O5 Tea

Backlog:

A really delightful Sencha. A surprisingly full-bodied, satisfying Japanese Sencha. Sweet and very pleasant to sip. Here is my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2013/01/31/chiran-sencha-from-o5-tea/

I was pretty sure this would not be a tea for me but it’s not a bad little tea. It’s not something i’ll ever re-stock but I for sure can drink this down. It’s very green…and tastes like eating spinach. There’s a mouthiness to this that i can’t quite describe.

Prologue: It took me for bloody ever to update Steepster with his tea. Ten minutes! That’s ten minutes that could’ve been spent sipping tea. Grrrr….

Anyway…

I originally was saving this for a special occasion, or for when I accomplished something magnificent – like curing cancer of the butt or something. I figured, however, that surviving the work week was just like surviving butt cancer, so, I whipped it out on my day off.

I’ve only heard of (and had) two other teas that were cask-aged. Those were from Smith Tea. I was glad to see that others were taking up this trend. This autumn flush Nepalese was cask-aged in Cab-Franc and Merlo barrels for…I-dunno-how-long.

The result was a tea that smelled vaguely of wine, but mostly of Himalayan black, which was fine. On the taste, it was really hard to tell the difference between the natural muscatel notes of the leaves and the wine-scenting from the barrels. If I were a betting man, I would say they showed up in the aftertaste the most. More Cab-Franc than Merlot (thankfully).

If I were to impart a suggestion on further experiments, I would say to use a wetter barrel when beginning the casking process. Otherwise, this was awesomeness in my mornin’ cup.

Edit: Would you believe this tea was somewhat instrumental in saving my trip to World Tea Expo? Well, it was. http://steepstories.com/2013/02/11/high-fives-to-o5-and-a-world-tea-expo-update/

So apparently 1 minute is a bit too long for this tea (or at least, in the tea:water ratio I used). Sadly, there was some bitterness that impacted the flavour for me. However, I still liked this tea – it was intensely vegetal in both aroma and flavour, and definitely now holds the spot of the most spinach-flavoured tea I have ever tried! It literally tasted like pureed boiled spinach. Which I strangely actually liked….

Thanks for letting me steal a sample out of your package of this, Sil!