Yuzu Temple

If I’m honest, I’ve absolutely mangled steeping parameters on this tea a couple times. (Ever accidentally forget you heated the water to 200F for something else and then pour it on green tea. That moment, man.) But I’ve never actually had a bad cup of it.

I think it tastes best with a 90 second steep at 175F. The green base is vegetal and bright without being astringent, and there’s an underlying semi-sweet floral element in the aftertaste. I don’t know if I read the yuzu as strictly yuzu, but it’s a bright orange/lemon hybrid citrus note, that pairs well with the rest of the cup.

Perfect for sunshine and spring days.

Going through my green tea samples and I found this one. I could go for a bit of flavour with my green tea on this dark and dreary Saturday afternoon.

The raw blend consists of dark green leaves that are (for the most part) small and broken with a few tiny pieces of yuzu fruit rind amongst them. Nothing the size of the picture though I understand this is only a sample, perhaps a larger package would be more similar. It has a sweet yet sour scent, more perfumed than citrus like.

Flavour is heavily perfumed and sour, so thickly that it coats the tongue and makes it dry. It doesn’t taste orange or citrus as much as it does perfumey, which matches the raw scent. I dislike perfumed teas like this. It’s drinkable though I’m finding it to be a let down. It’s green tea is bitter and completely lost amidst the heavy perfume, and the citrus is also bitter and somewhat submissive. There is some sweetness to it though it disappears quickly.

This blend was not for me, it was much too perfumed and bitter for my liking. Not only did it not taste like green tea but nor was it citrus like. Plus the dry bitty coating from the after taste feels rather disgusting on my tongue. A shame.

………………………..

Side note – I re-steeped the tea to see if it’s strength was toned down any. The second steep was actually much preferable to the first, it was less perfumed and bitter though remained dry and still lacking flavour. Perhaps a slight waxy touch of citrus though nothing major.

Sent by OMGsrsly via Crowkettle

Honestly I didn’t get any flavour out of this one. Didn’t really taste like anything. I’m trying to get through a lot of teas right now so I actually ended up dumping it, no sense drinking tea that tastes like nothing!

Though I appreciate getting to try it :)
I think I’m more a fan of MF’s black and gourmand teas.

I love yuzu. I really do. When I noticed Mariage Freres had a yuzu flavoured green tea, I just had to go for it. However, I remained a little disappointed. Sure, it’s good. Sure, it tastes of yuzu, but it’s just not that evocative for me. Would rather go for a non flavoured green tea like Fuji Yama for example. NOt bad, just not anything spectacular.

Thank you Scheherazade for this sample. I was curious about this one since a while.
Unfortunately this is not a tea for me.
Green but without astringency, flavoured but without any notable taste (some pale citrus maybe and on aftertaste)…I’m not able to taste the tea base neither…It is a pleasant cup of hot water tainted with a pale yellow herbal something.
Clearly the right tea for those who keep thinking tea is nothing but hot water…really…What have you done Mariage Frères ? it clearly doesn’t match with your habitual quality…

Another bonus from my swap with Scheherazade but unfortunately this one isn’t right up my alley. I first steeped it in the timolino at work the other day and worried that the metallic taste I was getting from it was due to the timolino, but today I’ve brewed in glass and served in china and it’s still tinny in my mouth. I guess that’s green tea though! I haven’t had green for a while, maybe I’ve just forgotten how to drink it…

This is a tea that Scheherazade shared with me. I have never heard of anything by the name of Yuzu before, so I had to look it up. Initially I thought it was the name of the type of green tea, but it turns out that it’s the fruit it’s flavoured with. Further investigation reveals that it’s a kind of citrus fruit that grows in East Asia. It looks like a mandarin and supposedly tastes like a mix of grapefruit, mandarin and lemon. So I’m left to expect something that can somehow manage to be sweet, bitter and tart at the same time. How is that going to work?

Citrus-y conundrums aside, I tend to find that green tea and citrus go quite well together, so I’m rather looking forward to tasting it now.

It does actually manage to smell like all those three citrus fruits mentioned earlier all at once. Imagine a triangle with grapefruit, lemon and mandarin at the corners. Right there in the middle of the triangle. That’s what it smells like. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. Now, the danger of lemon-y things is that they might wind up smelling a bit like washing up liquid, but I don’t think this one does. It smells rather like a fruit I would like to taste.

There’s a good deal of bitterness in the flavour. It’s not oversteeping-bitter or too-warm-water-bitter, it’s more like grapefruit-bitter. Like when you get a bit of the peel as well as the fruit. Apart from that the flavour isn’t really reminding me all that much of grapefruit, mandarin or lemon, although it is decidedly citrus-y. More sort of bergamot-ish to me. Like a bergamot that has been tarted up a bit with some lemon. It does go really well with the green tea though.

Hmmm… I’m not sure what I think of this. It seems to be rather refreshing, but I’m not sure I can drink very much of it without getting a bit tired of that bitter note.

The citric tartness of Yuzu Rind, complement the drink, it’s not a tea for those who don’t like tart teas, but its a good tea if you are wanting an inbetween from an herbal fruity tea and a pure green tea.

Brewed at 70°C in a big teapot.
I’m not a big fan of the Yuzu flavor. It was ok though, the flavor is strong enough without being overwhelming. This tea is only avaible in metal box for now, making it way over-priced.