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Yamakai Sencha - 2010 1st Harvest Shizuoka Sencha from Norbu Tea

Steepster Score 3 Ratings Rate This Tea

81/100

Yamakai Sencha - 2010 1st Harvest Shizuoka Sencha

Green Tea by Norbu Tea

This beautiful Sencha hails from the Ushizuma area in Aoi-Ku (ward) of Shizuoka. It is composed entirely of Yamakai cultivar tea plants, and it comes from a small scale/single estate farm which specializes in Munouyaku farming. Munouyaku is a term which basically means “no agricultural chemicals,” but it is important to emphasize that Munouyaku is not a regulated term or certification of any sort. In the case of this tea farm, it means that the farmers take great pride in managing their farm in a natural manner, from intensive, hands-on natural soil management without chemical fertilizers to careful weeding by hand. They also use hand operated trimmers to harvest their tea instead of the large tractor-type harvesters used on large scale farms. Basically, the people who produce this tea love the land it is grown on as much as they love the awesome final tea they produce, and the extreme care taken throughout cultivation is clearly evident in the beautiful deep green of the leaves before, during and after steeping and the brilliant yellow-gold of the infused liquor.

Our Yamakai Sencha is a light steamed tea, allowing the delicate but distinctive flavor of the Yamakai culitvar to come through in the cup. The infused liquor is delicate & sweet, and the aftertaste is perfectly bittersweet, mouth coating and long-lasting. It is a rare treat to find a tea like this one that has been produced with such obvious love for the art and science of traditional tea farming.

Because of the delicate nature of this tea, we strongly recommend steeping this tea using 140°F water (no higher than about 150°F maximum) and somewhere between 1 and 1.5 grams of tea per ounce of water used. It has been my experience that using a high leaf to water ratio and a relatively low steeping temperature really brings out the sweet subtleties of this awesome Asamushi Sencha.

7 Tasting Notes

Geoffrey Norman
95
Geoffrey Norman

This was the third Asamushi-style sencha I tried from Norbu. I didn’t know much about the leaf cultivar going into it, but it possessed a wonderfully vanilla scent to the dry leaves. That same characteristic also translated to the liquor’s taste. I never call sencha creamy, but this definitely was on the foretaste with a strong fruit note. My heart still belongs to guricha and Fukamushi-style senchas, but this ranks well up there.

Full Review: http://www.teaviews.com/2011/04/16/review-norbu-tea-2010-spring-yamakai-sencha/

2011-03-24 03:15:48 -0400
140 °F / 60 °C
2 min 30 sec
0 comments
teaddict
90
teaddict 3 tasting notes

Yamakai Sencha – 2010 1st Harvest Shizuoka Sencha

One sniff and I’m already in love: the scent is sweet and rich. 5 grams of tea to my 150mL kyusu, prewarmed, water to 140 degrees per Greg’s brewing recommendation.

Brewing 2 minutes first steep, throwing caution to the wind…and it is sweet and rich.

30 second 2nd steep, delicious and sweet, a bit astringent and nutty too.

For 3 steep, heating the water to 150, just to play a little more, and steeping 1 minute—similar to previous infusion, but a bit lighter in body and richness—really think it’s done at 3.

I may play with it a bit more next time, because I am concerned that the very long first steep took a bit more of the punch that should have been left for the later steeps.

Overall, this is a lovely sencha. Without a head-to-head comparison, it’s hard to rank it other than saying it’s right up there with my top-tier senchas. Lovely for breakfast this morning with toast with honey-butter.

2011-01-16 12:31:26 -0500
140 °F / 60 °C
2 min 0 sec
0 comments

Had my best session yet with this tea this morning. I actually started with the water hotter, because I’d been considering starting the day with Dragonwell, and had the kettle already up to 160 degrees, and it was quite full, and I did not want to wait for the water to cool back to 145, or two play with adding cool water to get there. So I used the hotter water, 5 grams of tea in the 5 oz kyusu, and started with one very short infusion (started pouring at 25 seconds); then 20", 1 minute, and 5 minutes. By the time I’d gotten to the last one, however, the water, which was cooling slowly in the kettle, was down to 145 degrees. And all were sweet, fresh young asparagus and peas, very little grassiness, and no astringency or bitterness at all. Just my thing, and one of those accidental brewings that would be very difficult to precisely replicate again.

2011-01-30 13:05:43 -0500
160 °F / 71 °C
0 min 30 sec
0 comments

Another day, another lovely infusion with this tea. I did manage a less-than-wonderful infusion a couple of days ago when I forgot a steeping, but it was easily rescued with a good deal of dilution. But as a rule it is very pleasant, and many infusions are quite lovely, even brilliant, with just a little care.

It’s climbing up my preference chart bit by bit as I work with it more.

2011-01-22 11:22:39 -0500
145 °F / 62 °C
0 min 45 sec
0 comments
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Joshua Smith
81
Joshua Smith 6 tasting notes

This was actually my first time drinking Sencha, so I was actually rather excited going into this. After picking up the packaged that contained the tea this morning, I opened the resealable bag and was greeted by a wonderful fresh vegetable aroma, with a bit of grassiness mixed in. The first infusion was an wonderful balance of vegetative flavors with hints of grass and subtle hits of sweetness.

Unfortunately, this tea very quickly loses it’s flavor, and I only got four infusions before the taste became bland. On the bright side, it did not become bitter in later infusions, and it didn’t become overly grassy/vegetative like some green teas do. I’m really glad that I bought 100 grams, as this is a tea that I will definitely need to keep in stock.

2011-11-07 18:22:17 -0500
3 min 0 sec
0 comments

Once again, this was a rather pleasant tea. I accidentally over steeped the first infusion, which resulted in more bitterness than usual, and it was harder to taste the grassiness, which was kind of weird as the grassiness is usually the source of bitterness in green teas. I wonder if that was because of how careful I was with respect to water temperature, or because of the inconsistent water quality in my dorm (which, for the record, was exceptional today). Regardless, the only downside to this tea is that I only got 4 infusions out of it.

2011-12-03 18:27:57 -0500
155 °F / 68 °C
2 min 0 sec
1 comment
2011-12-12 16:48:58 -0500

I actually drank this yesterday, but didn’t end up having time to do a review (CURSE YOU PHYSICS LAB REPORTS!!!!!!!), but I figured, better late than never.

As usual, this was a very pleasant tea, but I did accidentally over-steep the first infusion, and that was a little unpleasant. Other than that, it was pretty much the same as my previous experience with this tea.

2011-11-21 11:31:11 -0500
160 °F / 71 °C
2 min 0 sec
0 comments
2011-11-20 11:26:30 -0500
2011-11-20 11:26:30 -0500
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