Teas' Tea Green Hoji

I’ve found a green tea that I like!!! Actually, I really like it! I picked this up at the Whole Foods in Winston Salem, NC. I’ve been working in NC since Monday morning and just got back today. Yay!

I was upset that Whole Foods didn’t have Ito En’s Golden Oolong (my favorite of theirs) and picked this out purely due to the “roasted” aspect. I’m not a green tea lover. I’ve tried to like it. I want to like it. But I just…don’t. I will say that I enjoy green tea blends. But frankly, the components in the “blend” usually mask most of the green tea flavor. Samovar’s Moorish Mint comes to mind. I love that blend…and it contains green tea. But do I taste it? No, not really. I’ve found that if I think of straight up green tea as a broth or veggie soup of some sort, I can usually finish most of the cup. I’m just not into the vegetal taste.

Anyway, I was brave and picked up this Green Hoji. It doesn’t taste like a typical green tea at all. Very roasted, coffee notes…no vegetal taste at all. It smells like burnt peanuts…and I mean that in the best of ways. It also smells and tasted kind of like that puffed wheat breakfast cereal. There is a bitterness, but it’s not an over-steeped type of bitterness. It works for the tea. It’s rich, dark roasted, peanutty, puffed wheat goodness. As far as bottled teas go, this one is a real winner.

I’ll be sure to seek out roasted green teas in the future.

not as bitter/smoky as I expected/feared. It actually reminds me a lot of Ito En’s “Oi Ocha” minus the buttery/floral aspect. I like the Oi Ocha better because it has that extra dimension, but this wasn’t bad.

Roasty and Toasty.. I enjoyed this today.

In fact, it was my deciding factor on where to go to lunch.

You see, I brought frozen Trader Joes burritos with me to work… but I’ve been eating those same damn burritos at work for awhile now. I decided to treat myself and eat out today. I was torn between a fresh cheap sandwich (a 10min. walk to the left) or a nice refreshing Teas’ Tea from the health food store (10min. walk to the right).

The Tea won. Which is really the only good thing about that grocery store. You have to check the expiration dates there. Too many times has an Odwalla or fresh fruit medley been bought, then returned promptly for having a really really nasty taste or smell from being past it’s date. So I decided to go safe, and went for a small caesar with a hummus wrap.

Harvest Market on 8th Street. Always check the expiration dates! That market should be fined. But they have every kind of Teas’ Tea, so I keep shopping there.