1113 Tasting Notes
Well, here’s a tea that I’m unsure how to rate: This is a warm cup of apple juice being drank outside during spring. Overall it is an experience that I am hoping to share with others and hear their remarks. Quality looking, wonderful smell, and a bold taste.
I will update my review after I cold brew this… I probably should of started that way but I’m impatient.
If this tea wasn’t smooth it wouldn’t pass as a tea I would drink. Nothing special stands out with this tea in terms of taste. The leaf looks nice, but looks are not what my taste buds judge off of. Overall this tea made me want a quality phoenix oolong as it is similar but lacks the bold taste.
Finally reviewing this tea now that I finished it off.
The reviews for this tea are great so I saved it until I had time to really evaluate it. After three different sessions with this tea I found that I was rather disappointed. While this brews a nice cup, the Imperial Gold Bud Dian Hong was absolutely superior and I cannot forget how good it was so now all other golden teas have a higher bar to reach. This isn’t to say that this tea is bad, its just my standard is rather high now.
Decided to drink some non-Japanese green today and pick this up. First thing I notice is how ugly this tea is… it looks more like grey tea than green tea. I guess looks don’t matter because my tongue and brain are what I want to be stimulated, not my eyes.
It’s got a nice bitterness to it( that astringent taste is well with this one).
I wish I knew who put up the tasting note of “autumn leaf pile” because now that thought is stuck in my mind. With that stuck in my mind it does taste like some dried out autumn leaf pile that decided to try and evolve into something drinkable- I’d say it passes. For what this tea tries to accomplish, it does just thought. My taste in green teas just do not fully line up with this one’s astringent notes and mild dryness. Good cup regardless if I would want to drink it more than what I will.
I just bought 100g of hojicha off a dude selling tea on the street!
By the street I mean his tea shop on the corner of a street in northern Tokyo… anyways, this hojicha is very roasty. Steeping this is odd because the leaf is ugly; it looks stale and brown. Drinking this is the best past because you can somewhat experience the roasted green leaf process as the flavor fills your mouth. It is quite odd to drink a green tea that has been roasted after drinking straight green tea for awhile but I really enjoy this. I’m somewhat curious to how the flavored hojichas will taste like because I cannot imagine a roasted tea with fruit just yet… maybe it’ll be like a piece of toast with jam :p
Just went to a tea shop in northern Tokyo and had no clue what I was buying because it was all in Japanese.
I ended up getting a matcha that I really like that isn’t too strong and has a nice floral taste that comes in throughout the taste.
The oolong is mild, yet it is a wonderful taste. There is no astringency in this oolong and yet it keeps its brisk flavor even if it is mild (if that makes sense).
The green tea is decent but not the best. I am going to keep trying to brew it differently. The package says to use 8g of tea to brew it… are you kidding? I am going to try that suggestion soon and see what happens.
https://instagram.com/p/1AArFxxYHH/?taken-by=sinhatin
My host family in Tokyo took me to pancake house here that is known for its artisan coffee… but I don’t drink coffee so I ordered a Darjeeling. You read that right, a Darjeeling in Japan… I have no understanding of why this location had no green teas of any sort but I rolled with it. It was morning so a black tea was nice. This tea was strong and bitter, woke me right up. I just don’t like black teas in general but this Darjeeling was brewed quite nicely and I was impressed at its smoothness.
This tea is normally out for free tasting at Teavana in one of their (in my opinion) over priced iron cast teapots. I’ve tried this a few times and have yet to find it to taste the way that I want my rolled oolong to taste like. Sugar was not added to the samples I’ve tried, which is nice of them to not do for this tea (though they do it too often), but there is still a lack of aroma and flavor that I hope to find in oolongs. The oolong used for this tea would pair nicely with floral aspects and used as a summer tea, however for what it is just doesn’t rise to the challenge of better than decent.
If I were to rate the tea overall it would lose points because of appearence and lack of consistency, however I rate on flavor and quality within the brewed cup: This tea is a more mellow/milder cup of a floral jasmine green tea. The green tea is even more mellow which disappoints because if the green tea overpowers the notes of floral in a tea I tend to like it more. Some might like this more than others but it was not a tea for me.
“Whoa”
That is what I said when I first tried this tea. The first time I drank this was hot, which may not be the best way to drink this tea, and my tastebuds were greeted with a familiar taste of wine. The grape flavor is less fresh grape than an aged grape, if that makes sense. This tea is actually quite nice and better than the White Grape that Teas Etc makes- it’s less dry and the proportion of green to white tea on this blend is much nicer. I am looking forward to cold steeping a few gallons of this in the summer.
