Takumi

Tea: Takumi
Vendor: Zencha
Price: $31.00 / 100g (shipping included)
Source: Yame, Japan
Vendor Description: This premium sencha is produced from leaves of Gokou, a variety of tea plant. Only first two leaves and buds are carefully picked by hands.
Rich in natural sweet aroma and fresh scent with excellent astringent taste.

Leaf: This tea is very distinctively a fukamushi. There are primiarly small particulate pieces to this tea with a few larger, longer leaves. The larger leaves are all long and narrow. The dry leaf as a whole has a sweet aroma to it.

1st Infusion Parameters: 5g, 185F, 5oz, 45s

1st Infusion: The infusion is lightly murky in color, somewhat expected of a fukamushi. It has a yellow-green hue to it with a light snappy aroma. The aroma feels a bit like there are hints of the sweetness of a yutaka midori in it, but the aroma is very light overall. There is a light marine flavor to the tea. The flavor overall is very delicate and complex. It finishes with a light astringency.

2nd Infusion Parameters: 185F, 15s

2nd Infusion: This infusion has the characteristic dark green murky hue of a fukamushi. It is almost dark enough to be a forest green hue. The aroma is not very strong, but it is thick. The flavor of the tea is sharp and almost stinging in nature. There is a strong and bold central flavor to it with a light aftertaste. The tea finishes with a medium sense of astringency.

Rating: 8/10

Conclusion: This tea was very interesting. It's another example of the somewhat hard to fine Yame sencha. It shows the complexity found in some of the other Yame Senchas, and performs pretty much as expected. The price for this tea is well within range for it's quality. I would love to see this tea as an asamushi though.

Kiwami Shincha

Tea: Kiwami Shincha
Vendor: Zencha
Price: $25.00 / 100g
Source: Yame, Japan
Vendor Description: The Premium Sencha produced only from the first flush leaves of Asagiri, a variety of tea plant. You can enjoy excellent natural sweet aroma and cleanly astringent taste.

Leaf: The leaf for this tea is borderline between a chumushi and a fukamushi. It has a very fresh aroma as is expected from a shincha. There is a little bit of flat leaf in the mix.

1st Infusion Parameters: 3g, 5oz, 185F, 45s

1st Infusion: The infusion has a clear bright green hue to it. It is radiant and brilliant as is expected from a shincha. The aroma is sweet and fresh. The flavor matches well to the aroma in terms of a very clean and fresh flavor with a hint of vibrance to it. There is a hint of marine flavor lingering in the background.

2nd Infusion Parameters: 15s, 185F

2nd Infusion: This infusion has a murkier, more characteristic fukamushi color to it. the hue is a deep green color. The aroma is very bold and intense. The flavor is a lot lighter, but the weight of the fukamushi portion of the flavor seems to almost conflict with the freshness of the shincha. It finishes with a light sense of astringency.

Rating: 7/10

Conclusion: This is a pretty good shincha, nothing spectacular, but nothing terrible. It expresses the freshness and vibrance that should be in a shincha, but the fukamushi aspect seems to conflict with the freshness feel of the shincha. This is partly due to my preference for an asamushi, but with a shincha this seems to be expressing itself a bit more. At it's price it doesn't feel particularly cheap or expensive, but leans toward the pricey side. I was somewhat expecting a more defined flavor for a Yame shincha.

Sencha The Ultimate

Tea: Yame - Sencha The Ultimate
Vendor: Zencha
Price: $22.00 / 50g
Source: Yame, Japan
Vendor Description: This is the tea specially produced for exhibition and in limited supply.
Only first two leaves and buds are carefully picked by hands.
Rich in natural sweet aroma and fresh scent with excellent astringent taste.

Leaf: The leaf has a bold and fresh aroma to it. It is somewhat different than most sencha aromas, but I can't seem to pinpoint how. It has some very gracefully long and thin needles to it, but in general appears to be more of a fukamushi than anything.

1st Infusion Parameters: 5g, 5oz, 185F, 45s

1st Infusion: This tea has a brilliant green hue to it. It is a very bold and persistent aroma. It reminds me of the aroma from the leaf. There is a pleasant crispness to the aroma. The infusion is lightly murky with a bold flavor. It starts with a very sharp, but momentary flavor. On the back end there is a light marine flavor. There are other aspects to this flavor which I'm having a problem pinpointing. It feels very complex yet undefined. Overall the flavor starts off lightly and then hangs around in the middle to taper off to a long aftertaste.

2nd Infusion Parameters: 185F, 15s

2nd Infusion: This infusion has a bold and rich green hue to it. The flavor is light and crisp with a light bitterness to it. The backend has a light bit of astringency, but it's showing the same complicated nature as the first infusion.

Rating: 7/10

Conclusion: While I was excited to try this tea out in order to see more of the spectrum that a Yame sencha could offer I was disappointed by this offering. The flavor was muddled and not as clear as I would expect from something labeled as the ultimate. Part of this may be from this tea being more akin to a fukamushi bordering on a chumushi. But I don't particularly see this tea as being any better / worse than the Serene Forest from Lupicia. And given that the Serene Forest is around half the price, I would suggest going with that one instead. Currently though Zencha has this in a shincha for preorder and that might have a bit more brightness and clarity that the sampled one did not have.

Teabag - Mecha

Tea: Mecha
Vendor: Zencha

About This Tea: This was a teabag that was a sample included with my latest Zencha order. I did my best to translate the packaging, and the title of it was Mecha, so I'm assuming that this is mecha.

Teabag: This teabag consisted of a satchel style teabag that had a very loose drawstring / tag line at the top and was sewn shut at the top. Unlike pyramidals this was not designed for expansion, just knowing that it had space in the bag to puff out though. The leaf is very small bits of stem and leaf, which correlated with my previous Mecha assumption. There is a like sweet Yutakamidori aroma to it.

1st Infusion Parameters: 185F, 5oz, 45s

1st Infusion: The infusion was lightly murky with a yellow green hue. There wasn't much aroma to the leaf, the aroma that was present with the dry leaf appears to be gone. The flavor is light and sweet. There is a bitterness at the tip of the tongue. The flavor is quite bold and strong and exhibits traces of a gyokuro like grassiness.

2nd Infusion Parameters: 185F, 1:15, 5oz

2nd Infusion: This infusion was much murkier in color. It however didn't have much aroma and not much flavor. It really seems like this tea was only good for one infusion:

Rating: 6/10

Conlcusion: While it's hard to give this tea a rating because I don't know the pricing for this tea. It's not particularly interesting as a tea, but it's not bad. It's a rather good teabag, and at around $6/10 this would be a good teabag to get. Good flavor, just not much of it after the first.

Shizu no Kaoru

Tea: Shizu no Kaoru Shincha
Vendor: Zencha
Source: Japan

Leaf: The leaf consists of very small pieces, much like a fukamushi. It has a light sweet aroma. Some of the tea consists of very thin needles, although they are not necessarily the straightest of pieces.

1st Infusion: This tea has the characteristic shincha bright luminescent green color to it. The tea is murky, which is not surprising considering the appearance of the leaf. It has a light and sweet aroma, but the aroma hints at something else which I cannot really place. The flavor is very light and clear. It is light bodied and has no astringency. It feels smooth as it glides across the tongue and has a very clean feeling in the mouth. There are slight hints of grassiness to the flavor.

2nd Infusion: This infusion was a darker green and very murky. The aroma was much more traditional sencha. The flavor is very light and open feeling with a very light body to it. There is a light bitterness and a light astringency.

Rating: 10/10

Conclusion: This tea is very light and delicate. It is well balanced with a light sense of bitterness and astringency. It is a very good example of a very good shincha. I can't wait to see if the batch from next year is going to be as good as this one.