Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 1
Will from Nio Teas was kind enough to reach out to me and offer to send me their tea advent calendar, to which of course I said yes! I was expecting it to arrive late, and yet to my surprise it was delivered this afternoon, right on time to be included in Day 1!
Starting off with a bang with a gyokuro! I honestly rarely drink gyokuro, though I do enjoy it when I do. I think it’s just an intimidating sort of tea because it’s expensive. But onward we go! I used Nio’s recommended steeping parameters that were included right on the packet (love that!) – 5g of leaf for 150ml of 145°F water, steeped for 2 minutes and then 20s.
I find this one to actually be quite light for a gyokuro. It does have that sweet vegetable-laden umami bomb sort of flavor, but it’s less intense than I would expect from my past experience with gyokuro. But I haven’t tried very many, so take that with a grain of salt. Deliciously sweet steamed spinach and creamy kabocha notes along with hints of fresh seaweed. Then in the middle of the sip, a toasty nutty note appears. I see their description mentions hazelnut and I think I agree with that, it’s definitely a toasted hazelnut though. The end of the sip is soft and refreshing, with a definite apple skin flavor mixed with freshly cut grass. There is a slight hint of bitterness throughout the sip, but it’s very gentle and adds a nice contrast to the sweetness and the richness of the umami.
The second steep is more savory and grass-forward, with less of the creaminess and sweetness of the kabocha. Still delicious, but more sencha-like compared to the first brew.
Maybe it was a bad idea to drink this at 6 PM, I’m already feeling the rush of energy… I forget that gyokuro is one of the only teas that actually affects me this way. Oops?
A great start to the advent though! ❤
Flavors: Apple Skins, Bitter, Freshly Cut Grass, Hazelnut, Kabocha, Marine, Nutty, Roasted Nuts, Savory, Seaweed, Smooth, Spinach, Squash, Sweet, Thick, Umami, Vegetables, Vegetal, Wheatgrass
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Wow! That calendar came fast! I don’t even have a tracking number for mine. (I hope it’s not stuck in post office limbo…) Glad the gyokuro was good.
They didn’t give me a tracking number either. It looks like it was shipped from within Texas (I’m in Austin) so I guess that explains why it came so quickly ha ha.
Yes, that would explain it! I hope they sent it via regular mail and not via a courier. I always seem to have problems with FedEx, DHL, etc.
It was UPS!
Wow! That calendar came fast! I don’t even have a tracking number for mine. (I hope it’s not stuck in post office limbo…) Glad the gyokuro was good.
They didn’t give me a tracking number either. It looks like it was shipped from within Texas (I’m in Austin) so I guess that explains why it came so quickly ha ha.
Yes, that would explain it! I hope they sent it via regular mail and not via a courier. I always seem to have problems with FedEx, DHL, etc.
It was UPS!