Tokyo

Wow! This may just be my favorite green tea yet!! (excluding matcha of course). One of my many new years resolutions was to drink more green tea, and I don’t think I’ll have any problem with that if it’s Tokyo blend! A million thanks to ScottTeaMan for the recommendation, it’s right up my alley! Subtle, grassy sweetness, with the complexity of the sesame seeds to give it enough character, this is a treat.

I recently converted my sister (a longtime exclusively coffee-drinker) to tea. As I have a habit of forcing things I love upon my friends and family I have been thrilled with this feat , and taken it upon myself to introduce her to as many different teas that I thought she’d like as possible. She started calling me her tea mentor, so I thought I owed it to her to take her on a round of tea shopping this past Saturday. We stopped at the David’s tea on Bleecker, Porto Rico Importing and Harney’s Soho store, of course. All were insanely busy but I’d have to mark it as a success as we were both encumbered with large packages by the time we made it to the bar to watch my 49ers’ magnificent victory!

Now that I’ve rambled off the backstory at length, this was one of the many purchases made that day. I was indecisive and looking for something different, and when I had one whiff of this I knew it’d be perfect! It’s sweet florals are the perfect cure to this rainy/snowy day!

A jagged bancha blended with sesame seeds provides a visual more natural than I thought at first. The aroma is roasty and sweet with hints of a more savory flavor profile.

When brewed the leaves produce light yellow liquor partially clouded by some dusting from the loose blend. The steeped aroma is lighter, slightly sweeter with more prominent nutty tones and a more subdued roasted profile.

On the palate everything comes alive. Clear spinach and artichoke flavors pair with the roastiness of the sesame and the nutty flavors to create a well balanced and nuanced flavor profile.

While there is a slight bit of vegetal astringency it’s only on the initial part of the sip and is quickly balanced by the other pieces of this teas’ profile.

This one was quite yummy and for a while I couldn’t quite decide what it reminded me of. Then it hit me. It reminded me exactly of the second resteep of 52Teas Marshmallow Treat.

I really enjoyed this one. It was very genmaicha-like in the roastiness. I brought it along for my week away and I’ll be enjoying it again for sure :)

First of all thank you to Batrachoid for giving me some of this tea to try.

I’m not really tasting the supposed caramel flavours in this tea though that might just be a reference to the naturally slightly nutty flavour of the bancha base. The sesame seeds are more obvious although the flavour isn’t as strong as with Adagio’s sesame-flavoured black tea. It’s a nice green tea, but nothing too extreme.

I can’t taste the nutty flavor (that supposedly comes from the sesame seeds), but the caramel is definitely present. I’m not sure how well it blends with the bancha…meaning, it almost tastes like sweetened Japanese green tea.
However, it is better than if you simply added sugar to plain bancha. I really have enjoyed it, the butteriness and caramel-sweetness. It is a fun alternative to the fruit-flavored greens I’ve had.

Wow, this was an interesting tea. It had a fairly simple buttered spinach aroma, but the flavor was very complex. In my bid to find words to describe it, I came up with this:
Lightly sweetened buttered spinach, with caramel in the aftertaste and a bit of astringcy towards the end of the cup.

I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’d order more of it. I’m starting to see that I have a preference for the unflavored when it comes to greens and oolongs.

I drank this today with my breakfast. It’s really sweet on its own. I think this might be one of the sweetest green teas I’ve had. I am not crazy for the flavoring, it reminds me of Bossa Nova with the caramel, nutty taste. I love the sesames in it. The green tea itself is nice, I would of liked it without the sweet flavoring. I just haven’t found a tea with caramel I liked, it is just something that doesn’t agree with me.

Thank you Shinobicha for a taste! I have been interested in knowing what this taste like.

Normally I don’t go for green tea—I haven’t branched out much and most of what I’ve tried has been too vegetal for me. But this, oh! It smells so good. Sweet, nutty, smooth… it really is the closest thing to a dessert tea that I’ve tried. Somehow the sesame and caramel notes just add up to the most delicious smelling thing in the world. (Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little.) I will warn you, though, the tea itself is not nearly as strong as the scent of the leaves. It’s much milder, more… nutty, almost, though without the strong grassy taste I usually associate with green teas.

More bad news: the leaves are fairly large, but they aren’t totally unbroken and I’ve found a number of stems. A quick googling shows that bancha tea is usually lower grade, so this isn’t super surprising with that in mind. It’s definitely a high enough grade for a simple flavored green.

I’m still sorting out the exact combination of time and temp and amount, but I definitely have to use more of this than my stronger black teas, and I go for two minutes and thirty seconds rather than the recommended two. Definitely don’t be stingy when measuring this out. It’s already a very mild tea. I’ve found you can get at least two full-strength steepings out of it, and it’s only six bucks for a quarter pound at the store.

Once I run out of this (and I will definitely run out), I am absolutely buying more.

The first bancha I’ve got my hands on in years. Has sesame and carmel. Very lovely roasted flavor.