Gyokuro

My all time, by far, favorite tea I have ever had. This green tea is just in so many ways fantastic. It has the classic green tea taste to it without being too rich or too bitter. I don’t really know what else to say about this tea except ignore the high price tag and TRY IT. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Ok. So. On one of the many occasions where DavidsTea gives a free 50g of your choice, I picked Gyokuro. I would have preferred the Gyokuro Yamashiro but they never had it in stock :I Anyway! Point is, I have tried this tea, and tried to like it, so, soooooo many times.

This and the other Japanese Greens by DT made me thing green tea just wasn’t my thing, because I’d always end up with a bitter and unpleasantly astringent cup, even though I’d try cooler temperatures, shorter steeping times, gong fu bastardization, etc. Until, I tried their Japanese Sencha. Dang. It changed my mind on what green tea should taste like. From there I’ve been inspired to go revisiting other japanese samples in my tea cupboard and trying to wrangle em.

Basically, what my green tea wants from me is absurdly cool water. Now, my tea is a little underleafed so its a bit weak, but I finally taste what its supposed to be. My next cup is going to have less water so I can focus on flavour.

A long-ish rinse right under a cool tap in my perfect steeper is needed to get rid of the millions of tea dust bits that fall through even the tiny holes of the DT perfect steeper and into the bottom of the cup where they bitter-ify everything.

Next, water at 65C. Not 80C like the bag says, not 74C like the thermometer says. I’ve tried doing short steeps at these temperatures and they came out bitter and awful no matter what. But at 65C, it tastes mellow and the butteriness comes out. I’m going to further experiment in the future to see if this tea can handle a little hotter, like 67-68 or 70 without going to crap.

Anyway, basically, I need 65C water and short 30second steeps. But really, is my water weird or something? No one else seems to be having these difficulties!

Anyway, there’s no bitterness now, just a slight vegetal and slight buttery flavour – I think I can sense some sweetness and salt, but again, I think I underleafed for such a short steep, which would explain the light/weak flavour. Yay for bastardized gong fu… Well, I’ll be getting a real gaiwan in the mail soon enough!

Gonna go for a second steep now with a little less water.

Edit: Second steep was a bit too long @50seconds. Oops. Less water so there’s more flavour, but the tea has lost most of that slight butteryness, but now has a thicker feel in the mouth and I can taste more oceany flavours – a pleasant light briney kind of taste like seaweed + some dry land kinda vegetal. Its a little bit bitter and a little more astringent but I’ll put that down to the length of the steep, its still acceptable to me. Gonna go for a third with a shorter steep and the same amount of water.

Its a very finicky tea… I’m sure a top notch gyokuro would taste a good bit different. Would love to try the yamashiro version since it should be more buttery.

2nd Edit: 3rd steep – rinsed with cool tap water for 5 second, then steeped for 65C for 35 seconds. Bitterness and astringency have retreated. The seaweed taste is still slightly there, like an essence, which is nice, but now theres an interesting, very sunny taste that makes me think of the taste in the air when theres a warm breeze on a warm fresh kind of day… and at the end of the sip a sweetness on the tip of my tongue thats just plain sugary. Its SUGARY. All my wat. Not like sweetened green tea – more like a sip of tea gets swallowed and then someone sprinkles a few granules of sugar on the tongue.

anyway, on my 4th steep and its a bit buttery, but weak and no longer interesting.

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.

Simple, buttery, grassy tea with a roasted, smokey nutty taste.

This was a very nice Green Tea. And very expensive. Which is why I had a hard time reviewing this tea. Was it worth the price? I don’t honestly think so. I’ve had other GTs that were much less expensive and had great flavour.

This tea is very vegetal. Like drinking a cup of hot vegetable stock. Like I said, it’s a good tea. But I don’t think I’ll repurchase. I’d like to try some other Gyokuro varieties. Maybe get a tester pack from Japan or something like that.

Great quality green tea!

Very nicely done.

I prefer the Genmaicha more, but this one has an earthier taste to it. I drink this one hot.

Here we got a memorable Gyokuro, sweet in mouth but rich in flavor. It’s a really good Gyokuro, not the best, which have a subtile grassy background. It’s hard to describe but if you love Gyokuro, give it a try.

DavidsTea is really specialized in their products and this one demonstrate that there is not any negligence for the straight tea too.