Soba Seed Stem (Azumino Sobacha)

This is good. Very easy to drink and not bitter. It’s pretty much genmaicha but with soba seeds instead of roasted rice. I’m enjoying it, but I like the rice version better.

I opened this up for lunch today. I love the nutty but fresh smell coming from the bag. There were super small almost kirara rice like seeds. They are round and remind me of tiny chickpeas. These were mixed in with bright green stems, which resemble kukicha. MAN, I really miss kukicha! I need to make an order for that as soon as I’ve finished a few more teas. mMMm… This one was nice and light. It is different. I like the nutty and toasty flavor and it is light as well. Delicious! This isn’t bitter at all.

The roasted quality of this sobacha is distinctly present but enjoyable.

The green tea base is a very well chosen complement to the soba grains. I only get a hint of that sencha flavor I despise in the aftertaste. And really, even then, it’s so subtle that it adds to the enjoyment of the soba.

The dry tea blend smells like a houjicha. However, the brewed tea has a heavy roasted aroma that’s more like genmaicha than houjicha.

The color of the tea is very light, much lighter than I expected. But it does have a green tea base, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I wish I had written more about what the genmaicha I’ve tried tasted like so I could compare it better.

Overall, this probably isn’t a tea I’d drink all the time. But it’d be fun to have every now and then to shake things up. It is a very distinctive, unique tea.

Random tea of the day!

Poor neglected tea, lol. I actually bought this one at a Lupicia store in Osaka, Japan in the fall of 2019. So, it’s a bit old, and yet this is my first time writing a note for it, and probably only my second time drinking it. Oops?

It’s essentially a spin on genmaicha that uses kukicha instead of bancha and sobacha instead of genmai. And it does taste quite similar to genmaicha, though the kukicha base is much milder and sweeter than the usual bancha. The roasted buckwheat has such a rich and deep toasty flavor to it, plus the little nuggets are totally adorable. It ends up tasting like an extra toasty genmaicha with a smoother green tea base.

Really lovely and comforting, and I’m sure this would be delicious iced as well. I’ll have to add this one to my sipdown station, so I remember to enjoy it in the evenings. :3