In this afternoon’s steep-off chez sherapop, two organic filter bag green teas wrapped in open-air paper envelopes are going sniff to sniff and sip to sip against one another. The first up is Touch Organic Green Tea. Vying to rule the category “organic filter bag green tea wrapped in open-air paper envelope” is Choice Premium Japanese Green (also organic). The Touch hails from China, but is a similar style of tea.
My first observation is that the Touch Organic Green is more golden and less cloudy than the Choice. This led me immediately to predict that the Choice would be more flavorful, being both more cloudy and more green. This is true. The Choice also tastes and smells more like sencha than does the Touch Organic Green.
Neither of these teas claims on the packaging to be sencha, so I don’t want to go overboard here. I hasten to add, however, that calling a tea “Premium Japanese Green” naturally suggests as much, since most of the tea produced and consumed in japan is indeed sencha.
I now suspect that the Touch may be a Chinese bancha or a blend of Chinese bancha and Chinese sencha. It’s also possible that the Choice is a blend of Japanese sencha and bancha. Why else would they not take credit for being pure sencha, if that is what it is?
In any case, I find the flavor of the Choice to be richer than the Touch. The Touch is still highly potable and the price is ridiculously low for a decent organic green tea. Is it worth it to pay the same price for only one-third the number of bags in order to taste the marginally better Choice, which however costs more per bag than Harney & Sons Japanese Sencha and yet is not nearly so good?
In this sort of cost-benefit analysis—which I generally eschew, but seeing as today’s steep-off is between grocery store teas, it seems not inappropriate—I end up coming to the conclusion that, despite its slightly inferior taste, Touch is a much better deal, all things considered, than the Choice! If I’m going to pay the price for Choice filter bags, why not just go Harney instead?
