Yokota Tea Garden: Sencha Tea Flower Blend

Happy National Book Lovers Day! Today the prompt is to pair a tea with a favorite book or what you are currently reading.

Right now I’ve been (re-)reading the lengthy manga series Boku no Chikyuu o Mamotte ( Please Save My Earth ), which is one of my favorite series involving the complicated interconnected relationships between a set of people in modern-day Japan (err… it was the 80s/90s at the time of writing!) who discover they all share dreams of a past life they spent together as aliens studying the Earth in a moon base. Flowers and their symbolism play a large role in the story, so I wanted something floral, and preferably, also a Japanese tea.

Then I discovered that I have this (old) tea in my stash and have never tried it, and thought it would be a good fit… a sencha that is blended with the flowery blooms of the tea plant. The flowers are so interesting… extremely light, white, and fluffy, they somehow remind me of pieces of popcorn in the dry leaf. Once steeped, they pillow out and look quite pretty.

The scent of the brewed tea smells like warm butter and a sweet floral that smells closest to sakura to me, with a seaweed vegetal undertone. The tea has a very clean, green flavor: fresh grass, buttered greens, garden peas, and a more subtle umami seaweed note. Marine flavors aren’t a favorite in green tea and this one is extremely mild compared to other sencha I’ve had in that regard. The end of the sip is a sweet floral, but again, not overbearing… the closest I can describe the taste is a combination of honeysuckle with sakura.

It’s a very nice tea, and since I only managed to get around to it far later in the afternoon than I planned, I hope that Yunomi’s claim that this green tea isn’t as caffeinated as others holds true.

Home – 2:00 PM

The Great Cupboard Excavation
Untasted teas remaining: 18

I wanted a nice palate-cleansing Japanese green tea after having a couple of very flavored black teas that I didn’t enjoy. Plus Japanese green tea is one of my favorites, so I’m always happy to relax with a cup of it.

This one is a blend of sencha and tea flowers. The flowers are really lovely, they’re whole and sort of bud-like, and they open nicely when steeped. To me, the dry leaf looks like it also contains some kukicha. But that’s not mentioned in the tea description, so who knows. The sencha leaves are somewhat large and flat, rather than being dark and needle-like.

The steeped tea is light and almost golden in color. It’s quite sweet and light and clean-tasting, which to me would make sense if there is indeed kukicha mixed in. There are mild vegetal and grass notes, with a bit of spinach and perhaps a ligher, sweeter vegetable like peas. There is just a little hint of umami as well.

I’m surprised that it’s not very floral at all, although I’m not sure what tea flowers would taste like. I can detect just a tiny bit of floral at the end, but it’s certainly not similar to jasmine as the description implies. If anything, I would say it’s closer to a sakura flavor. But still very light, I’m not sure I would know there were added flowers just going by the flavor.

Overall, it’s a very light Japanese green tea. I see now that the suggested water temperature is 194°F, so I’ll have to try that next time to see if it brings out more of a floral flavor.

This is one of the teas I ordered from Yunomi that showed up on Friday. I’m just now getting a chance to try it. I woke up with a sinus headache after having one most of the day yesterday (not fun at a high school robotics competition, let me tell you.) So I figured a nice mug of tea would be nice.

I picked this one and started reading the steeping instructions. They’re for 2g of tea in a 1/3 of a cup. I probably could have broken out my gaiwan and used that, but I really wanted a nice mug. So I used about 5g and put it in the basket of my ForLife mug. There aren’t a lot of flowers in the 10g size, either, maybe about 8 or 9, so I put 4 of them in this portion and left the rest in the other half. 190° was the recommendation, which seemed a little hot for me, but it seems to have worked out well. I might try the other half at about 180° just to see if it makes a difference. There was also a lot of dust in the pouch, but probably because it is such a small amount and traveled half way around the world.

It’s a nice, green, grassy sencha, quite clear once I let the dust settle. It’s maybe a touch floral, but not much. When I ordered it, I wanted more floral, but now that I’m tasting it and that’s not what it is, I’m actually quite okay with that. It’s got a really nice flavor.

I don’t think it’s helping my head any. I’ve got way too much to do today. After robots taking most of my time since Wednesday night, and new furniture coming tomorrow, we’re so behind. I have to go buy a sheet set because the company I ordered custom sheets from screwed up and the fixed sheet hasn’t gotten through customs yet. ( I should have opened that sooner, but I didn’t want the cats getting into it.) I have a lot of vacuuming to do, as well as moving the old furniture into the guest bedroom. We were supposed to have my BIL here to help, but his flight tonight was cancelled and the only one he could get on today is taking off soon. (Husband took him to the airport and should be back any minute now.)

My head still hurts, but this tea is good. I’m looking forward to seeing how the leaves resteep.

Sipdown (128). So I’m finishing off the other half of this sample today. I thought I tasted perhaps a bit of floral flavor, but I think that’s just my mind trying to connect the tea to the name. Like I said in my previous tasting note, it’s basically just another sencha to me. I steeped very briefly (~20-30 sec?), which helped reduce the bitterness, but it was still there. Disappointingly not what I was expecting from this tea. Will not repurchase :(