Gyokuro

Incoming first-time Japanese-tea review!

So after my super-fail attempt at sencha, I figured, hey, let’s try something a LOT harder. Gyokuro. The parameter beast! Brew at your own risk!

Auggy sent me some super-premium stuff, so I figured, let’s start with the Harney and expand from there. I opened the little sample packet, and I was… surprised! Way to go, Harney! The leaves here are long and gorgeous, with a deep green-blue character. I was really surprised how much of it was unbroken and lovely.

It… it smells like grass. Yep. Fresh mowed lawn. So I carefully measured out a tablespoon of the stuff, and waited for the water to cool.

And waited.

And waited.

Okay, it takes a LONG time for water to go from boiling to 140, lemme tell you. But I didn’t want to mess this one up. Nope! Not after the sencha debacle! Then I made sure to pour at 55 seconds… just because I needed to make sure I didn’t mess this one up. Aaannnnd, I brewed with the lid uncovered. Yep! Gyokuro is too expensive to mess up! What a finicky little tea!

The infusion… it’s so pale! Paler than white tea! And instead of tinted yellow, like a white tea, it’s tinted lime. The cup smells like sweet grass. And… I’m not really picking up much other than that. So let’s move on to the fun part: the taste!

Wow. Um, hrm. Wow. Weird. Um. Yeah. Wow.

For as light as it looks, there really is a flavor punch is here. Not watered down, nope, not at all! There’s a lot of grassiness. A lot. Which I’m assuming is an acquired taste. I kind of like it, but then I sort of don’t, and then I’m confused. But it tasted like buttered, sweet grass! Which is kind of odd. It tastes fresh-cut. And there’s a wonderful sweetness that lingers totally along the palate, enveloping my mouth. No astringency at all! Nothing! Seriously, this one goes down smooth. There’s some very verdant green sediment at the bottom of my cup.

It’s the texture that’s really throwing me for a loop. It’s almost… heavy and creamy. Thick in my mouth. Now this is beginning to sound wrong, and I’m starting to giggle, but… yeah.

It tastes like a summer day spent running through sprinklers, the wet grass clinging to your feet, the water cooling on your skin, the smells and tastes of the air mingling together… it’s highly evocative, but I’m not quite sure I’m wrapping my head around the flavors yet. I don’t know how much of this I could drink at a time. It’s just odd! Lots of umami, but odd!

Also, this has lots of caffeine, right? Hrm… hehehe, I guess I’ll be up till all hours of the morning, then!

My second Gyokuro, and I’m closing in on the last of the Harney samples from my two Harney orders so far. After this I have 4 greens and 4 oolongs left. Then order time!

Trying this the same way I did the Adagio earlier. 140F for 2 minutes to start, 30 seconds thereafter.

The smell inside the sample packet is incredibly, vividly, of chlorophyll saturated fields. Green teas don’t ordinarily evoke the descriptor “rich” for me, but this fragrance is, in fact, extremely rich.

The leaves are gorgeous. Darker-than-emerald-green, fine, flecked with silver, and shiny.

The liquor. Best described with a bit of dialogue:

Me to BF: What do you think of the color of this tea? [holds up glass cup]

BF: [Sniggery snort.] Terrible. Looks like Gatorade tea.

I must admit it does have that lime green Gatorade look to it. At least it isn’t quite glowing like nuclear waste, like the extra green Genmaicha.

And at least it smells and tastes nothing like Gatorade. The aroma and the taste are both of sweet-butter-mediated-slightly-bitter-vegetables, somewhere on the green continuum between spinach and cabbage. The mouthfeel is heavy, oddly suggestive of gelatin but fortunately not gelatinous. (I’m not a gelatin fan, ever since my friend Karen in the 4th grade told me Jello was made of horse hooves which turned out not to be true, but I can never get that thought out of my mind. I can think of nothing grosser than vegetable Jello. I stay far, far away from aspic.)

I’m liking this a little better than the Adagio and I wonder if it has to do with the freshness? This was in the sealed packet until right before preparation, whereas the Adagio was in the little sample tin that had previously been opened, though carefully resealed and stored in proper tea storage conditions. Is Gyokuro particularly susceptible to the effects of air? To the extent there’s anything negative to say about this tea, I would chalk it up to user error in preparation. I’m sure there are all kinds of ways in which I could be getting the preparation wrong. But I’m still generally liking it, so that must be saying something.

In any case, another fun trip to Gyokuro land. I have some from Den’s to try, too.

Feeling a bit light headed after an uneventful Valentine’s Day spent watching both Planet of the Apes movies for comparison purposes, so I decided, what better way to jumpstart my day than with a cup of ghastly, green Gyokuro.

The spinachy, seadweedy and decidely vegetal aromas are a brazen shock to the senses, but not in a harsh way. It’s lovely and soothing, pleasantly stirring, like a hearty spinach soup simmering on the stove. A sip of this decadent brew floods the mouth with a lush green flavor of the freshest steamed spinach, the cooked flavor of toasted walnuts and oddly, a hint of sulfur. Unlike many other high end teas, the flavor is consistent and solid, unevolving, but delicious all the same.

Like most great things Japanese, Gyokuro is a study in subtlety. A type of teas as well as an adjective, it has come to describe teas with “umami”, or mouth-coating sensation, as that caused by this lovely shade grown tea. Judging the gentle differences that shade growing makes requires careful attention. Though Gyokuro tea grows partially in the shade, and Sencha teas grow in the sun, both are processed the same way. The leaves therefore resemble each other closely, both in appearance and in taste. Yet the shade covering of Gyokuro accounts for the subtly lusher, darker, more mouth-coating tea.

Most Gyokuro is grown around Uji, half an hour south of the former capital of Kyoto. The shade-growing method was developed at the end of the Edo era, in the 1860s. Once a rural suburb of Kyoto, Uji has now become quite busy. Apartment houses and office buildings have replaced many Gyokuro tea fields. The remaining fields that make Gyokuro are wedged in between the buildings and on the hills that surround the city. About three weeks before the May harvest, the gardens are shaded over. They were once covered in rice straw; today growers use black plastic mesh.

Since the gardens are so small, crops are usually plucked by hand. Then the leaves are promptly steam-fixed to preserve the lovely dark green color of the leaves. Following the Sencha rolling method, the leaves pass through a series of machines that shape and dry the leaves in stages, approximating the steps skilled handlers once followed to make hand-rolled Gyokuro. (Since it takes about four hours to make a kilo of hand-rolled Gyokuro, it is rare to find hand-rolled tea, but they very long and slender leaves make a light, elegant brew.) After the rolling the tea is dried in an oven. The result is a special tea the Japanese particularly prize for its constant, vegetal flavor with gentle, soothing roasted notes.

This tea looks like Pine Needles! I am also told that this tea has a vegetal aroma and taste to it. If it tastes like Taiping Hou Kui, I’m sure I’ll love this tea.

Leaf Quality
The dry leaves are very thin, and deep green. They are also very delicate- the slightest touch of one of these leaves could brake it in 3 pieces. They smelled sweet, and floral. The wet leaves had the smell and consistency of cooked Spinach. I even noticed a very slight sulfuric aroma, as in cooked broccoli or cabbage. This tea, just by the leaves, was very vegetal indeed.

Brewed Tea
The brewed tea smelled of buttered Brussels Sprouts, which I happen to like (I know! How strange!) The color was a hue of lime green, but very clear. I could mistake this for a vegetable base in a soup. The taste was vegetal, and almost savory. However, this tea was also slightly sweet, and it reminded me of Sugarsnap Peas. How much vegetables have I mentioned so far?

This tea is very different in character to Taiping Hou Kui, which is more sweet, and less vegetal. Also, this tea is more robust. The taste does not change very much between steeps either. This tea still succeeds in pleasing the palate.

The dry leaves of this tea look like a bunch of macerated pine needles in colour and shape. I think the leaves would have been bigger normally, but sample packs tend to get squished and this one has been in my cupboard for a fair amount of time. The leaves turned a vibrant jungle-green as they steeped and gave off a rather savoury aroma.

The tea is a lime green colour I don’t think I’ve ever seen in another tea and the flavour is distinctly ‘umami’ to my tastebuds. I’ve only ever had one other gyokuro, but I recall that it had a sweetness to it that this tea lacks. It has a lightly grassy aftertaste with hint of bitterness which makes me wonder if I screwed up the steeping somehow – maybe I steeped it for too long?

Experience buying from Harney and Sons http://steepster.com/places/2779-harney-and-sons-on-line-millerton-new-york

Age of leaf: Lot # 11201: puts ‘production’ at roughly mid-July 2011 (although according to their website, all their Japanese tea is ‘harvested’ from previous years harvest – 2010).

Appearance and aroma of dry leaf: Very small cut, straight pieces, dark green in color with a fresh vegetal aroma.

Brewing guidelines: Small amount of Stevia added, glass Bodum pot with metal strainer/plunger.
…………….1st: 160, 60” – great flavor
…………….2nd: 180, 40” – good flavor
…………….3rd: 155, 120” – very mild flavor, mostly just sweet

Color and aroma of tea liquor: a light lime green color on the first steeping, light yellowish green on the second and third steepings Grassy aroma.

Flavor of tea liquor: The flavor is what I believe the best Japanese green teas are known for: grassy, vegetal, fresh.

Appearance and aroma of wet leaf: looks a lot like cut grass—I have cleaned many lawnmower and this looks a lot like the grass clippings: dark green leaves cut into tiny pieces! There are a few large pieces of stems mixed in with the “clippings”.

Blends well with: I believe any Sencha will blend well with Gyokuro as they are both steamed when processed and take a little cooler temperature when steeped (I have had success blending it with at least one Sencha).

Value: For the sample direct from H&S, great, considering what you get for $2 (it is roughly $10/ounce otherwise). I was also lucky to get a large supply of this through a third party for a great price.

Overall: I have heard much about the amazing qualities of this tea, and I have not been disappointed: everything about it is fresh, and the flavor is strongly vegetal and unusually sweet for a green tea (I add less Stevia to the first steeping than I do with other green teas). I have been drinking this since late summer. I enjoy it all through the week since I drink it on mornings before work to give me that extra theanine kick (it is purported to have more theanine than other green teas due to its being shaded at the end of growing period); its hard to say for certain, but it does seem to have a greater effect on calming and focusing my mind than most other green teas. This is a tea that, if I can get it for a good enough price, I like to have on hand at all times.

All-time favorite tea.
Feel like Japanese royalty with this sensational drink, a jewel among green teas.
This is a beautiful, strikingly green tea with a shade-grown flavor, a lightly vegetal and full-bodied tea that leaves the palette fully satisfied. This is a refined, and hardly forgettable tea.
Highly recommended. This is the creme of the crop in Japanese teas.

Though caffeinated, the tea is remarkably zen-inspiring.

**If deciding between Gyokuro and Heavenly Gyokuro, the difference is minor. To save a few bucks, go with the standard gyokuro. It is no less superior, and will not disappoint if brewed well.