I wish I had read the Steepster reviews before buying this. The reviewers mention the sugar syrup or sugar whatever added to the tea. This isn’t mentioned on the website description at all. It just says sencha plus cherry blossoms and petals. What the tea really has is cherry marshmallows, like the kind of dried marshmallows in cereal like Lucky Charms. They dissolve completely in the brew. The website should have mentioned added sugar, instead it gives the impression of an herbal sencha blend, which this is NOT.
Leave it to my idiocy for not checking what my fellow Steepster people wrote. Actually it didn’t occur to me, I thought this was a new tea and wouldn’t be reviewed yet.
The tea smells like the cherry marshmallows but the cup fortunately doesn’t really translate the sickly sweet smell. The dry tea smells like a ton of flavoring and sweetener was added but maybe it comes down to controlling how many of the marshmallows you put in the pot, because the actual sencha appears to be just pure leaf.
I’ve had American Tea Room’s Sencha Ashikubo before, and for the price it is not too bad. This one tastes more vegetal in the cup than cherry or sweet. The sweetness might help with bitterness if oversteeped, but again it might change depending upon how many marshmallows you have in your brew. I could taste the spinach-y sencha and if I hadn’t smelled the bag or seen the marshmallows I wouldn’t have known from the taste that anything else was added. So that means I can stand to drink it and will likely finish the bag. I won’t buy it again, but I can at least recommend it as a pretty spring sencha that is mild and pleasant with no overpowering notes.
Flavors: Spinach, Sugar, Vegetal