Gorgeous Geisha

Over 40oC. Bushfires everywhere, the smell is drifting in my windows. General ugh-ness about today. Iced tea is a lifesaver, probably actually. I hope everyone is safe on this horribly dry and hot day.

Oh my this is good.

I am not a fan of green tea in general. There are very few green teas that I like and even fewer than I love so I never expected to like Gorgeous Geisha.

I was at Chadstone’s T2 shopping for my sister’s Christmas present and they had Gorgeous Geisha iced and it was oh my God so good. Iced it reminds me of T2’s Strawberries & Cream but without the sweetness. It smells and tastes like strawberries drizzled in cream with a refreshing after-taste of generic sweet fruit. The green tea element seems to make the tea less sweet and more refreshing without any actual ‘tea’ or ‘grassy’ taste making it a really refreshingly sweet iced tea perfect for a hot summer day. I think I would actually prefer this iced compared to Strawberries & Cream because it is less sweet and more refreshing.

Dry you are greeted by very large green tea leaves and small little freeze dried strawberry pieces – the smell is quite unusual it’s like walking into a strawberry field – very strong aroma of strawberries surrounded by an earthy-grassy scent.

Hot a very sweet (almost sickly sweet) strawberry aroma greets you with only the very slightest hint of a grassy smell. The taste is incredible it’s like drinking a strawberry Martini – a very strong strawberry taste with a coating of creaminess chased by a light bitter-grass after-taste.

Oh so good and oh so surprising.

I highly recommend this for fans of T2’s Strawberries & Cream and for people wanting to edge themselves into the world of green tea. It is yumilicious.

This is the last tea to try from my Nine Green pack from T2. I tend to always save the best for last, and I figured there was a pretty good chance I’d like this one. No worries there! Sniffing the dry leaf, it’s almost all sweet strawberries. There’s not much to notice of the cream, and even less of the sencha itself. After it’s steeped, it becomes almost 50/50 between strawberries and sencha in both the infused leaf and the liquor. It’s very smooth and rather creamy (makes sense, really) in my mouth and a sensation of juicy strawberries really lingers well after the last sip. All that being said, it’s not overly sweet at all; in fact, it has the usual slight bitterness and other normal characteristics of sencha, just with strawberries on top.

In all honesty, since I’m really going gung-ho on tea tasting, I wanted to find an unflavoured green tea in this pack that I would happily choose as a cupboard standard. The best bet for that is the Genmaicha Sencha which I think is fantastic, although maybe it’s not considered “unflavored”. But this Gorgeous Geisha is very good, and my Southern Girl background kind of makes it hard to turn it down! Seriously, I did try to pick a “real” tea for a keeper. But juicy, fruity, creamy tea? Come on. How could I resist?

You can read a separate review I did for this tea and a couple of other T2 greens on my blog: http://hardlysupermom.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/progress-report-card-t2-nine-green-pack-part-3/

I’ll say one thing off the bat – this tea smells mouthwatering. It has a grassy sencha flavour, and the distinct creaminess makes it a good introduction for those uninitiated into the world of green tea. That said, the strawberry serves to make the tea taste rather tart, which I’m not sure I’m a fan of – going from a sweet, soft fragrance to the surprisingly strong flavour was a bit of a shock! I’ll also need to put slightly less tea in next time to minimise bitterness. Even without the bitterness, the flavour is nothing to write home about, which is a shame.

Edit: This tastes much better cold. Still not amazing but much much better.

Now matter how I brew it, I find it to be too bitter for me. Of course, there are days when I crave such bitterness, but more often than not it is a disappointment. Furthermore, the strawberry addition, although fragrant, is negligible – another disappointment.

mmmmm

As much as the idea of strawberry and green tea excites me, this is inferior to the bag of strawberry green tea that i bought from a supermarket at Riga… which is way cheaper than the price that you’d pay for at T2. Otherwise, this tea smells great, but taste very little.

So good! In the bag this has a tangy fresh strawberry smell from the freeze dried pieces but after a couple of minutes brewing the smell and flavour is very mellow and creamy, like a strawberry icecream. I find nearly all tea relaxing but this one is really nice and comforting.

This smells amazing, but to drink it’s very… ehh. It’s fine – there’s nothing wrong with it per say, but the strawberry imparts an overpowering tartness that doesn’t really appeal to me. If fruity flavoured greens are your thing, you would probably like this (more power to ya), but I’m not a huge fan.

I would say it’s a green tea that has quite a good fruity aroma before and after steeping, meaning that the dry smell is similar to the wet taste. I bought this tea solely due to the dry aroma and it wasn’t disappointing to have that same aroma when I steep and drink it.
I wouldn’t recommend this tea for entry level green tea drinkers as the taste of strawberry overpowers the taste of the leafy green tea. Nonetheless, it adds a bit of fun to my green tea drinking ritual because sometimes going for the same old pure green can be rather boring.