Midori

Tea: Midori
Vendor: Tao of Tea
Price: $14.00 / 1 oz tin.
Vendor Description: Japan produces almost exclusively green tea, the majority of which is sencha. However, the range and breadth of sencha grades and styles is enormous ranging from coarse, everyday green tea to exquisite masterpieces of the Japanese tea-making art. 1Go is a premium grade, first flush sencha produced with the utmost artisanal skill in early spring.

Leaf: The leaf for this tea was nicely vacuum packaged in a double lidded tin. Interestingly the vacuum package was labeled with a very interesting label. It had the following text on it:

JAPAN GREEN TEA
SENCHA 1GO
NET WT: 1OZ
PACKED BY
KABURAGIEN CO.
PRODUCT OF JAPAN

I'm rather curious as to if this tea was simply packaged by Kaburagien or if The Tao of Tea is simply reselling Kaburagien's tea stateside. The leaf itself was rather standard for sencha. Mix of light to dark green colors, a bit of small dust and a moderately polished appearance. The leaves were nice and long, but not abnormally long.

1st Infusion: The tea had a very light and sweet aroma to it. This was paired nicely with a light and rich flavor. The flavor was very characteristic of a sencha. It was just the right bitterness with a certain grassiness. It left with a light astringency. The flavor was all around slightly sweet and enjoyable.

2nd Infusion: The flavor was very crisp and had an open ended flavor to it. Where other teas normally taper off, this infusion simply stopped the flavor as if it vanished. As to be somewhat expected there was a stronger medium sense of bitterness and astringency with this infusion.

Rating: 7/10

Conclusion: While the first infusion had a very good distinctive flavor, the second infusion was somewhat lacking of the quality of the first. The price was also a major detraction from this tea, it was something that I expected more for considering the price. Good tea, bad price.