I think this tea is definitely one many of those leaving low ratings are misunderstanding, going into it – much of this is due to Lupicia not making it especially clear for western consumers that this is not sakura-cherry green tea. This is brined sakura leaf green tea. Brined sakura leaves are obviously a radically different flavor from fresh fruitiness… a traditional Japanese taste utterly nonexistent in the western palate and one that would not please someone seeking fruity floral freshness. To a Japanese person, this combination evokes images of spring time and freshness – because they’ve grown up in a culture where brined sakura is linked to that. A big part of that also probably has to do with using boiling water and/or long brewing times – sencha wants lower temperatures and shorter times, and the briny sakura does as well. Too hot and long with this and you end up with a horrible bitter salty mess.
For me today, I picked this tea as a pairing with music – I just got my hands on Tama Onsen’s “Open Your Heart(s)”, and the second track, Setsuna Yamai, left me wanting something extremely traditional.
http://tindeck.com/listen/ruuu
The aroma of this tea is somewhere between genmaicha and shincha – the roasty savoriness of the former, over a much fresher leaf than is usually found in genmaicha. Flavorwise, it hit the spot for what I wanted perfectly. It is what you’d expect, for the most part – the fresh grassy flavor and astringency of a good sencha, with a distinctly present salt note, and a very subtle sweet cherry fruitiness beneath. The saltiness is definitely a dominating note, and makes for a salt-water sort of mouthfeel, and for some people would be a dealbreaker and stop them before they got to the other flavors. If it works for you though, the sencha and the sweet cherry begin to show themselves.
The combination of a roasty saltiness and sencha on their own would make for a warming, nostalgia-inducing traditional japanese green tea experience. The addition of the sweet cherry under-flavor that lingers on your tongue after the rest have faded makes it into something else entirely. Rather than a synergy, it’s like drinking two separate teas simultaneously, the sweet and salty halves coexisting but not as one. Definitely a very complex and uniquely creative brew as I’d expect from Lupicia, and one that really hits the spot in certain, specific moments for me.
This is definitely a super polarizing tea, and not for people who are primarily fans of mellow, sweet teas. It’s intensely calming and relaxing to me, but make no mistake – it’s intense, and odds are, very unusual to your palate. Brew it gently, and don’t let the leaves go stale, or the bitterness and brine will overpower everything else. I also found that it had a ton of dust to shake out through the basket before brewing, and I recommend you do this, lest that dust end up in your cup and sour the brew. Even with my best efforts, quite a bit made it into the bottom of the cup – I don’t think it suffered for it, but if I hadn’t shaken it mostly out first, it would have.
