Yunomi

Next sample from Yunomi and the first I’ve tried from Nishide. The factory was established in 1860 and is currently run by husband-and-wife team Takashi and Atsuko Nishide. They buy aracha from Uji and surrounding areas of Kyoto and process them in their factory. The cultivar used is Osahiri, which is an early-budding cultivar.

This is the BEST sencha I’ve ever tried, hands down. I believe it is an asamushi based on leaf appearance and flavor. That is fitting, as a high-quality asamushi sencha was the tea that pushed me off the ledge into the deep end of this fascinating world of the leaf. Fukamushi and chumushi senchas are great, but something about the yin-yang interplay of a great asamushi like this with simultaneously reserved flavor followed by intense emotional and visceral responses is what captivates me.

No bitterness or astringency. Very delicate and refined front end followed by an intense umami and sweetness with phenomenal mouthfeel as it tracks to the back of your palate. You feel a soft rubbery object lingering in your mouth even after swallowing. The sweetness is medium-high and the huigan is off the charts. Longevity is 4 infusions. Balance is perfect. The value is amazing at $0.53/g; I would’ve expected this to be > $1/g.

So why 99 and not 100? The flavor falls off pretty steeply between steep 2 and 3. Perhaps it needs somewhat hotter temps at that point? It picks back up again in the 190 F final steep. Other than that, it’s perfect.

Harvest: May 10, 2024
Cultivar: Osahiri
Processing: Asamushi?
Location: Uji, Kyoto

Dry leaf: Umami
Wet leaf: Same
Flavor: Umami, sweet, vegetal, smooth, thick, artichoke, chalk

Next sample from Yunomi and this one is also great! I think they must have changed how they label Kurihara’s teas, as I do not recall the numbering system when I last purchased from them. I believe they sold a gyokuro that just went by the name “Kurihara Heritage Gyokuro.” Regardless, this tea is certainly different from that one.

Brewed 6 g in 100 mL for 14 mins at 75 degrees F, then 2:30 at 120 F, then 3:00 at 120 F, then 2:30 at 160 F. This brewing style works wonders. The first brew is still packed with L-theanine energy, though perhaps a bit more tame than the last gyokuro I had from Kurihara. The brew is crystal clear jade dew. The latter brews produce the deepest green liquor I’ve ever seen and no off notes. Packed with umami flavor throughout.

Absolutely no bitterness. A very slight touch of astringency on the last infusion. No sweetness either. Mouthfeel is full and lively. 4 infusions. Great value at $0.62/g.

Harvest: Late May – Early June, 2024
Cultivar: Saemidori
Location: Yabemura Village, Yame, Fukuoka
Altitude: 300-700 m

Dry leaf: Vegetal, umami
Wet leaf: Same
Flavors: Umami, stewed vegetables, broth, salty, energizing, savory

Sample 3 from Yunomi. I think I’ll reserve final judgement on this until I alter my brewing style. They don’t say on their website, but this one also appears to be a chumushi, though the flavor is more intense than #2.

The first two steeps were fairly bitter (more than the other two) but it was tolerable. No sweetness. The third and final steep was actually my favorite, so I will decrease the amount of tea to 3g/100 mL next time and see how it goes.

EDIT: This tea LOVES a cooler brew. Dropping temps from 156 to 140 F and quantity from 4.5 g to 3 g did wonders. Changing rating from 72 to 94. I mean, this thing is so beautiful now! Will make the same change on Chiyo #2 and report back. This is one of the things I love about Japanese Greens – they require finesse. I hope someday to be enough of a tea master as to be able to tell by looking at and smelling dry leaves what brewing parameters they desire.

This is now free of bitterness and LOADED with sweetness. Goes 5 infusions: 140 × 60, 140 × 25, 156 × 60, 190 × 60, 190 × 90 and still had good intensity. About the same price as Kurihara’s #24 at $0.33/g.

Harvest: May 2024
Cultivar: Yabukita
Location: Yabe Village, Yame, Fukuoka
Altitude: 600 m

Second sample from Yunomi. This one is super different from Kurihara’s #24. It is also a chumushi.

The farm is owned by a husband and wife. The husband’s grandfather Chiyokichi, was the founder of the farm and give it his name.

No sweetness. Mild bitterness with no astringency. Umami is present, but nowhere near as intense as the Kurihara. Longevity is 4 infusions.

Certainly not bad, but at the same price as the Kurihara, I would much prefer that one.

Dry leaf: Roasty, nutty
Wet leaf: Same
Flavors: Bitter, steamed vegetables, umami

A free sample with my first Yunomi order of 2024. They sent me this 2023 version in the same order as the 2024 version. This one is definitely not as fresh tasting and noticeably less flavorful than the 2024, but not too bad!

My shincha order from Yunomi is finally here! I pre-ordered it back in April and it took quite some time for all the teas in the order to become available before they could ship it. I am blown away by this first tea, truly! There is almost nothing wrong with it honestly. I liked Kurihara’s gyokuro in the past, so I wanted to start with their sencha this time. Supposedly this family has about 3 hectares of tea plantations.

This tea is a chumushi (40-50 seconds), but they say the flavor leans more towards a fukamushi as the leaves are so young, and I agree. Very deep umami with phenomenal strength and some nice sweetness. Longevity is 5 infusions; quite solid for a sencha. No bitterness or astringency. Mouthfeel is thick and smooth and rich.

At $0.30/g, this value is INSANE. Super excited for the rest of the samples!

Harvest: May, 2024
Cultivar: Saemidori
Location: Yabemura Village, Yame, Fukuoka
Altitude: 300-700 m

Dry leaf: Umami, vegetal
Wet leaf: Same
Flavors: Umami, vegetal, grass, sweet, rich

TTB tea! Here I am drinking smoked teas again! Actually, this isn’t bad. It’s meaty and smoky, but not overly strong. I did get tired of it after a third of the large mug, but that’s just due to my preferences.

I’m not usually a fan of green tea, but this one has been my favorite and I’m glad it has defied my preferences in tea. Yunomi lets you preorder their teas and this was one that I preordered last year. It is unbelievably smooth with plenty of nuttiness from its roasting. It has some nice acidity that lingers, but it is not too overbearing. Reminds me of the taste when you’ve added a splash of lemon to some spinach that you are sauteing.

Sipdown 39 – 2024

Finished this at work a couple days ago and truly cannot remember a thing about it.

I found this tea on a trip to Oshino Hakkai. It is an instant Matcha sweetened with Peach. It is very tasty and refreshing on ice or hot and very easy to prepare. Just add water and stir. The matcha taste is not very strong, but in this case, i think that it a plus. The Peach is so natural tasting and I like it pre-sweetened.
I only have a few packets left, so I am rationing it and hoping to be able to order some more now that I am back in the US.

Sipdown 36 – 2024

I don’t drink a ton of green tea anymore, but a few weeks ago suddenly got this urge to have some. I didn’t really have any on hand, so of course had to make a Yunomi purchase (also pre-ordered some One River Tea 2024 harvest).
This was the first on deck. It’s nice! Mostly getting roasted seaweed with a touch of cooked greens.

Reviewing this tea as part of the Intermediate course offered by the Global Japanese Tea associate. I’m not sure of what to put this under MY14 or this one but this one seems more fitting. One doesn’t often think of oolong when they think of Japan but if they market this more they will give other countries a run for their money.

I’ve not had a Japanese oolong in a few years so I was excited to try it. I decided to try using a shiboridashi to brew it during our class session. Glad I did. Though I’m sure it would have made an exceptional brew with a kyusu too. The dry leaf is very reminiscent of an oolong with its curled features. The aroma is so lovely. Mineral and fruity with hints of apricot. The wet aroma is gorgeous. Buttery, fruity, and tropical florals and a bit of slight butter. The flavor is high in apricot notes and tropical florals.

Huh, I never wrote a note for this tea?
And I thought I prepared it a few times! But I had 15 grams, which means like I had it just once?

Prepared as on label: 5g tea, 5 minutes, 90°C water. Definitely smells smoky, but in flavour it is rather like a coffee tea! Definitely and distinctly coffee.
Nice and round mouthfeel though.

Happy belated new year! I’ve been absolutely slammed at work this week, so this tasting note is a few days late, meep!

I’ve started a low-key tradition of beginning the year with a gyokuro. I have no idea how I got into that habit but I like it. Something about a brothy, deep, green brew just fits conceptually with both the dead of winter and a fresh start. I didn’t take adequate notes on this one and unfortunately it was a sipdown so I won’t have a chance to take more, but one thing I specifically remember being struck by is that it wasn’t quite as thick as some other gyokuros I’ve had. Not the thinnest, but also not the richest. Very middle of the pack in that sense. Enjoyable though!

Weird that this is listed as Yunomi brand tea when Azuma is the farm that produces and sells it. Oh well! I got this in a hojucha lovers collection at a stand outside a store in Kyoto earlier this year and am just now getting around to trying it. I’m on my second cup already, so I must be liking this quite a bit! It says on the package that it is for baking and lattes, so I prepared this in oat milk which is adding a creaminess to the cup. It has a nice smooth roasty flavor to it, maybe a little nutty. I can pick out the hojicha when I focus on it, but it’s easy to get lost in the comforting aspect of the overall cup. I could mindlessly sip on this all day!

A sipdown! (M: 3, Y: 53)
Last 4 grams used western and steeped just right… I wish to know how long steep it was.

Definitely the smoke isn’t overpowering the black tea itself. Which I think it is great. The flavour of black tea is smooth and almost velvet-like, a bit sweet as well, brown sugar and malty notes.

I won’t re-order right away, but it has high chances if I place an order on Yunomi again.

Sipdown 45

Did a very short cold brew to finish this off, and it was quite tasty. Added a tiny bit of honey and mixed it with mango juice. Super refreshing.

We went to a really good teppanyaki restaurant while we were in Taiwan – so good that we kept going back. The only problem is that it puts everything like it back home to shame. We’ve got hibachi places but they’re the standard fare. I love that, I grew up on it being the fancy “going out” meal for my family, but now I’ve had better and I want more of THAT. They served buckwheat tea with our meals. Tea-averse partner was super into it, so I bought him a couple of buckwheat teas from Yunomi to try out at home. What I really want to do is find out whether I can brew up the buckwheat that’s in my pantry cabinet, but that’s an experiment for another time!

So this tea! It is really hot right now, so I made a cold brew pitcher. It sat in the fridge for a few days because tea-averse partner kept drinking other things (insert eye-rolling emoji and crying emoji). Eventually I just started pouring mugs of it and putting them in front of him, mostly because I wanted to try it too! The great news is that this really can’t oversteep. It just gets deep, nutty, and roasty. Basically tastes like childhood. And really nice as an iced tea on a hot day. Partner approves too!

Made two lattes with this already! The flavor is remarkably like the other peach matcha I’ve tried from Yunomi. The matcha was a whisper of green in the drink, the ratio of sugar to matcha seemed a little more on the sweet side than the apple flavor I had a few months back. not my overall favorite, but it does get me excited to move on to the mango flavor I got!

Whoops! I’m already about halfway through this bag, and have yet to write a note about it! It’s been my daily green for about a month now, and I get pumped up to drink it every time. The creamy mouthfeel with the vegetal bite hit the spot every time. I foolishly thought this tea would carry me through the season, but it’s clear that i’ll be on the hunt for a late season sencha soon hehe UwU

Cracked this open to enjoy while at work today. The black tea was refreshing and robust, i steeped it for much less than my usual teabag method – only 2mins. Sadly, did not get any citrus from the brew, I think the black tea base was much louder than the mikan dust. before I began brewing the teabag, I could have sworn that the mikan was sugar for a moment – that’s how fine the grains were of the chopped dried fruit. But alas, the black tea was much louder. Perhaps the citrus will come out more if I ice it.

Began this tea as a side by side with the Minami Sayako cultivar oolong tea from my last Yunomi tea order. As soon as I tried the teas side by side, I immediately decided to just drink them one by one. They were extremely different, it seemed superfluous to do a side by side for such different teas. this one is a late summer 2022 harvest. The brew was much much lighter than the Minami, more akin to a silver needle brew color – almost silver. The leaves were also much smaller than the Minami, but that might have just been the sample bag. I got bright lemon and heady florals on each steep. this tea is very reminiscent of a Lishan oolong, all flower and no bite. the soup was thinner than I am used to with such a green oolong, but that says nothing on it’s character. I was not as much of a fan of this one as the other oolong.

Began my session with this tea as a side by side cultivar comparison with the Tachiho cultivar oolong I got from my last Yunomi order. As soon as I began though, I realized how different they were and just drank them one by one. This one, the Minami Sayaka cultivar, is from summer 2021. From the jump the brew was a deeper gold color and developed into a soft gold till the end. There was a light roasty nuttiness on the top of the brew, giving it a distinct soba cha/hojicha flavor that reminded me where this was grown. The leaves were larger than the Tachiho as well. The floral note that wove itself in and out of the brew was wonderfully refreshing. I’m over the heavy florals of most green oolongs, but the light roast of this tea helps to mellow the bouquet in such a pleasant way.

Happy 101st tasting note to me!

IT’S FINALLY TIME! I’ve finished all the opened samples of my Japanese greens, so i can treat myself to a new spring 2023 tea! WOOOO. This fukamushi is remarkable – it was chewy and intense for the first three shakes of my kyusu, and kept it’s savory twang until steep 5. The wet leaf was very interesting as well, reminded me of my favorite shrimp chips. I know, sounds gross, but it propelled me to make another round as soon as the first leaves were spent. yayyy tea!