Scent of Mountains Sencha

This is a free sample provided by Russel Allyn and Harney and Sons. Many thanks!

The dry leaves had a lovely spinach aroma! I love the name – I did a survey once about “worship styles” and my results said that I feel closest to God out of doors. That is absolutely right, though throw in some mosquitos and our summer humidity and I will get close to God right by the a/c vent thank-you-very-much. The aroma of the dry leaves reminded me of the aroma of Weishan Mao Feng that I tasted a few days ago, but the liquor is nothing like!

The tea steeped to a lovely greenish yellow. I poured some into my small white cup and there were tiny specks of dark green, which I find absolutely beautiful. My husband freaks out if there are “bits” in his tea, but with good tea, I consider it to be decoration, like spices sprinkled on food. It makes it look so wholesome, so real, so unprocessed and natural.

The taste of the tea is vegetal, grassy, and very brothy. There is a bit of butteriness as well, but perhaps that is the texture of the tea rather than the taste. This is a wee bit brisk, not unpleasantly. H&S gives it a 2 on their briskness scale, so very low.

After the sip, for several minutes a sweet taste arises – the sweet plum flavor but here mixed with a hint of the spinach flavor as well.

The second steep is as dark, and the flavor almost unchanged.

I am glad I made a lot of this. I have combined the first two steeps in my tetsubin over the warmer so I can drink it all day, and I hope to give these leaves a good run and see how many good steeps they have in them!

Thank you, Russell and Harney and Sons!

This is a new favorite in the tea room. It is an excellent sencha for a very reasonable price. It’s light a sweet and the leaves will rebrew six or more times (we gave up before the tea did). We’re so happy for the new addition to our Japanese tea selection.

This is the perfect green tea for me. Lots of that wonderful, buttered-vegetable flavor, but absolutely no seaweed notes (hate that). It just feels NOURISHING to drink this wonderful brew!

The first tea to try from my Harney & Sons order! :D They had a few different sencha teas, I had to get this one because of the name. I know, that’s not really a good selection method, but too bad! :D The leaves look similar to the other senchas I’ve tried – very thin, dark green leaves about three-quarters of an inch long at most. This tea has a powerful smell! It has the same strong sweet and grassy/vegetal scent, but for some reason it conjures up images of mango for me. I brewed it for 1 minute.

The aroma is very sencha-y – steamed spinach and grass with some butternut squash. My boyfriend claimed it reminded him of some form of meat stew (what?). This tea tastes quite similar to Den’s Sencha Shin-ryoku that I tried a few days ago. On Harney’s website, it says that this is a medium-steamed sencha. The taste is sweet, strong steamed spinach melded with squash and a slight grassiness. The flavor here is quite deep. It has a buttery spinach aftertaste that lingers for a long time, and is my favorite part of this tea. Quite tasty. And hooray, Steepster added “butternut squash” to the flavor list after I emailed them! :)

Light green in color with a steamed vegetal aroma. Brothy vegetal taste with spinach and sweet pea flavors. This is a delightful green tea.

My first steep of this tea is a little bitter; I think I should have steeped for about 2 minutes, not the 3 minutes suggested on the tin. Aside from the bitterness, there’s a deep, brothy flavor. There’s a warm, buttery aftertaste with some sweet, grassy notes. I’ll drink this a few more times, do some second and third steeps, then come back and edit this note.