Tokyo

I’m playing Story of Seasons- Trio of Towns this morning. Tsuyukusa Town has a nice tea house, and visiting makes me want green tea in real life.

One of my newest samples. There is a sweet caramel scent while dry, and more of a sesame scent when brewed. The flavour is sweet sesame, with caramel notes in the background. Glad I decided to try some. It goes pretty well with doriyaki and daifuku.

Delicate, sweet caramel flavor that complements rather than overwhelms the bancha base. One of my favourite flavored teas. The first steep is a dessert-style caramel green, while a second steep presents mostly the classic bancha taste. This would make a nice introduction to green tea for a skeptic.

This is a tasty green tea. You get a nice combination of the grassy note of the green tea base, along with a sweet note from the caramel, along with a nutty sort of note from the sesame seeds. It is good. Got it at the Coffee and Tea Festival NYC for only $5 so it’s even better.

I rewed this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 175 degree water for 3 min.

Sigh. It is moments like these that I really, really wish that Harney and Sons were more readily available here in Canada! I ordered a big batch of their teas from the Harney and Sons website last December, but because of the cost of shipping have not ventured to do so since.

Anyway, this tea! Tokyo by Harney and Sons was the most original taste I have ever enjoyed. I have yet to see it replicated anywhere else. It might be a testament to how good it is that when I finished the canister, I actually kept it around for nigh on 6 months just to be able to smell it. It was amazing! It had a really great tea base — reminded me of a nice steamed sencha — full bodied green — but with a fantastic creamy and nutty sesame flavour. It reminded me a bit of black sesame ice cream with some of the best green tea. I’m pining for it still and it’s been a year! If anyone knows where I can get my hands on some more… Let’s just say you’ll be my new friend.

Not quite sure of why they decided to name it Tokyo. I don’t picture any of the places we went while I’m sipping it. Ok wait no I just pictured one of the grocery stores. Those were always fun to walk around in. It’s nothing special in taste. Grassy. Can’t really taste the sesame seeds…

I just put my Black and White Cheesecake in the oven (Dorie Greenspan recipe), and I totally licked all the remaining batter out of both bowls and off of all used utensils…
So, wanting to pull myself out of that sugar coma, but not in an aggressive way, I decided to go for this one… It’s one of those flavoured greens that I always come back to.
Sesame seed, caramel goodness!
I’m a bancha lover, too, so this tea is all around great stuff to me.

My blackcyberconsumerweekend purchase finally came in! I chose five teas to get sample sizes of. There were about five more that I was interested in, but they were out of sample sizes during the sale and they now have them back in. :/ Shipping took a while, but oh well.

This one was intriguing because of the sesame seeds. I get a very green flavor in the start of the sip and it is only after the sip that the caramel and sesame flavors come out. It has a little grassy bite at the end of the aftertaste. This tea has a little sweetness of it’s own, but I wanted to try it with some sugar added anyways. I think the addition of sugar makes it less green in the beginning of the sip, a little more buttery and makes the caramel and sesame come out a little sooner. I don’t know that sugar really makes this tea better, just a little different than before. It leaves my mouth feeling dry.

It’s a really interesting tea for a slightly flavored green. At this point I think I could go either way with it. It is possible that by the end of this sample I’ll fall in love with it or loose any interest at all.

The last time I tried this was at school and I royally botched the steeping (both too long and too hot), rendering it undrinkably burnt and bitter. So last night I brewed it at home, where I could brew it properly.

It’s much better the second time around, and certainly interesting. It’s not a tea I’d want a lot of, or want often, and it’s not one at this point that I’d probably buy more of. I’m kind of a hard sell on green teas, unless they have a roasted flavor, and I’m getting that slightly bitter vegetal aftertaste on the back end of this that turns me off of greens. I think I’d like something like this much better if it had a black base.

This is tasty, but I admit, I don’t get a ton of sesame from this. I think it is a good thing, because I wouldn’t like it if it were overwhelmingly seedy, but this is just a hint. I don’t think I would repurchase, because I am not super into sesame flavor, but a lot of people would love this. There is no bitterness at all.

I picked up a sample of this in my last Harney order, and was pleasantly surprised. I’m not normally a fan of green teas, finding them too light and insubstantial for my tastes. This was heartier than most other green teas, and tasted fuller in the mouth. I really liked this.