Ito En

Picked this up at the Asian grocery store today. I wasn’t expecting much out of it, but the description was promising and I wanted to at least try. So far I’ve never tried an oolong I really hated. This was also a convenient thing to reach for while I waited for the water to heat up for a different cup.

This exceeded all my expectations. It’s smooth, with some floral and honey notes and a strong peachy flavor throughout. A really solid oolong! Sadly this particular store doesn’t sell any oolong loose-leaf, but I did find some decent-looking Japanese greens and some interesting herbals.

Another DELICIOUS bottled green tea I bought at Fresh Market! This one is not as crazy strong as the Sencha Shot but has the same bright green yet sweet and nutty sencha flavor. Totally great! I will buy it again, I’m sure, for convenience reasons, though I try to avoid bottled beverages when possible.

Saw this today at the Fresh Market on sale 2 for $2, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. This is actually pretty dang good, folks! Very good for bottled green tea. It is VERY strong, grassy, and a little nutty. Tastes just like I brewed up some strong sencha and chilled it myself. Color me impressed!

If you are on the go and love unsweetened green tea, give it a try!

Today I have dental work done, and everyone knows that having dental work means I need to drink lots of tea, right? Actually I do not think they are at all related, but I wanted a nice Japanese Green to relax me before my inevitably unenjoyable experience. Something refreshing and evocative of spring, something from a store that is far, far away in Pennsylvania. Something like:

Wegman’s Ureshino Tomo Ryokucha. Sadly they do not have an order online function (if they did I would never have to bother my friends to mail me my favorites when I drink them all) but through research and rumors I believe their distributor is Ito En so in a way this is a review of both a Wegman’s tea and Ito En’s. Ureshino (meaning it is from Ureshino, Saga Prefecture, Japan) Tomo Ryokucha (or Guricha, curly tea) is a pan-fired tea with absolutely lovely leaves. The aroma is is very refreshing, a blend of vegetal and sweet mixing notes of spinach with scuppernongs. After these initial notes fade you are left with a gentle citrus aroma that just kind of tickles the nose. This tea is certainly sweeter than most Japanese greens, which I find very intriguing.

When I introduce the leaves to their new watery friend I am greeted with the aroma of freshly roasted chestnuts, how surprising! After the initial chestnutty surprise I was able to detect the sweet smell of fresh hay or, if you are into that kind of thing, the smell of woodruff. The liquid itself smells much more vegetal mixing nicely with tones of chestnut and fresh grass.

Ah, I wish I had any skill at writing Haiku, because truly this tea deserves poetry (in its traditional native form of course) but I don’t so I must make do with flowery speech. Sometimes a tea is mild and it is boring, a real let down, sometimes a tea’s mildness is so wonderfully perfect that you wonder why you would ever want anything stronger. This tea fits into the perfectly mild category (or the Haiku comment would be just sad) with the main note being roasted chestnuts leaving a very sweet aftertaste. After the initial chestnut sweetness the taste of mown hay and a tiny taste of spinach. I wanted a tea that tasted like spring time and refreshed me, and this one certainly works.

Photos and blog post: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2013/09/wegmans-ureshino-tomo-ryokucha-tea.html

Really good. My boyfriend doesn’t like green tea very much but likes this one. The flavor is definitely matcha. It gives very short steeping directions but doesn’t seem to get bitter if oversteeped.

The first time I even had Soba tea, I had been in Japan for only a few days so far, and was sitting in a small parlor at a government center in Japan, and was served this as I waited. It tasted like cheerios in a cup, and is so delicious. It took me a long time to find out the english translation – buckwheat tea.
I highly recommend trying it – you may find it at a Japanese or Korean grocer.
Each teabag is designed for 1 pot of tea; 200cc of water for 2 small cups of tea. Let it cool a bit after poring/removing tea bag. Served hot or chilled with no sweetner or milk.

This isn’t bad if you are picking up a bottled tea. Now, I drank most of it with a meal of sticky rice and honeyed tempura chicken, so I didn’t get any of the green tea out of it. Even when I drank the last 1/4 there wasn’t any green tea flavor in it.

But the jasmine is a lovely aftertaste. It is a lot of jasmine, but I like knowing that it is there in an aftertaste. Really nice and refreshing. Pleasantly sweet as well.

very refreshing and the flavor is fairly natural for a RTD tea. Wouldn’t buy a whole case, but would buy a bottle or two again.

Went to Mitsuwa today and got some lunch. I got this tea with it too.

The dry leaf smells like hay, very sweet hay. And plums? Something fruity, sweet yet tart. Once put in a heated pot, the leaves smell dark and heavy, almost (but not quite) musky. After brewing, the tea smells sweet and tangy. The taste is slightly astringent and peppery. Yes, peppery. How strange.

Slurping brings out a sweet, fresh cut sweet grass taste and the aftertaste has a fresh floral note. There is a bitterness to it but not an unpleasant bitterness – more like the bitterness that comes with dark, leafy greens (collards, kale, that sort of thing). The mouthfeel is thin with a little of that peppery taste coming through on the texture – little dashes of roughness.

This isn’t as sweet as I am normally go for but I’m finding it very attractive. Will wait on the rating to see how this romance develops.

This doesn’t exactly taste like jasmine tea… must be the ascorbic acid. but pretty good if you need to pick up a bottle of tea at the store.

not as bitter/smoky as I expected/feared. It actually reminds me a lot of Ito En’s “Oi Ocha” minus the buttery/floral aspect. I like the Oi Ocha better because it has that extra dimension, but this wasn’t bad.

As with their “Tea Apple,” I found this one to be juicy, natural tasting. However, the tea is definitely secondary to the pear flavor. Very refreshing, and worth buying a bottle to try, but not something I would specifically seek out in the future.

HisGirlOona is right: this tastes surprisingly like biting into a juicy red apple! They somehow bottled that “crisp” taste that bottled apple juice never seems to capture.

I can’t say much for the tea itself because I was too wowed by the apple. Not an everyday drink for me, but I’m glad I tried it. It was refreshing and would certainly fulfill an apple craving if you don’t have an apple handy!