Thé Santé

This was my very first cup of Gyokuro. After having heard so much about it, I was naturally very excited. To my surprise, it tasted a lot like a super-fine sencha. No complaints, mind you, since I happen to love sencha!

The liquor was more green than yellow, the dried leaves very dark green and somewhat broken up, without being powdery. I really enjoyed the first infusion earlier today and am looking forward to a follow-up tonight.

second infusion: jade dew—yes! delicious and beautiful

third infusion: still peridot-citrine perfect green, the taste is still great, and the texture is silken on the tongue. I love this stuff. Dare I try a fourth?

fourth infusion: (a first for me…) I made one more cup with the spent leaves. Remarkably, the brew was still good! I love this tea!!!

Another lunch of eggs over easy atop English muffins with sautéed arugula and sliced vine-ripened tomatoes simply cried out for sencha. Today’s choice: Fukujyu from Thé Santé.

Initially, I found the taste of the greenish yellow liquor a bit grassy and more astringent than yesterday’s Nagashima. However, by the second glass, I was a believer once again! i wish that I could figure out why the second glass is nearly always so much better than the first. This happens quite often to me and makes me think that ratings on the basis of a single glass may be generally less favorable…

I’ve been focusing on China green teas recently, but now I’m switching gears for a sencha suite. First up was today’s Thé Santé Fukujyu. Very smooth and satisfying. The liquor is pale green and there was no astringency whatsoever to this batch. I used cooler water and a short steep, in addition to a finer meshed sieve to catch the smaller particles.

I like it, I do!

second infusion: I drank this right after some jasmine green tea, and by comparison this sencha seemed mighty fishy! It really tasted like seaweed in a way that I had not noticed before.

Today’s pot of Fukujyu was a bit more astringent than I remembered the last one being. Still, it was a nice post-lunch sencha. I noticed that the liquor was more golden than green, which makes me wonder whether I may have steeped longer this time than last. I’ll have to check that.

This Fukujyu Sencha from Thé Santé is truly delicious. Definitely earns the label “superior sencha”!

The dried tea is dark and redolent of roasted spinach. The brewed liquor is yellow-green, and the flavor is perfectly sencha, with the added pleasure of a silken texture.

second infusion: Distracted by something, I managed to forgot about this brew for several minutes and so oversteeped, but it was still just as good as the first infusion! A bit more golden in color, but not at all bitter.

third infusion: I tried a third round on the same leaves after dinner, and it was lighter but still delicious—and hopefully caffeine free by now!

I brewed up a medium-sized tetsubin of Thé Santé Sencha Shizuoka today to have with lunch: toasty french bread and soft-boiled eggs. It turned out to be a great accompanying beverage: slightly astringent and vegetal but not overly so. The liquor was pale greenish yellow with a touch of halo-like viridescence.

Prepared correctly (cooler temperature, short steep, sufficient leaves), this is a solid savory green tea for me, and I’ll probably restock…

Today’s pot of Sencha Shizuoka was somewhat less satisfying. Perhaps I underleafed? The liquor is pale golden yellow (not green), and the flavor is not very vegetal at all.

I should use 3 tsp, not 2 tsp, for this tetsubin in the future…

Today’s pot of Thé Santé Sencha Shizuoka had a marked seaweed flavor to it.

Hai!

Today I was very scrupulous with temperature and timing in brewing this sencha from Thé Santé. The water was less than 80C and the steep lasted precisely three minutes (the package recommends 3-4). The brew was the usual beautiful citrine-peridot hue and tasted oh-so-sencha satisfying. There’s a reason why the entire population of Japan is addicted to this tea…

second infusion: Usually I wait until later in the day for a second infusion, but I did one very soon after my first infusion because I was still craving another cup. It was good!

third infusion: I do not always make it to a third infusion, though I recall from my trip to Japan that they use the same leaves over and over again. This one was faint and lighter colored, but still a nice post-dinner, caffeine-free (or close) thirst quencher.

In today’s pot of Sencha Shizuoka, I used a bit more tea, with the result that the liquor had a detectable spinach taste to it. Delicious!

I love how every sencha has its own unique personality. Yes, they are similar, but they are also individuals as varied as separate human beings!

second infusion: tasted even more like roasted spinach—with a dash of pepper

I rarely bother with a third infusion because often it’s too weak for me. This one was better than usual: still faintly reminiscent of roasted spinach, this time even more peppery!

Sencha Shizuoka is a light and refreshing sencha, as it should be! The color of the brew is very pale yellowish green. The dried leaves are rather fragrant, with the scent of something akin to spinach. The taste is clean and only slightly vegetal.

I drank my first cup right after my first meal of the day (which never takes place before noon…): a bowl of steaming Scottish oatmeal with molasses brown sugar and a dash of salt. Now feeling good despite the antarctic weather outside!

This is my first tea from Thé Santé, which does not seem to get that much air time around these parts. I’ll have to review the rest of the items from my order as well! Mostly Japanese…

So far so good.

As an experiment, I tried the second infusion using hotter water and a two-minute steeping time. It was very good and not at all bitter!

When in the mood for a straight red rooibos, this scores! It’s got all the different flavours I ever got from other ones I have tried, perfectly balanced. Rooibos has this distinctive taste which I really can’t put words on, but I tend to forget about it since I often drink flavoured ones, in which I almost never taste any rooibos at all. And when I do, it’s always only a very unidimensional taste – this plain rooibos is all but unidimensional, it really has depth in flavour. Love it!