Gyokuro Yamashiro

My 100th tasting note! How exciting.
I decided to celebrate with this tea as I have been very interested in it since I started drinking tea. I got caught up in oolongs though and got swept away from this beautiful green tea.

I did 4g of tea per 4 oz, with water temperature around 60ish, for 1.5 minutes. It smells incredibly sweet and vegetal. YUM. Beautiful color to the liquor too – like sunshine in a cup (with a slight green tinge). Oh yummy. The taste is thick and vegetal with some bright sparkly tastes at the end of the sip that I cannot place. Perhaps I am sensing some nuttiness too. Really nice sweetness to round out the vegetal flavours too. I’m giddy
I am not quite getting the butteriness, but maybe that is because I brewed it at a lower temperature? All the websites I looked at recommended 50-60C for water temperature so I wanted to stick to that.
Overall, this tea is nice. I will play with the steeping parameters a bit more before I’m dead set on the rating.. but currently I’ll put it at 85 due to the price and the fact that I am not blown away in buttery lovely flavours (.. perhaps I was looking for something more astounding like a lovely TGY type flavour intensity).

Edit: The 3rd steep is buttery veggies! Or creamed asparagus. Either way. YUM!

vegetal ! like rah rah vegetal! like fresh rain and a freshly picked garden. like a cucumber salad or wheatgrass shots after a great run.

and it’s slightly naturally sweet too.
so glad i got this early on and don’t know why it’s not already gone. though i’m glad it’s not because it will be perfect for spring. the bright green leaves and cloudy lime colored liquor will make the sun seem just a little warmer.

for lunch today i went and took and short ABS class. also i’m lazily attempting Intermittent Fasting. no doubt i’ll talk about it too much on here. it’s what i do.

This is like a savory vegetable broth. It’s got a rich creamy mouthfeel. I would agree with others that it’s buttery, but it doesnt taste like dairy. It’s all In the texture. It’s also a bit kelpy and oceanic. It’s got a bit of sweetness but not to the level of the gyokuro I got from Den’s. It also lacks that freshness of spring and sunshine. This one taste more robust. Like autumn. Maybe I should have asked when this was plucked. Hmm.

This is pretty good but I wouldn’t buy it again. If I’m going to get a tea this pricy it had better be magnificent. This one is only pretty good. I’m glad I got this to go from the store.

Anyways, I got a bunch of new samples to try. Yaaaay!

I ordered this tea mostly for my boyfriend, as he loves pure green teas, and was a little wary of how it would taste because of the cost. Was hoping it would be absolutely amazing!

The dry smell reminded me a lot of seaweed, reminded me of the ocean. I steeped at approx. 75 deg C. The seaweed scent got a bit milder when water was added. Overall a nice, fresh smell.

As for the taste, hmm…this cup I made seems a bit stronger than the taste I had previously (bf made a cup last week to try it out). It might have been because I steeped it another minute for 3 in tot? Or the water was a bit too warm? Oh well. It still tastes pretty good, a lot of green veggies present. Reminds me of spinach, might be the color of the leaves as well. I love the color of the tea. Beautiful light green.

Update—I swapped cups with my guy, who just made a second steep. I actually can smell a creaminess in this one! The taste is much milder too, and yes, I taste that creamy veggie taste. Mmmmm. Must say, I prefer the second steep on this one, unless I just did something wrong with the first. Rating may change from future cups of this when I figure out how to make it exactly.

Overall, an above average green tea. Was hoping for a wee bit more, but it still is splendid. Definitely one of the better ones I’ve ever had!

Made for me at a DavidsTea store.

Swoon.

Normally after I swoon, I write ‘THUD’, but you can’t thud into layers of buttery greens. Exquisitely good. I’ve only had oolongs so buttery. And the green tasting notes: like brussells sprouts before you pick up the bitterness. I was expecting it to be good, but it was fabulous. And best of all, the water wasn’t too hot (which has been a problem at my local DT).

Rating: 100.

Wow, this is so buttery and smooth. I’m not usually a big fan of green teas but this is really nice. Not too grassy or vegetal (which is a plus for me, but I know a lot of people like those characteristics)

I only tried this because it’s in the Orient Express sample pack. I won’t buy more because it’s really expensive ($22 for 50g). If price isn’t an issue for you, I’d highly recommend checking this out (even if you don’t normally like green tea).

I just got this in the order this week and I’m drinking it for the first time right now. I’m logging it in but I don’t have time for a proper review. All I can say at this point that it’s a divine tea! I love it!

Oh my gosh what a good tea this was. So I am a huge fan of green teas and this one really did please my palate! This one tasteed so nice and smooth, it tasted sort of spinach-y with a hint of the ocean to me. It definately goes down easily. I wish it wasnt so pricy though, but it is very rare and high quality… I will stick to getting it togo instead of buying the dry leaves (:

update Okay so I just brewed a cup of normal teabag grocery store green tea and I find that it has no flavour at all. After drinking loose leaf teas the grocery store teas just cant measure up…. i swear the bag has been in this cup for a half hour and it is has nooo flavour to it! I think I will stick to davids loose leaf green teas, tently is just not working out for me….

This tea breaks my heart a little. I’m a broke as heck person that spends way too much money on tea as a splurge, but even I had the eyes-bugging-out moment when I realized how expensive it would be to get a bag of this. Sadly, the to-go cups at David’s Tea are all the same price, so I figured I would get that as a treat and it would give me the chance to try their most expensive one for the same price as any of the other kinds. Why is this sad? Because now I’ve tried it and it haunts my dreams. Dream of tea, you say? Sounds like you have a problem! Well, yeah, I do, and it’s that this tea is buttery (like another reviewer I didn’t “get” what people meant by buttery tea until I tried this), green, smooth, and utterly amazing. I’m a “milk and sugar it up!” kind of person with most teas, but this is one of the very, very few I’ve ever enjoyed that is absolutely perfect with nothing in it.

It’s very delicate, and needs both a VERY short steep and much lower than usual temperature. One day, when I have a variable temperature kettle and am not so terminally broke, this will be a luxurious, once-a-week tea for me. I think even if I had all the money in the world I would still want to keep it to once a week (okay, twice a week!) as it really does taste special. It needs a lazy day of total indulgence, or a lake-view cottage afternoon, or the visit of someone you love to pieces, or the news that your best friend is having a baby. It is tea to celebrate life with, and as I type this I know I’m going to have to find a way to reshuffle my budget just a little bit so I can keep it in my life. Oh, what’s that, you think this review is stuffed with hyperbole? If only. No, this tea really is that special.

Love LOVE love this one. Maybe because I work there so I get to drink free teas all day long, and because i know it’s the most expensive one, but I’ve tried every other japanese tea we have, and this one is the best. It really taste like steamed aspargus with a bit of butter. And then kids would ask why we want to drink liquids that taste like aspargus. And we wouldn’t know what to answer.

I really do love the flavour of this tea, but I find it a little too soft for my liking. Still trying different combinations of steeping times, temperatures, and leaf amounts for that perfect cup.

This is really good. A unique buttery, sweet, light green tea with an intense flavor.

Gyokuro,

I stopped by David’s Tea today to grab a cup of straight green tea for the ride home under this terrible weather. I wanted to have a little taste of Gyokuro Yamashiro tea. A little bird told me to get a cup of it instead of buying a baggie because of its price, so I did.

Two things I should’ve done differently
1. – I ordered it with a splash of soy milk and agave out of reflex
2. – I steeped it for 5 minutes

I wanted to taste how it truly is… BARE NAKED STRAIGHT but I only realized it a little too late. I didn’t want to make a fuss so, I left it as that and went my way. I’ve also forgotten the amount of leaves David’s Tea pour for just a cuppa. It was too much! I think I’ve over-steeped the drink, giving it a slight bitter after taste, however, the tea was satisfyingly enough. I really love the vegetal tones.

Mmmm. One of my first straight green teas. Wonderfully devoid of bitterness and as others have said, very buttery. I always kind of wondered what people meant when they said a tea was buttery, and now I know. I got this as a sample and I can’t wait to buy more next time I’m at David’s (I wish it wasn’t so expensive though!)

This was my cup today in-store as they filled my order. I got the new girl on staff who doesn’t know her teas well at all and honestly kinda creeps me out. Sadly, the water she used was way too hot for this tea (something the regular girls at my Davids are sure not to do). My first few sips were utterly scorched and tasted like burnt spinach. YUCK.

Still, I’ve had luck with greens that I just kept with, so I let it cool a bit and didn’t sip again for at least five minutes. The cooler temperature helped (as probably did my pulling the leaves almost immediately after she gave it to me) and now that I’m halfway through the cup it is better. We’re still slightly scorched but I can see why people love this tea. I think if I’d made it at home it would be an excellent, if extremely strong, green. If I choose to have it again in store, I think I’ll ask for the bag on the side with a cup of hot water so I can choose when to steep the cup.

This is the best tea I have ever had. If I could magically transform my entire tea cupboard into this tea, I would be the happiest tea drinker there ever was.

I have been drinking this tea and steeping it for a minute, then reusing the leaves and adding 15 seconds to each steep. I can use the same tealeaves all day long, only noticing a weakening of the flavour towards late afternoon/evening. So then I just start upping the steep time a little more, and it’s still delicious.

The tea is warm and light and buttery, has none of the grassy taste that turns me off some green teas. This is a tea that makes the world slow down and give you some time to breathe and relax. I am taking it to visit my parents for Christmas, and they can’t have any because I am mean like that.

Fantastic for a straight green. Doesn’t get much better in fact. While I generally prefer pure oolongs over pure greens, I’d drink this every day if I could.

damn this is the best green tea no doubt. It reminds me of milk oolong but I like this one so much more. Screw grocery shopping im buying 100 grams of this

Meh. For the price, I was expecting to be absolutely blown away. While it’s true that the tea has a wonderful, buttery mouthfeel, I was not impressed by the taste, which I found to be a bit flat. Perhaps I’m brewing it wrong?

Very vegetal, full brothy-like taste. Flavour is highly reminiscent of seaweed. Prevalent buttery notes and roasted tones.