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This tea is wonderful; one of my favorite black teas for sure. I’m on my third tin.

There’s no bitterness and just a slight mild astringency.
There’s a touch of sweetness and a hint of malty flavor.
My first two tins were more sweet and my current tin is a bit maltier.

It find it very clean and light tasting for a black tea. I’d describe the taste as woodsy but not very earthy though the wet leaves certainly have an earthy mushroom aroma that I can’t seem to taste in the liquor. The finish is very slightly malty and sweet with definite notes of honey.

It’s too delicate and fresh for me to appreciate it as an early morning, breakfast, or desert tea, but as a late morning to mid-afternoon tea it’s great.

It’s not overly expensive so I feel the value is reasonably good.

I first brewed this like a sencha and was extremely disappointed. It lacked character and tasted more fishy than I expected. So I researched Gyokuro preparation and tried again and I’m glad I did.

The next time I used more tea (1g per 30ml of water) and a lower temperature at 65C.
This was much better. A lot of the subtlety that I was expecting now shone through. Subsequent infusions were also quite good with the second being the best overall.

It’s vegetal and has hints of grassiness, with a very slight (enjoyable) taste of seaweed compared to the overly fishy taste from my first attempt. I got a bit of the buttery mouth feel that others report, but not quite as much as I expected.

In general I prefer Chinese greens and Oolongs to Japanese green teas, but this one is pretty good.

Now the catch is that this tea is extremely expensive. I honestly don’t think it’s worth the price and I would not pay out of pocket unless it was discounted by at least 50%. However, since DAVIDsTEA introduced their loyalty rewards frequent steeper program (yay!) I get free 50g bags of tea quite often. As a freebie it’s great!

So the bottom line for me is that this tea is quite good but not amazing and I wouldn’t recommend it for purchase at full cost. It’s certainly enjoyable when prepared properly but as an ultra-premium offering it falls short.