Sakura Vert

I’m trying a mug of this thanks to CHAroma and I have to say, I am befuddled by the strong negative responses to this tea. I can’t detect anything offensive at all. It tastes floral and fruity. It’s a bit soapy, but not unpleasantly so. It’s very nice. The sencha base seems to get astringent easily, but that’s easily remedied by more careful brewing. And, as with the other Lupicia tea I sampled, the tea base and flavor harmonize to create a better whole. I really need to clear room in my cabinet so that I can order some teas from Lupicia!

The flavor does, in fact, remind me of the sakura mochis that are wrapped in the preserved leaves. I liked the flavor, but not the texture so I guess this tea is a perfect compromise.

SIPDOWN!

I’m sad to see this one go. It’s uber delicious when fresh! Once the leaves get old, it becomes soapy and heavy and weird. So definitely consume this one quickly! I’ll have to watch out for it now that it’s spring again. It’s seasonal, so you can’t always find it on Lupicia’s site.

This is a love it or hate it tea. It has pickled cherry leaves in it, not actual cherries. The resultant brew is slightly salty, very different, and certainly unique. I’m definitely a lover! :)

‘Disappointing’ doesn’t begin to describe this tea. I’ve rarely tried a tea that I’ve disliked quite so much as this one. It’s salty and bitter and I’m struggling to find any redeeming features. thinks Nope, there are no redeeming features. It’s just… yuck.

It’s possible that part of the bitterness comes from following the directions and steeping the leaves in boiling water. With most teas, I’d be willing to give it a second chance and try steeping it at a lower temperature next time, but I’m really not feeling inclined to go anywhere near this tea again.

I think this must be my most negative tea review ever – and it totally deserves it! I’m just about to go and pour the rest down the sink.

Sometimes, I get tired of straight tea, the gongfu style of brewing, the mess, the ritual, etc., and this seems to happen more often during hot summer days. Looks like it’s time for some flavored iced tea!

I visited my local Lupicia store hoping to get a nice flavored green and ended tasting this.

The flavor was… totally unexpected. Smooth and vegetal like your regular Japanese green, with a fresh crisp salty finish. As someone else said, the “saltiness” reminds me a lot of the leaves some mochis come wrapped in, especially in the aroma (which is one thing about this tea that I like the most, such a good scent when brewed).

I liked it overall, but like the shop clerk told me, most people find this salty hint a bit too much and I can see why. But I just find it really comforting right now. Even while drinking it hot, I feel slightly refreshed, despite these hot days. We’ll see how the iced version tastes…

This is the authentic taste I’ve been craving. It is not intended to be a typical cherry flavor – the leaves of the cherry blossoms are brined, so there is a slightly salty flavor combined with a floral aroma and an aftertaste of cherry – very subtle. Very spring.

The sencha used in Lupicia’s version is flavorful – it achieves what I’ve tried to do myself by blending my own green tea with actual sakura blossoms. I’ll enjoy the blossoms on their own as a tisane and in different cooking recipes and drink Lupicia’s version both hot and cold.

This blend is wonderful iced – it is strong enough to be enjoyed cold. Steeping sakura blossoms on their own, I haven’t yet been able to get a strong enough balance to try it iced, but Lupicia’s found the ticket.

If you enjoy Sakura or floral-scented greens, you’ll enjoy this version.

I think this tea is definitely one many of those leaving low ratings are misunderstanding, going into it – much of this is due to Lupicia not making it especially clear for western consumers that this is not sakura-cherry green tea. This is brined sakura leaf green tea. Brined sakura leaves are obviously a radically different flavor from fresh fruitiness… a traditional Japanese taste utterly nonexistent in the western palate and one that would not please someone seeking fruity floral freshness. To a Japanese person, this combination evokes images of spring time and freshness – because they’ve grown up in a culture where brined sakura is linked to that. A big part of that also probably has to do with using boiling water and/or long brewing times – sencha wants lower temperatures and shorter times, and the briny sakura does as well. Too hot and long with this and you end up with a horrible bitter salty mess.

For me today, I picked this tea as a pairing with music – I just got my hands on Tama Onsen’s “Open Your Heart(s)”, and the second track, Setsuna Yamai, left me wanting something extremely traditional.
http://tindeck.com/listen/ruuu

The aroma of this tea is somewhere between genmaicha and shincha – the roasty savoriness of the former, over a much fresher leaf than is usually found in genmaicha. Flavorwise, it hit the spot for what I wanted perfectly. It is what you’d expect, for the most part – the fresh grassy flavor and astringency of a good sencha, with a distinctly present salt note, and a very subtle sweet cherry fruitiness beneath. The saltiness is definitely a dominating note, and makes for a salt-water sort of mouthfeel, and for some people would be a dealbreaker and stop them before they got to the other flavors. If it works for you though, the sencha and the sweet cherry begin to show themselves.

The combination of a roasty saltiness and sencha on their own would make for a warming, nostalgia-inducing traditional japanese green tea experience. The addition of the sweet cherry under-flavor that lingers on your tongue after the rest have faded makes it into something else entirely. Rather than a synergy, it’s like drinking two separate teas simultaneously, the sweet and salty halves coexisting but not as one. Definitely a very complex and uniquely creative brew as I’d expect from Lupicia, and one that really hits the spot in certain, specific moments for me.

This is definitely a super polarizing tea, and not for people who are primarily fans of mellow, sweet teas. It’s intensely calming and relaxing to me, but make no mistake – it’s intense, and odds are, very unusual to your palate. Brew it gently, and don’t let the leaves go stale, or the bitterness and brine will overpower everything else. I also found that it had a ton of dust to shake out through the basket before brewing, and I recommend you do this, lest that dust end up in your cup and sour the brew. Even with my best efforts, quite a bit made it into the bottom of the cup – I don’t think it suffered for it, but if I hadn’t shaken it mostly out first, it would have.

I am trying this tea for the first time, using water just off the boil.
My first impression is that it’s quite different. I can understand why it has such wildly different review scores: there is an undercurrent of salted cherry three leaves that is quite different, and can be puzzling if you haven’t tasted them before. For me, the saltiness does indeed provide a clean taste, as described by Lupicia. It’s not my favorite flavored green tea, but it is a nice one nonetheless.

I have to respectfully disagree with the previous reviews, even though I completely understand them. This tea is very much an acquired taste, made as it is with flavouring from a pickled cherry leaf. If brewed lightly it can be a very fresh and uplifting tea. When I lived in Japan, the pickled cherry leaves would be found around sakura mochi, and were one of my favourite things to eat – only available in the springtime. This tea captures that flavour excellently – a true Japanese spring feeling.

If you like it, I’d also recommend the even more unusual taste of the Ume vert, made from pickled japanese plums!

I think something must have died in mine! It cant honestly be this awful can it? its just… so bad. It tastes like a football field! Ive tried it a few times at different temperatures and its just still awful.

… It comes in such a pretty tin though….

I was making soup when the doorbell rang. I was surprised because I wasn’t expecting a package and no one else ever rings the doorbell. I set down my spoon and hurried to the door where the dogs (I am keeping my grandpup for two weeks) were enthusiastically announcing the presence of the postal carrier and there was indeed a box by the door! A surprise box from White Antlers!

I read the nicest letter and then dug into the box of goodies. Everything looks so good! I picked this to be the first I try.

About the soup – I was inundated with cucumbers from the garden. I have given away cucumbers. Made cucumber sandwiches and cucumber salad. Some cucumbers were about to get away from me, looking a little sad in the fridge but still edible. They are not a sort suitable for pickles.

So I cooked some onion, added broth, tossed in chopped cucumber, lots of dill, garlic, evap milk because I don’t usually keep cream on hand, blended it….and it was really delicious. But I really didn’t taste cucumber. It could easily have been cream of zucchini. I decided to make it go a little further and added finely diced carrot and potato. Topped it with mozzarella. Yes! We will have this for a couple of days for supper.

All that added to say that when I saw the instructions for this tea, I was a little leery of sencha with boiling water. I looked at other reviews and decided to go with a lower temp and short time. And when the water hit the leaves…it smelled a lot like the soup on the stove!

A short steep of two minutes and…This tea is THICK. Or as the young whippersnappers like to say THICC.

The name would imply the taste of cherries, but it is not cherry. It is salted cherry leaves, such as the brined leaves wrapped around mochi. There is nothing fruity about this tea. It is savory through and through!

This is like drinking a broth, nice and salty, something that would take the edge off your hunger when you are sick and can’t really eat anything but you are hungry nevertheless.

And what was really cool was that it smelled so similar to my soup that was still simmering on the stove. This would be an excellent addition to the base for a fresh vegetable soup, especially a cucumber, zucchini, or turnip soup. YUM.

Thank you, White Antlers! There are so many teas in the box that I can not wait to try!