Green Tea Lovers

While eating a late lunch – Tandoori Rice (Vegetarian, of course!) – I pulled this one out that LiberTeas sent me! Thanks girl!

Smells like gentle green veggies. The liquor is a bit murky green-yellow-grey.

It tastes a tad vegetal but also a little sweet and even the slightest-lemony underneath. The end of the sip on to the aftertaste is fairly floral. I like the way this flavor morphs!

Neat Green Tea!

Amazing! And enough left to share with a few friends! Be on the look-out!

No notes yet.

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea.

This is really nice. The jasmine is a smooth, gentle jasmine flavor. The osmanthus offers very subtle peach-like tones to the cup. A hint of sharpness from the sunflower. I like the way these different florals come together in one cup. The green tea is light and grassy, but not too grassy. It’s a very pleasant jasmine, one I’d recommend to someone who generally finds jasmines to be too aggressively floral, this one has such a gentle demeanor, I think they’ll find it quite agreeable.

This is a fantastic Shincha. Sweet and delicious. The aroma of the dry leaf is – surprisingly – not at all vegetative, but, instead, it is sweet and nutty, with hints of flower. The flavor is quite the same, with only hints of a vegetative flavor, while the sweet nutty flavor prevails. Really delicious.

Thank you TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this.

It’s really nice. Light flavor with a sweet, vegetative quality.

I’ll have to write more about this one later, and I’ll rate it then.

In conjunction with today’s challenge (see discussion board) I have chosen this song to go with this tea…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKe0DFwSZM
Jason Mraz’s cover of Seals/Croft’s Summer Breeze because of the emphasis on JASMINE.

As for this tea…
it’s gorgeous! I was assuming it was just going to be green tea with flavoring but you can see all the different floral ingredients within. It’s pretty! The Jasmine (and other flowers) are wonderfully done…noticeable but not overly intense.

There is a nice sweeter side of the green tea coming out and it shine thru with the floral notes!

This is REALLY nice…I wish more Jasmine Teas could be this nice!

Milky and sweet. Very different from the Silver Needle teas I’m used to, and the uniqueness is welcome. This is splendid. Absolutely worth every penny.

No notes yet.

Wow, this was unusual. I’ve often speculated as to why other teas don’t appear in powdered form (and, no, I don’t mean “instant” teas). Sometimes, I imagined what a white matcha would taste like. Well, now I know. It’s weird…but in a good way. Unlike other matchas out there, this requires the use of boiling water to get the full effect. An attempt at the usual 160(ish)F temperature yielded an oolongy soup. If you like that sorta thing, go for it. I didn’t care for it. However, with boiling water, the true nuances of this came forth. It was a nutty liquor, beige in color, frothed up quite nicely, had a lovely texture, and was probably the first tea that had an umami character to it. Never thought I’d use that word in a sentence. Different than what I was expecting but damn good.

Full Review: http://www.teaviews.com/2011/01/25/review-green-tea-lovers-rhino-matcha-white/

This is my third product hailing from Shizuoka Prefecture. Of the three, it’s probably the second best I’ve tried. First flush buds are steamed to create this lovely, sweet-smelling “behbeh” sencha. Brewing required a less-than-a-minute steep in typical green tea temp water. The result was a foggy, vibrant green liquor akin to a genmai matcha-iri…but without the “suck” factor. It was a very nutty brew, but sweetly so; and not very vegetal at all. A second infusion turned up a citrus note. All in all, a bronze-worthy sencha.

Full Review: http://www.teaviews.com/2011/01/26/review-green-tea-lovers-shincha-shizuoka/

I usually infuse my green teas for about 3 minutes, but this one suggests 40 seconds! Yes, 40 seconds…so…I’m being a good lil girl and following the directions!

The aroma is barely there.

The color is a murky green but oddly enough tastes very clean!

The flavor really enhances itself as it cools at room temp for a minute or two. It’s fairly sweet. This is a very nice GREEN. I’m happy I decided to follow the directions on the infusion time…it was JUST RIGHT!!!!

When I got this in the mail, I was beyond excited to try it. White teas are my tea of choice. They started me down the steepy spiral of loose leafdom. Ceylon whites were still unknown territory to me. In appearance these looked like Silver Needle but more variant in size. I was reminded of Bengali white tea on sight alone. The aroma had a fruit-hint to it and a buttery/honey-ish lean. This brewed quite clear with a similar wet aroma as the dry. The taste differed greatly between the three infusions I made; sometimes leafy, creamy, honey-combed, nut-sweet, leafy, and vegetal. I was more or less impressed with the results.

Full Review: http://www.teaviews.com/2011/01/28/review-green-tea-lovers-adams-peak-white/

Immediately apparent was the consistency of the dry leaves, with a nice pale golden hue on delightfully fuzzy, even needles of great length, a bit sinuous. The warm gaiwan full of leaves gave a delightful fresh glow of jack fruit, almonds, palomino fino jerez and nips of banana. Again, the aroma was strongest in the first wet leaves, but it was very pleasurable. Flavors opened bright and strong with pulled white sugars, light green olive, and bits of cooked yellow plum. Mostly white sugar, though. Fresh and clean, extra-light and super-bright. A really thirst-quenching summer tea. It leaves me with a dry grass and hot savanna summer feeling.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=176

Great complexity and has a very interesting coffee and dark chocolate note in the background that really appealed to me. Good balance and length on the palate.

Price: $6.49 for 30g.
Buy Again: Yes

The needles of this tea were incredibly varied. A large portion were broken significantly and the color spectrum ranged from punishingly pale to a deeply hued golden to a near black. This was even more evident in the cup after a few steeps. The variance in processing showed through in the flavor and texture of the tea. The brief glimmering moments of delight came in the first wetting of the leaves, as they breathed out some apricot, muscatel, and white fig jam. After that it was all down hill, with an over-oxidized, weak black tea, and papery character. No pale fruits, little straw, and vanishing to non-existent sweetness.

I am honestly excited that regions are exploring tea styles that they have not historically produced, but as this example shows, some refinement is needed in the production process before these style-newcomers can create tea in the style that comes even close to holding a candle to the traditional producers. I look forward to that day, it will be a new dawn of tea terroir.

Full blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=167

Part of 2010 Official TeaChat TeaTasting Initiative Round 1 – Shincha.

Initially, I was surprised by the overall lightness of the first steep. Maybe this tea could endure hotter water or a longer initial steep. But, in the second session, the first steep revealed this tea’s true complexity, loaded with cooked pumpkin flesh and skin, fresh cut carnation stem, and young maple tree shoots. The second steep opens up some of the more briny and oceanic characters with detectable fresh, firm littleneck clam meat and brown seaweeds. The third steep was rather flat.

This tea can be defined by a raw, buddy green stem character that’s complex and not harsh, but floral and perfumed, like rose buds. Most of the green kelpy and chlorophyll heavy notes were reserved for the wet leaves. I went searching for a bit more sweetness and came up with little. This is a dry tea. The theanine glow is moderate to low and soft. Enjoyable, but perhaps a little quiet, yet maybe one to seek for its complex savory and stemmy flavors that dominate the first steep of this tea.

Blog post: http://tea.theskua.com/?p=59