Laoshan Genmaicha

This is rich. Almost too rich.

It’s buttery, creamy, smooth, sweet, vegetal, and much fancier then I am used to with my Genmaicha. Geez.. even the rice used here is fancy- delicious nutty, roasted jasmine rice. This cup melts, and, wow, is the second steep ever delicious!

It’s high quality stuff but I like how pedestrian and crude my regular Genmaicha is. I can always have two types of Genmaicha?

Oh man this is so good. I shouldn’t buy more tea for like 8 months but I need to have this around because it is a great warming up tea. It just makes you feel all warm and because it’s so hearty, it feels extra good.

Sweet, vegetal, and roasty! It does remind me of kettle corn! It’s hard to go wrong with genmaicha. I love the local flair of the MN wild rice for something different.

Another seriously good tea from Verdant. Everything I try from them exceeds my expectations!!

Genmaicha has for years had its own place in our cabinet. The ubiquitous purple and yellow box is a stable on our shopping list. Genmaicha is as common in our house as Sriracha or oyster sauce. It is a comfortable, dependable friend.

Sometimes our dependable friends surprise us. This Verdant GMC is an energized version of my humble friend.

Having a beautiful appearance and a familiar GMC aroma, I really wasn’t expecting an exceedingly memorable experience. Genmaicha is genmaicha, right? Wrong!!

The look is familiar as is the color of the liquor. Even the taste is familiar, but it is a familiar taste raise by a factor or 3 or 4 in intensity and quality. It truly is like the difference between those single serving ice cream cups you hand out to the kids at a birthday party and a super premium Haagen Daz. This is Genmaicha as I’ve never known it.

This tea is warm and wholesome. It has a very nice nuttiness and has an undeniable sweet, clean throat. I thought I was mistaken at first, but the lingering sweet ending is consistent and very pleasing. This is a completely clean brew.

From beginning to end this is a superior product. As long as I can afford it, this will be my new everyday Genmaicha.

Omm nom nom nom nom. I’m not the biggest genmaicha fan, only had a few, but this is delicious! Super savory and hearty. Second steep is just heaven. The third a brewed a touch too long, but it’s starting to create this really need cooling effect when I breath after a sip, it feels a bit like anise doesn’t quite taste like it, though it comes with a sweetness. Interesting. I want to make soup out of this, but I need a bigger tea budget, sigh. Not feeling much like rating things right now, but this would certainly be in the 90’s.

This tea has tarnished all other genmaicha, I swear. Laoshan green is an amazing base and the toasted rice is very complementing. I can’t wait for the spring batch of teas from Verdant!

It’s a fancy day for fancy tea. I’m a quarter century old! ACK!

This is a very enjoyable! It is very roasty and savory, but at the same time there is sweet vegetal quality to it. It is more complex than any other genmaicha I’ve had. The only deterrant in this for me is the drymouth it leaves behind. It gets to be unpleasant towards the end of the cup

Backlog:

I’m going to start with the direct link to my full-length review of this one, because … well, just because: http://sororiteasisters.com/2013/05/03/laoshan-genmaicha-green-tea-from-verdant-tea/

While purists might have a problem with a non-Japanese genmaicha blend, I found this to be really nice. Sweet flavor with a nice, toasted rice note. This is one that should be infused at least twice because I found the two infusions to be remarkably different from one another. It’s really worth it to go at these leaves a second time!

I liked the Laoshan green tea with this … the creaminess of the green tea melded so beautifully with the nutty, roasty-toasty rice. Delicious!

1 tablespoon for 375 ml

Stong steamed spiniach flavour. Not much roasted rice flavour on first infusion.

Second infusion at 2.75 minutes. Roasted rice flavour is better able to come through.

I apologize about the lack of updates the past couple days, I have been a bit under the weather. Luckily, the main thing keeping me from writing (a splitting headache) has eased so I can present a review to my readers. I had the idea to write a few blog posts to have stored away for days when I am either unwell or busy so I can still have daily reviews, something to work on this week. And now, for tea!

Today’s tea is Laoshan Genmaicha from Verdant Tea, it is a blend of Laoshan Green Tea, Toasted Northern Lakes Minnesota Wild Rice, and Organic Toasted Jasmine Rice. Laoshan Green Tea is grown on Laoshan Mountain in Shandong Province and was picked July of 2013. I find myself wondering which lake the Wild Rice came from, I am sad I missed out on harvesting the Wild Rice when I was in the North Woods of Minnesota a few summers ago. The aroma of the tea is rich, the rice has a nutty and toasted aroma that finishes with a sweet, sticky rice aftertone. The leaves’s aroma is very, well, verdant! They smell fresh and green, full of fresh vegetation and a mild vegetal tone. It finished with a gentle hint of caramelized sugar.

The aroma of the steeped leaves in a word, yum! But that is not exactly a description, is it? The rice adds a very toasty quality which blends with the green wonderfully. The green leaves have notes of green beans and a hint of citrus. The aroma is subtle, nothing is overpowering and it is well balanced. The liquid is buttery sweet and creamy with notes of toasted rice and nuttiness with a very mild hint of vegetal.

When tasting the first thing I notice is an initial savory quality that is like a mixture of green beans and sage that fades into a rich, creamy, sweet, nutty taste of toasted rice. It is a very smooth transition between savory and sweet that is punctuated with a hint of citrus that lingers in the mouth for a few. The mouthfeel is very smooth, almost creamy. I really like this tea, it is a new take on the traditional Genmaicha and while they have similar ideas (rice and green tea) they are executed quite differently. My biggest word of advice if trying this tea is do not expect it to taste like the traditional Genmaicha, toss any expectations out the window and be prepared for a new experience.

For blog and Photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/01/verdant-tea-laoshan-genmaicha-tea-review.html

I don’t normally drink green in the AM, but I had this to cleanse my palate after the coffee/puerh tea. No way I could have another black tea right after that. I like this genmai only because I like the veggie flavor of the green, otherwise I prefer my genmai’s much more toasty. But this is cleansing my palate perfectly.