O-Cha’s Organic Sencha “Warashima Supreme” is a light-steamed shincha with a seductive aroma of white chocolate and berries and slender leaves resembling broken pine leaves. This sencha comes from Shizuoka and steeps into a mellow, light green cup, whose most dominant flavour is that of steamed spinach, accented by a hint of pepper and a slight sweetness.

Unlike the Kagoshima Sencha Yutaka Midori that I reviewed earlier this week, this shincha is much more forgiving of lengthened brewing times, largely because its flavour is not nearly as forthright as that of the other shincha. In fact, the longer brewing times (I’m still only suggesting an extra 20 to 30 seconds) help tease a little more out of the tea.

Available from O-Cha

© Eric for Tea Finely Brewed, 2010. | Shincha 2010: Organic Sencha “Warashima Supreme” from O-Cha | No comment |
Post categories: Green tea, Tea reviews
Post tags: 2010 Shincha, First flush 2010, Japanese green tea, Japanese teas, O-Cha, shincha, Shizuoka tea

Open up your packet of Kagoshima Sencha Yutaka Midori, draw in deeply, and you’ll be hit with the heavenly aroma of extraordinary tea: forest freshness, met by the syrupy sweetness of blackcurrant and the tartier overtones of tropical fruits. You only get this kind of rich aroma when the tea is this fresh ? and this good.

Precision pays off with this shincha: oversteep it by 10 or 20 seconds and you’ll find that the tea has developed a sharpness that can be off-putting. But get it just right and you’ll be rewarded with a wonderful sencha, a broth with flavours of steamed vegetables and a chewy texture.

Available from O-Cha

© Eric for Tea Finely Brewed, 2010. | Shincha 2010: Kagoshima Sencha Yutaka Midori | No comment |
Post categories: Green tea, Tea reviews
Post tags: 2010 Shincha, First flush 2010, Japanese green tea, Japanese teas, Kagoshima tea, Kagoshima Yutaka Midori, O-Cha, shincha

A new year, a new tea. Hojicha is a roasted Japanese tea that consists predominantly of the stalks of the tea plant. It is, according to Harney , a relatively recent invention, dating back to 1920. The rise of mechanical harvesters had meant that there was an excess of tea stalks after harvesting. Seeing the waste, a Japanese merchant in Uji took the stalks and started roasting them. Hojicha was born.

This is my first experience of hojicha, courtesy of Mighty Leaf Tea, who provided me a small sample for review.

The tea looks like a mixture of stalks and leaves, with a dark bronze appearance. The dry aroma is rich with notes of berries and chocolate. It smells delicious.

I steep the tea for two minutes, which turns out to be just about right. Something tells me that oversteeping it would give it a biting astringency. As it is, the liquor is a greenish yellow and has a savoury, somewhat grassy flavour with berry-flavours still swirling around. It’s hard not to draw comparisons to genmaicha, which has a similar colour and savoury character.

In some ways, I get the feeling that hojicha’s strength is in its aroma, not its flavour. It tastes nice, but not as nice as it smells. It also doesn’t have much of a finish. But then, hojicha seems to more of an every-day kind of tea, and it would make a perfect accompaniment to food.

Organic Hojicha is available from Mighty Leaf Tea.

© Eric for Tea Finely Brewed, 2010. | Organic Hojicha from Mighty Leaf Tea | 2 comments |
Post categories: Green tea, Tea reviews
Post tags: Hojicha, Japanese green tea, Japanese teas, Mighty Leaf Tea

How do you like my new tea set?

I celebrated my birthday last week and got three new tea brewing devices: a porcelain gaiwan, a yixing teapot and this one, a simple Japanese teapot with a large infuser basket.

It has been fun experimenting with the gaiwan over the past week, while I’ve been considering which type of tea my yixing should be devoted to (anyone have any thoughts?). I decided to use the teapot pictured above to make today’s tea, Monk’s Bliss by Mellow Monk.

Monk’s Bliss is a shiraore, which is a green tea with some leaf stems. The result is a mellow green tea that tastes remarkably like steamed vegetables.

As I drank this tea, I kept drawing comparisons to the shincha I tried earlier this year. That too I described as tasting liked steamed vegetables, though I found this tea a much milder beast. Where the shincha delivered three, sometimes four strong infusions, the shiraore gives just two. But there is a warm depth to it, a richness that reminds me of a forest floor. It’s mellow and calming, a perfect accompaniment to a sunny spring morning.

Monk’s Bliss is available from Mellow Monk.

© eric for Tea Finely Brewed, 2009. | Monk's Bliss by Mellow Monk | 5 comments |
Post categories: Green tea
Post tags: Japan, Japanese green tea, Japanese teas, Mellow Monk