Tasting note 101! I totally didn’t realize that I cracked 100 yesterday! :)
Another tea I picked up in my “sample” buying spree the other week. I’ve never had Genmaicha (from anywhere) before but the description sounded very interesting, especially since I really like the flavor of roasted and/or popped rice.
I was really quite surprised at the amount of roasted rice in my package; it looked almost to be half and half with the green tea which was great to see, but there were only a few popped kernels so it wasn’t quite as visually stunning as the images on DT’s site suggest. The smell though… I had to go back to it a few times… at first all I was getting was the roasted rice. Then after the second or third sniff I started to get some notes from the green tea, bright vegetal notes with a few floral hints mixed in.
The steeped liquor came out a light yellow-green and the aroma was filled with deep notes from the roasted rice. There were some sweet tones from the green tea as well which had a bit of a fruity scent now, though I still found that there also was the more “traditional” vegetal scent as an undertone. As for the flavor…. It carries over from the aroma quite nicely. I find it filled with dark puffed/roasted rice notes with slight vegetal hints from the green tea and every once and a while I get a few floral notes on the finish. It’s not astringent either which is good since I accidentally over steeped this a bit.
I have to admit though, I keep looking for a molasses/malty flavor to go with the puffed rice notes and I haven’t even had puffed rice squares in years! It’s a good, solid tea; but definitely one that I’d have to be in the mood for.
(PS I had a hard time finding this tea to log… When I searched for “Genmaicha David’s Tea” it took me to a (basically) empty page with no notes or ratings on it which I found odd so I went hunting further and eventually found this page. Weird)
