Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Steepster Select
Tea Description:
Sencha leaves are expertly mixed with popped brown rice and milled matcha powder. A most comforting and delicious afternoon tea. You won’t find a greener tea anywhere!
Taster’s Review:
During my years as a tea reviewer, I’ve tried several different Genmaicha with Matcha type blends like this Genmai-Matcha Matsujirushi Green Tea from Steepster. It’s essentially a Genmaicha blend that has been dusted with Matcha powder. As the tea brews, the Matcha mixes into the hot tea and it becomes part Genmaicha and part Matcha.
And, it surprises me to say this, but this may just be the best Genmaicha with Matcha blend I’ve yet to try. I’m not sure why that is, perhaps it’s because the Genmaicha here has a base of Sencha leaves rather than Bancha. I don’t know if that’s the reason, but I do know that this tastes exceptionally good!
The flavor is much of what I’d expect from a Genmaicha: roasty-toasty and warm, but with that strong note of freshness from the green tea. The Sencha is light and refreshing with just a hint of bitterness that contrasts with the sweetness of the rice notes as well as the sweetness from the Matcha. It’s absolutely more sweet than bitter, with just hints of bitterness popping up around mid-sip that offer something a little different for the palate to explore.
And of course, it’s the Matcha that makes this different from your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Genmaicha. The Matcha makes the tea a little smoother and richer. It’s a thicker consistency, so the palate enjoys a smooth, velvet-y texture.
This is really a refreshing drink. I drank most of it while it was hot, but since the temperatures are reaching the 90s these days, I decided to let some of it cool so that I could see how it tastes chilled. And it makes a tasty iced beverage too. It’s very invigorating!
Japanese Sencha Saga Green Tea from Simple Loose Leaf
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Simple Loose Leaf
Tea Description:
This high grade Japanese Sencha Green Tea boasts beautifully dark, wafery leaves and a strong, sweet grassy flavor. The brewed leaves provide a slight vegetal, seaweed flavor with a perfect balance of nutty, rice notes. Best served hot, in the traditional fashion.
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn more about Simple Loose Leaf’s Selection Club subscription program here.
Use this code: SISTERSELECTION25 to get a 25% discount when you sign up for the selection club. This discount is not applicable on the retail selection of teas, and is only good for the selection club subscription.
Taster’s Review:
When I opened this sample packet from my May Selection Club box from Simple Loose Leaf and took a sniff, I was pretty sure that the aroma would be vegetative. This is a Japanese Sencha and I’ve experienced many different Sencha teas from Japan. And while there are many different Sencha teas out there and they all have their own unique qualities to them, the fragrance has been, for the most part, “vegetal”.
And so it is with this Japanese Sencha Saga Green Tea from Simple Loose Leaf. But, I noticed something else in the aroma too … a sweet flowery note, gently floral. The scent evokes imagery of sitting on a lawn that has just been mowed, and in close vicinity to the lawn is a beautiful flower bed filled with fragrant flowers. The breeze floats through those flowers, picking up their bouquet, and the air is now gently perfumed with the scent of the flowers with the dominant smell of the grassy vegetation.
I love it when I come across a tea that is familiar – a Japanese Sencha, like this – and I find something unexpected about it like that!
This green tea is sweet. The vegetal notes are sweet – not savory, not bitter, not even bittersweet. Just sweet. Beautifully, deliciously sweet. The texture is soft. I often describe a Sencha tea’s texture as “brothy” but this is not quite that thick, it’s more of a soft, smooth texture … I imagine that the texture here is what it would be like if one were to drink liquefied silk.
Although I’m sure that this tastes better! I’d much rather taste the brewed liquid of the leaves from Camellia Sinensis than the liquefied fibers from a worm’s backside, wouldn’t you?
The flavor is strongly vegetal, somewhere between the flavor of grass and kelp, but, without the savory notes grass or kelp. As I said, this is pure sweetness! It really is one of the sweetest Sencha teas I’ve yet to taste.
I taste layers of flavor beneath the top note of vegetation, hints of flower and whispers of fruit. Almost an apple-y sweetness without the apple-y tart. Creaminess that I wouldn’t call ‘buttery’ – it’s more like a subtle vanilla tone.
I’ve tasted many Sencha teas, and I’ve enjoyed many that I’ve tried (I can’t think of any in the recent months that I’ve tried that I’ve not enjoyed) … but some are definitely better than others. This one is one of the better ones!
Green Apple Watermelon Flavored Green Tea from 52Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Tea Description:
So, maybe I’m weird, but I like to eat the green apple and watermelon Jolly Ranchers together. I love the mixture of sweet and tart. So it seemed like a good idea to make a tea with buttery chinese sencha, some sweet young hyson, freeze-dried granny smith apple bits and some organic green apple and watermelon flavor. The green apple was pretty potent, so in the final blend, I added a bit of organic cantaloupe flavor to give it a bit more sweetness and melon-ness. Is that a word? It is now. (I wrote it on the Internet, so it has to be a word, right?)
I hope you enjoy this tea as much as I do. I’m looking forward to reading your reviews and tasting notes. =)
Learn more about this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
The dry leaf aroma of this Green Apple Watermelon Flavored Green Tea from 52Teas is sweet and fruity, smelling a bit more like candy than it does fruit, which after reading the above description, isn’t too surprising. The dry leaf doesn’t have any real noticeable “green tea” fragrance to it, but once brewed, I pick up on more of the green leafy notes. The brewed tea has less of that aforementioned sweet and fruity scent although I can still pick up on the watermelon and apple.
I’ve said this before about some of 52Teas’ blends, but I’m going to say it again … this cup benefits from a few minutes of cool time. When sipped “fresh from the teapot” hot, the flavors are kind of muddled. But, after allowing it to cool for about three minutes, the flavors start to come into focus.
The sip seems to mostly be about the green tea – and that’s quite alright with me. I can taste a sweet, vegetative taste that reminds me of lightly buttered veggies with a hint of grassy taste. I do taste notes of watermelon and sour apple weaving their way through the sip, tasting more watermelon than I do apple. The apple flavor really comes to life in the aftertaste, which tastes very much like the green apple Jolly Rancher candy that I used to enjoy as a kid. (Back then, you could by the Jolly Rancher stix, I don’t know if they still have those or not, it seems like all I can find now is the small, bite size hard candies.)
Both the fruit flavors are more true to the Jolly Rancher candy than they are the actual fruit. The description that Frank from 52Teas wrote (the one that I’ve pasted above) is pretty spot-on: this does taste a lot like I popped two Jolly Rancher candies (a green apple and watermelon) in my mouth and let them dissolve together … or perhaps, more accurately, like I dropped one of each Jolly Rancher candy into my cup of green tea and let them dissolve and add their sweet yumminess to the tea.
It’s a good tea. I can’t say it’s my favorite from 52Teas, but it’s one that I’ll enjoy having in my cupboard for as long as it lasts.
Crime of Passion Green Tea from Culinary Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Culinary Teas
Tea Description:
Memories of the Copacabana Beach in Rio. Papaya pieces, sunflower petals and criminally exotic passion fruit notes infuse superior green tea.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Mmm! This Crime of Passion Green Tea from Culinary Teas takes me (or at least my taste buds!) on a tropical vacation! The sweet passion fruit and papaya flavors meld together with the lush, green tea to present a really tasty tea with tropical flair.
The green tea base is a Chinese Sencha, and it lends a sweet, buttery and slightly vegetal note to the cup. I’m not finding this to be overly vegetative or grassy. It’s a light “grassiness” – I find the buttery/creamy notes of this tea to be stronger than the grassy/vegetal tones to be. The texture of the buttery notes give this a very smooth mouthfeel.
The passion fruit and papaya are beautifully sweet. There are hints of tartness in there too, but mostly, I taste sweet tropical fruit. The fruit notes here are strong and are edging out the flavor of the green tea just a tad – that is to say that the flavor is stronger than the green tea – but it’s so tasty that I am finding it difficult to find fault with this, especially since I can taste the green tea. It just isn’t as strong as the fruit notes.
A really tasty tea. It tastes great served hot (and makes a nice mental va-cay during the cold winter when you want to think of warm tropical breezes, the sun and the surf!) but it’s even better iced. Very refreshing!
Hoji Cha Gold (Houjicha Gold) from Kyoto Obubu Tea Plantations
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green Tea
Where to Buy: Kyoto Obubu Tea Plantations
Product Description:
This Houjicha is special! Made by roasting mature sencha instead of bancha, Houjicha Gold boasts a much more intense flavour with lingering buttery sun flower tones. Relying on the name it turns bright golden in a cup and gives off a room-filling pleasant roasted fragrance. As it is made from sencha we recommend steeping it shorter than other houjicha.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I love hojicha (or houjicha, or Hoji Cha)! I just love that toasted flavor that comes of roasting the green tea leaves. The roasting process changes the green tea flavor, converting the “vegetative” or “grassy” taste of a Sencha and/or Bancha tea into a sweeter flavor that tastes like sweet, freshly roasted nuts.
And in this “line of work” I have had the opportunity to try MANY different hojicha. Some I’ve liked better than others (although I can’t really recall ever not liking a hojicha that I’ve tasted.) But this Hoji Cha Gold – also called Houjicha Gold – from Kyoto Obubu Tea Plantations is one of the very best, if not THE best, that I’ve tried!
What makes this tea different? This houjicha consists of only roasted Sencha leaves (rather than a combination of Bancha and Sencha, or just Bancha leaves) … maybe that’s the reason for the better flavor. I don’t know.
What I do know is that I taste a really deliciously sweet, roasty-toasty, nutty flavor. I taste not just nutty flavors, but hints of caramel and even a slight floral tone that is interesting.
I like that is not just sweet. There is a savory note in this tea that hits the palate right about mid-sip. This savory note comes from the slight floral note … it’s slightly sharp and intriguing!
At the start of the sip, the palate is washed with sweet, nutty flavors, and then as the sip progresses, the palate perks up with the introduction of this savory note. It sort of wakes up and says “Hello, what is this?” and this allows the palate to really explore this tea.
I find myself appreciating this contrasting note because as much as I do enjoy hojicha teas … sometimes they are just a little too sweet. I like this uplifting sharpness to the cup, it cuts through some of the sweetness, and makes the tea taste more balanced.
A really enjoyable Houjicha, one that I’m glad I had the opportunity to experience!