Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green, Sencha
Where to Buy: Zen Tea Life
Tea Description:
Sencha is the most commonly enjoyed variety of Japanese green tea. Sencha contains more of the beneficial nutrient Catechin than other green teas, because it is grown in full sunlight, thus it becomes yellow-green in color. Sencha tastes gently astringent and smells wonderfully fresh. Sencha is harvested three or four times a year. But with each harvest, the tea becomes slightly lower in quality. This is why the first flush, or Ichiban Cha, is the best. All of our Sencha products are made exclusively from Ichiban Cha. You will certainly be delighted with the fine and generously harmonized flavor of our Sencha.
Ingredients: Sencha, Matcha, Brown Rice, Puffed Corn.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
The cup steeps into a clear, nearly neon green color. Its bright and cheery, and just what the doctor ordered on a foggy dreary day!
The flavor of this tea is deliciously green, vegetal, sweet, nutty, and fresh.
As described there is a light astringency to the cup but it does not become bitter if brewed correctly.
The directions say to use 1 to 2 teaspoons so I split the difference going 1.5 teaspoons however I am feeling I could have saved some leaf and went with just one. It is a strong tasting tea, not too strong, just strong enough that you don’t need as much leaf as you could use unless you want your sencha to really punch you in the face.
There is a wonderful fresh cut grass after taste that I adore! It lingers just like beautiful clean crisp blades of summer grass from a full lush lawn.
There is a nuttiness to the tea as well which is another of my favorite flavor notes. The matcha in the tea is noticeable in flavor but does not leave matcha “dust” in the bottom of your cup. This brings me to the following: One thing that does confuse me is that on the ingredients listing it says there is puffed rice, matcha, sencha of course, and brown rice, yet in the leaf itself I see none of this so it must be somehow mixed in here perfectly so it is not detected in the dry leaf. To the naked eye it looks simply like a beautiful deep green sencha. Or the labeling on my sample may be incorrect. Regardless, I can taste the flavor notes listed on the ingredients, I just can’t see them. What the label infers to me is a genmaicha.
What one can’t be confused about however is that this particular tea, is delicious.
