Tsugaru Green

Tea: Tsugaru Green - 8225
Vendor: Lupicia USA
Price: $5.50 / 50g
Vendor Description: Japanese apple tea produced using Bancha as a base tea and flavored using fresh juicy "San-tsugaru" apples from Aomori Pref.

At first I tried this tea without having read the description for it, and was a bit confused to this tea. This is one of the few cases where the Lupicia description was actually quite useful. What had confused me was the nature of the leaves that they had used, they did not seem typical for most of Lupicia's green teas, but hearing that they used Bancha leaves makes it make sense.

The leaves appeared odd at first, the blend of them was a bit unusual. I wasn't expecting them to be Bancha leaves. They did have a very sweet apple aroma to them. It makes me wonder how this tea would be if finer sencha style leaves were used.

The first infusion had an amazing sweet apple smell to it due to the apple flavoring. The flavor was equally as sweet, with the actual taste of the tea reminding me of taking a bite out of a peeled fuji apple. The flavor blended well with the tea flavor, I thought that the flavor blended well and had a sense of being like a tea brewed with a light apple juice. There was no bitterness to it and only a light sense of astringency at the end.

The second infusion surprisingly still had an apple taste to it, the taste wasn't as strong, but it was still there, but it tasted more like a tart granny smith apple this time. I guess most of the sugars came out in the first infusion. There was also a medium sense of astringency in this one and no bitterness

Rating: 5/10

Conclusion: For the price this tea is a bit expensive. The flavor is quite good, but I think it would have been better if paired with a sencha leaf.