This has got to be one of my favorite Samovar teas.
Just got home from a long day at work, feet are killing me, I’m just beat. I ended up having stir fry for dinner, and this tea makes a great after meal tea. It really helped offset the oily tastes from this stir fry. After eating a bowl of the stir fry, I was fairly full, but after drinking this tea, I now feel much more satisfied as far as fullness is concerned. This tea could definitely be a meal on it’s own.
The first sip, this tea has a nice nuttiness to it, like most genmaicha. But a couple sips after that the nuttiness gets a bit sweeter, and for some reason brings thoughts of Cracker Jacks, just with a little less caramel flavor. With the following sips, intertwined with the sweet/roasted nut/popcorn-like flavor from the genmai, are nice hints of mildly sweet grass-like flavors from the sencha.
I really enjoy genmaicha, I probably drank it almost half the time that I was visiting my girlfriend (she is a JET) in Japan (which wasn’t too long, about a week and a half, but what an amazing week and a half). So drinking this always kind of brings back nice memories. But with this tea, there is one thing that sets it apart from the others. There is an amazing full bodied milkiness to this tea due to the matcha. The sweet, toasty, creaminess is just amazing.
The color and aroma of this are both amazing. The deep green color is just amazing, I guess from the matcha. I can definitely relate the smell to brine with hints of grass. Almost reminds me of opening a jar of lotus root in brine that you would get from an international food market. While not one of the most amazing of smells, it is definitely recognizable.
2nd Steep: 5 minutes – Still nutty and a bit creamy. There is a little bit of residual matcha in this steeping. The color comparison of the first and second steep are like night and day. Second steep gives off a slightly green/amber color.
3rd Steep: 8 minutes – Pretty much tastes like a typical genmaicha, which is not a problem at all with me since I like genmaicha.
