Heavenly Drop Gyokuro

If you read any tasting notes for this one before you drink it you will definitely taste what you read. I accidently read cantaloupe and now I taste it.
The dry leaf is long and incredibly thin. Mostly dark green with hints of light pistachio green. The aroma is filled with umami and grassy notes.
Flavors high in umami. It doesn’t quite taste like zairai to me though so I believe this is one of their conventional gyokuro. This is one of the teas from the Global Japanese Tea Association classes. The mouth feel is incredibly smooth though it is quite a bit astringent if you don’t watch it. Thus far I’ve been able to get 3 full infusions from these leaves. This also makes a great Umami bomb if you use the koridashi (ice brewing style) .
It is pretty simple if you have never brewed that way before. Simply add your leaf and ice cubes to an appropriate size cup and wait till it melts.

Gyokuro intimidates me.

Like anything higher-end and expensive, I worry about doing it wrong and wasting something lovely. I’ve brewed a gyokuro only once before, and I was too stressed out to even really enjoy it.

But… I’m too tired to fuss over the details. This is the second to last tea in this sampler and I have more tea coming Friday from Den’s (sigh, I wanted so badly to reorder of my favorites from this sampler but I just can’t swallow $30 in international shipping costs right now), and it’s been such a week, I need to stop putting off the nice things.

This is definitely different from the other sencha. The dry leaves smell….deeper, certainly a darker green, and …..something else. Something I haven’t sensed before. I really can’t believe how deeply emerald these leaves are.

135F for two minutes and… the cup is …. strangely both very pale and very cloudy.

It’s certainly quite unlike any of the sencha. Astringency— is it really astringency? There a lot of it, but it’s also very mild, somehow, It make my mouth water but it doesn’t dry me out nearly as much. It’s full and rich and brothy, savory, something in the aftertaste is almost meaty. Not grassy at all. Fascinating.

The second steeping is brighter, a little thinner, a little grassier, but every bit as savory. The damp leaves smell like dried dates and maybe nuts?

There’s a nuttiness to the third steeping too, I feel like, the richness is starting to fade, but that alkaline-noodle-soup flavor lingers on and on.

The leaves are just so pretty, floating there under the water, almost blue-green, watching them is so relaxing, like an underground jungle. It makes me sort of miss when I kept heavily planted aquariums.

I don’t think I quite love gyokuro enough to justify the price, but it is always a unique and wonderful thing to try every now and then when I get samples.

Sipdown! (13 | 143)

So… I haven’t had much gyokuro. For some reason, I’m very intimidated by it, even though I drink sencha all the time. I guess it’s because it’s supposed to be this precious thing, and I’m afraid of messing it up? I ’unno…

But today I said YES, let’s steep it up! This was a single sealed 5g packet leftover from an Obubu sampler I had. I used a 120-ish ml shiboridashi for this tea, and 140°F water.

Wow, it’s really a punch in the mouth! Such an intense vegetal and umami flavor, but without any bitterness at all. Very thick with a lovely honeyed sweetness, and also some sweet fruity notes. The first thing I thought of was maybe cooked pear? But I see that the description mentions melon, which I also agree with. There are also sweet and creamy veggies, like edamame and fresh garden peas, and a strong note of steamed spinach. Perhaps a hint of floral at the end?

This was just so yummy. Very thick, brothy and satisfying, yet also sweet and fruity. I have a few more gyokuro samples from Obubu, so I’ll have to give those a try soon!

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