Top Leaf

Green tea of the mid morning here. This is another sensational, fresh & beautiful tea from Mellow Monk. I took this to work with me to concentrate on finishing it off (so I can justify buying more stuff from Mellow Monk!)

Some teas just seem to lift your spirit and this is one for me. I was also reflecting this morning on how much happier I am than I was almost a year ago. I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself through spiritual practice and opening the heart and it seems to be working. Sending out lots of love to the Steepster universe! :))

Revisiting a bit of this as I close-up my night of swap prep. In the past 2 weeks I have yanked over 120 different teas from my cupboards! Woot! Sharing the TEA LOVE :)

I’m going to have another cup of this tomorrow and/or Monday and will TRY and part with the rest :)

Once again, I’m drinking a neglected Sencha and wondering why the hell I haven’t been drinking this more regularly. The first cup was made using barely steaming water, steeping the leaves for a minute since this tea is also a bit picky. The result is very sweet, with a pleasant grassy taste and subtle fruity notes, and a smooth, clean finish. I could definitely drink this every day, but sadly I’m running low, and apparently Mellow Monk is waiting on the next shipment…darn.

Thank you TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea! It’s A-MAZ-ING and I’m glad that I had this opportunity to try it.

This is so good. I love the light grapefruit notes of this tea. The flavor is something like a Gyokuro and a Sencha, but I like it better than either of them. It is so completely delightful.

And, now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone with this tea.

Finally decided to take the plunge and buy this tea. I’m glad I did. I figured it was more or less a sencha and it pretty much is. It’s a little different in that the grassy-spinach taste is a little subdued compared to the in-your-face senchas I’ve had. I was a little disappointing to have found absolutely no umami factor in it though.

Even with that, it is very creamy with a hint of some juicy quality. And I think there was a slight note of pistachio. I got some sort of nut note and while trying to figure it out I kept thinking pistachio. It may not be pistachio but the color of the tea kept making me think of the green nut! Either way…pistachio!

Speaking of color, the dry leaves are a nice dark emerald, wet they become this bright, vivid, vibrant emerald green. It was very pretty. Even the infusion had a greenish cast to it, very cool, kind of like a sencha or genmaicha infused with matcha powder. This is why I think I was coming up with pistachios and not some other nut…so much green!

I found a slight hint of astringency, but it wasn’t the typically blech bitter-astringency I always taste. This was a silky-astringency. It was actually quite pleasant. I never thought I would say astringency in tea being pleasant…I abhor astringency. But this was just a slight drying of the mouth with a bit of a silky mouthfeel. Very pleasant, what I always thought astringency could be but never actually found it to be, at least not in green teas.

This is such a pretty and good tasting tea, definitely worth trying out.

I’m excited to try something from The Mellow Monk. I’ve heard good things about their teas but never had any. Now, thanks to TeaEqualsBliss, I get to try my first one today!

The smell of the wet leaves and the liquid have a crazy warm cinnamon note to them. The taste is just as nuts. More so even. It tastes like a plum spice tea. A mild plum spice tea with a grassy undernote, but still a plum spice tea. It almost makes me think that I didn’t clean my teapot out enough before I brewed this, but I used my kyusu dedicated to sencha so I know that’s not it. Hmm. Maybe this tea absorbed the flavor of another tea because I can’t imagine any sencha actually tasting like that. But maybe I’m wrong and this is just one weird-ass sencha. Regardless, this is too weird and wrong for me to rate.
3g/6oz

The leaves of this tea are a dark, pine green and look like little bits of chopped-up needles. I’m not quite sure what to expect of this tea, I’ve never tried any of Mellow Monk’s products before – this and one other sample were gifts from TeaEqualsBliss. I’m not even sure what type of tea this is or where it’s from, though my guess from the flavour is that it’s Japanese.

It’s faintly sweet and a bit hay-like at first but then it takes on a savoury, slightly nutty-tasting tone. Then the flavour trails off into a grassy, slightly bitter aftertaste. The touch of bitterness actually seems to work with this tea providing a counterpoint to the initial sweetness that gives this tea balance. It also leaves a nice, fresh, palate-cleansing taste in my mouth.

Thanks again to LiberTeas for sharing such a nice sample!
I tried this again with cold brew (46F water for 12 minutes) and with a regular brew (160F for 1.5 minutes) and each one of those pots I did a minimum of 3 steepings…
This is definitely a unique, enjoyable tea.
The cold brew wasn’t actually as strong as I hoped, but I may have used too much water for the leaf. The hot/regular brew was very good; with strong flavors: earthy, somewhat fruit, and even a mouth-filling mintyness!

Interestingly, the wet leaf smells very similar to the brewed leaf of gyokuro!

I’m not sure I’m sold to buy 100g, yet, it’s just down on the list somewhere… (there’s just too much to try!) :-)
However, I can see that this tea is much more suited to a typical American palate (as they say on the Mellow Monk website) and isn’t grassy or bitter at all, so it could be at the top of the list for some. Either way, I give it a thumbs up!

Fruity, slight floral notes emerge on second infusion. A refined Japanese green.

Dry aroma: sweet, toasted notes, hints of spring clover and cut melon
Wet aroma: sweet cream butter, nutty, clover and baby spinach
Appearance: deep green jade hue, folded-slightly twisted leaf and wabi sabi hints of curled leaves and blond threads. Moderate leaf length implying spring pluck and new growth pick.
Cup: Pale, ghostly green luminescent liquor; clear, bright, translucent. Clean, vegetal sweet flavors, creamy mouth feel, with hints of pistachios. A silken astringency slides against an elusive body that seems to call to mind spring clouds. Hints of melon and fruit are ethereally present against the creamy, nutty layers. Wonderfully balanced, in all of its characteristics, dancing somewhere between a gyokuro and quality shinriku sencha.
Brewing: 3g in 8oz porcelain gaiwan, using 168 degree water and steeped for 3 minutes. Managed to get 3 consistent extractions.
This tea won the North American tea championship in the green tea division in 2010. The service was swift, courteous, and enclosed note had a personalized touch. Overall, a very lovely tea.