Rose Sencha

I got this as a sample in my latest Den’s order, which is good because I am on a quest to try all of their flavored senchas! I love love rose, so I thought this for sure would be a winner.

Maybe my expectations were too high, but this was just okay for me. Actually, it’s tasty: I found the sencha to be dominant, but it wasn’t the same buttery flavor that I got in the pineapple sencha. The rose is faint and at the end of the sip, but somehow still very perfumey. I don’t mind perfumey but it wasn’t my favorite rose flavoring.

I feel like I’m being kind of harsh on this tea! It’s good but just not quite what I was expecting after the yuzu, pineapple and sakura which are all super fabulous.

Happy Mother’s Day!
Because my mother is an avid roses person, along with being strictly “sencha-only” in regards to tea, this was an easy choice for the day.

Brewed with Den’s parameters. This is a light-tasting, light-bodied sencha, and that mildness works well with the understated rose flavoring to create a very polite, elegant brew. No loud notes here, just a very balanced, steadied tea. This has that nice, soft, “fluffy” (?) texture I like from mild sencha. Incredibly easy to drink.

Although… is this really what rose flavor is like? Since Mother keeps our gardens overflowing with roses, I’m familiar with roses, but I haven’t had a lot of rose-flavored things. The aroma is very pleasantly rose, and there are petals in the dry leaf, but this tastes more like… pineapple? If pineapples were flowers… It’s not entirely fruity, but it’s bright, slightly sweet-tart, almost tropical. By rose-flavor, I was expecting a dewy, fresh-cut, perfume-like profile.

Whatever this flavor may be, it’s certainly clean, and applied with skillful restraint. Lively, without being loud; subtle, without being spineless. Mr. Den seems to make such balanced blends, I look forward to relying on them more and more.

I received this as a sample with my order. I love the sencha in it. I was unsure what to think of rose. Now I know, I don’t like rose if it’s a dominant flavor. If it’s a background flavor, I can take it. But straight up rose? I can’t do it. I still gladly drank the sample. I have requested they make a coconut flavor, since their flavored sencha are all top notch.

You must LOVE rose to enjoy this tea. It’s still good.

Had a sample of this in a recent order.
The rose flavor was very strong, it was actually difficult (at least for me) to taste the sencha. If you like rose-flavored things or rose in tea, you will like this one. The aroma is the best part about it for me, and it feels like very good quality.
The second and third steepings were better, because while it was still very floral, it was less so, and it tasted sweeter (I think it was a sweetness that was left by the rose flavor).

I wouldn’t buy a whole 2oz package of this, but that is because rose tea is just not my thing. Like I said, this seemed like it was high quality. I wouldn’t mind having it again if there was a free cup just sitting there, lol.

let it brew a little longer than supposed to.. about 4 1/5 – 5 min.. although a nice mild tea, you actually will pick up on the nice floral notes. little touch of honey would have been better, but the raw sugar I used was quite nice as a second choice