of this, all at $2.99. Time to stock up!
