Since I liked the Iyemon Reicha so much, I decided to try another one, this time from Ito En. Like the Iyemon one, this Reicha is a seasonal tea and thus is only available for the summer (hence the name, which means: Cold Tea for the Summer – the sad thing about learning Japanese is you start to realize that being able to combine pictographs has left them really unimaginative when it comes to names “ok ok ok, so we’re making a special summer tea for cooling of, what should we do?” “let’s combine the symbols for ‘cold’ and ‘tea’” “that’s BRILLIANT!”). Unlike the Iyemon, this is just straight green tea, no added matcha, sadly. (yes I realize that matcha is also green tea, you know what I mean!).
This is all right, but I definitely prefer the Iyemon reicha for it’s matchaliciousness. It’s a little more bitter than the standard bottled green teas and it seems the tea they used is the kind of butter kind, but otherwise it seems pretty unremarkable. Another tea your are just not meant to pay that much attention to as you drink.
