Uji Kabuse

Tea: Uji Kabuse
Vendor: Wegman's Food Markets / Ito-en
Price: $87.99 /lb
Source: Uji, Japan
Vendor Description: Like the famed gyokuro, the tea known as kabuse-cha is shade grown--but for a shorter amount of time. This process creates a tea with the freshness of sencha and the richness of gyokuro. This particular tea comes from the famed Uji region outside of Kyoto. Enjoy its deep, mildly sweet flavor and vibrant green color.

Leaf: The leaf for this tea has a very chumushi like appearance. There is a large amount of dust to this tea along with medium sized needles. It is not so small to be a fukamushi, it also doesn't move with in a very fluid motion. The leaf is very dark green and has a lightly grassy aroma.

1st Infusion Parameters: 5g, 5 oz, 185F, 60s

1st Infusion: This tea has a rather thick aroma to it, it reminds me of a gyokuro slightly. The flavor is somewhat what I would expect of a kabuse, there are hints of gyokuro flavor to it. It exhibits gyokuro style grassiness, but the front of the tea is light like a sencha. The hue is a brilliant yellow color and it has a thick gyokuro aftertaste. It feels like it is more of a sencha than a gyokuro.

2nd Infusion Parameters: 15s, 185F

2nd Infusion: This infusion is a little bit cloudier than the first infusion. The tea is slightly greener in color, and it is almost aromaless. There are small hints of gyokuro aroma to it though. The taste is lighter and clearer than the first infusion. It feels like a very lighthearted gyokuro with the flavor of a gyokuro, but the lightness of a sencha. There is a just noticeable bitterness to it and it leaves a very light and clean feeling. It finishes with a light sense of astringency.

Rating: 8/10

Conclusion: This tea is very interesting as it straddles the traits of a gyokuro and a sencha rather well. Adjusting parameters I could see it as being very easy to produce one flavor more than another. It was enjoyable and tasty, but it's price is a bit prohibitive.

Hojicha

Tea: Hojicha
Vendor: Wegmans Food Markets / Ito En
Price: $48.99 / lb
Vendor description: Crafted from roasted green tea, hojicha offers a visually stimulating medley of stem and leaf. Young grassy notes mingle with a taste that is effusive and toasty. It is an ideal tea for relaxing and appealing for its low caffeine content.

Leaf: This hojicha has a very evenly colored leaf. It has a brown hue with hints of green to it. There is a lightly dusty aroma to it, this is somewhat different in comparison to the normal roasted aroma of a hojicha. There is also a high leaf to stem ratio for this hojicha making it more akin to a kukicha hojicha, but not fully there.

1st Infusion Parameters: 5g, 5oz, 208F, 2 min

1st Infusion: The hojicha exhibits a very traditional brown hue. The aroma is very odd. It does not have the normal roasted aspects of a hojicha. It is duller and light. The flavor is also not terribly traditional. It is light, yet full bodied. It is smooth and rolls down the back of the tongue. The actual strength of the flavor isn't very noticeable, instead it is dominated by the texture, just not so much flavor. What flavor there is, is lightly burnt/roasted, but it is just hints.

2nd Infusion Parameters: 208F, 3 min

2nd Infusion: This infusion is more golden borwn in color. The aroma is more traditional and smells of roasting. The flavor still feels light and empty though. You feel the texture of the tea on the sides of your mouth, but the core flavor is lacking.

Rating: 3 / 10

Conclusion: This tea felt like it was missing a single part of the flavor, unfortunately that was the central core of the flavor. If that was present, it would be much better. Without that component though it felt empty and bland.

Chiran Kanayamidori

Tea: Chiran Kanayamidori
Vendor: Wegmans Food Markets / Ito-en
Price: $87.99 /lb /$16.50/ 3 oz
Source: Kagoshima, Japan
Vendor Description: Harvested in Kagoshima prefecture, Chiran Kanayamidori bears a flavorful, verdant liquor with succulent notes of leafy greens. An excellent accompaniment to flavorful dishes.

Leaf: The leaf for this tea was mostly smaller particles and had a few longer needles to it. Based on the appearance I would say that this is most likely a fukamushi sencha. The green color was a bit muddled, almost bordering on shades of brown at times and didn't have much of a shine to it.

1st Infusion Parameters: 5g, 5oz, 180F, 60s

1st Infusion: The tea was yellow green in color and very murky. This was a very characteristic fukamushi tea. The aroma was light and snappy. The flavor led off with a sharp bitter flavor on the tip of the tongue and transitioned to a long lingering smooth aftertaste. It finished with a light sense of astringency. The bitter flavor was very short lived and dropped down quickly into the tapering flavor.

2nd Infusion Parameters: 180F, 30s

2nd Infusion: This infusion had a darker murky green hue. The up front flavor was again very sharp and snappy. This time it felt like the flavor consisted mostly of a bitterness and tapered into a lingering fukamushi flavor, although the dropoff was not as fast as the first infusion. The flavor felt muddled and a bit confused, like a blend of two teas trying to display at the same time. There was a medium sense of astringency to the power in this tea. The flavor of the tea overall felt a bit light.

Rating: 3/10

Conclusion: This tea seemed to be a bit subpar for a Chiran sencha. This flavor was dominated by the fact that it was a fukamushi and little other than that. It produced an appealing looking cup of tea, but the flavor itself was quite snappy and sharp. If looking for a fukamushi from Chiran/Kagoshima, I would suggest sticking to a yutakamidori instead.

Kaiseki Hojicha

Tea: Kaiseki Hojicha
Vendor: Wegmans Food Markets / Ito-en
Price: $43.99 /lb / $8.40 / 3 oz.
Vendor Description: Delicate twigs from the first flush are lightly roasted, rewarding the tea lover with a deep, sweet, well-rounded flavor that is almost chewy. "Kai" means "gathering", making this the perfect tea for dining.

Leaf: This is best described as a Kukicha Hojicha. It consists primarily of teas stems which have been lightly roasted. It has a light roasted aroma that is characteristic of a hojicha. The tea itself has a very light brown color indicating the light roasting.

1st Infusion Parameters: 5g, 5 oz, 208F, 3 mins

1st Infusion: The infusion produced a dark brown colored hojicha that almost reminded me of coffee in color depth and chocolate in hue. The flavor was rich and bold with a medium sense of bitterness in the aftertaste. The flavor was very strong, but only had a light sense of body to it. It felt very subdued. It wasn't strong early on, but the tea built up flavor to have a strong showing in the ending flavor and afteratste. It had a medium sense of astringency to it, and left me with an impression that no matter how bold it felt on the back end it seemend a bit bland.

Rating: 5/10

Conlcusion: This isn't an outstanding hojicha, but it's not bad either. It's priced very reasonably, although a bit on the higher end for a hojicha. For it's price in the hojicha pricing scale there are other more oustanding hojichas available. I do agree with the vendor description for this tea though that it is well suited for dining. It has a very good cleaning flavor to it, and would not dominate over food.

Honyama Sencha

Tea: Honyama Sencha
Vendor: Wegmans Food Markets / Ito-en
Price: $72.99 / lb.
Source: Shizuoka, Japan
Vendor Description: A delightful hint of maize in the bouquet hints at the gentle firing of the drying process. This tea offers a subtle sweetness. Its flavor signature is generous and soft, with a compelling wildflower aftertaste. From Shizuoka's Abe River region.

Leaf: The leaf for this is a very normal appearing chumushi sencha. It has a dullish green / brown color to it, but not extreme so.

1st Infusion Parameters: 5g, 5 oz, 180F, 2 min

1st Infusion: The first infusion had a lightly yellow green color. The aroma was light and had almost a hint of a genmaicha aroma. The flavor was light, it was very front loaded with no sense of bitterness or astringency. The flavor was very thick with a strong marine flavor to it.

2nd Infusion: This infusion was a dark yellow infusion with a light brown hue to it. The flavor was very crisp this time and had a sharp bitterness to it. The marine / seaweed flavor was still quite present in this tea.

Rating: 2/10

Conclusion: This was a rather unremarkable tea. The price is moderately high considering the flavor of this tea. For it's price there are many other teas which have a nicer flavor to them. While the tea itself has no particular flaws, it is a short lived sencha which quickly moves into a sharp bitter flavor in the second infusion.

Teabag - Japanese Green Tea

Tea: Japanese Green Tea (Sencha Matcha)
Vendor: Costco / Ito-en


This was a teabag that I was given to compare it for review. Costco is not normally somewhere that I would look for tea, but I figured I would review it anyway.

Teabag: The teabag was packaged individually in mylar packaging. When I opened the teabag there was a small puff of green tea which surprised me. I wasn't expecting this to be a Sencha Matcha bag since the teabag wasn't labeled as that. It was simply labeled as Japanese Green Tea, such an informative title, right? The teabag itself was made of the same material as most teabags are nowadays with a nylon like mesh material. The bag was in the shape of a satchel though, cut as a completely flat pouch, with no ribbing for expansion.

1st Infusion: The tea gave off a very strong sencha scent. As expected from a from a sencha matcha blend the color was very murky and a bright green color. The flavor of the tea was actually very weak. The tea had no bitterness or astrignecy and the flavor was very hard to find. In general it seems like the tea had the right look, just not enough of a flavor to back it.

Rating: 2/10

Conclusion: There just wasn't enough of a flavor here to really enjoy this tea. The appearance of the tea was quite nice, but it was quite lacking in strength.

Sakura Sencha

Tea: Sakura Sencha
Vendor: Wegman's Food Markets
Price: $4.87 / 2oz.
Vendor Description: This refined and gentle green tea is a marriage of premium Kagoshima Sencha and dried cherry blossoms ("sakura"); it's like sipping springtime itself. Smooth, light-bodied and mellow liquor with a distinctive fruits-and-flowers taste from the cherry blossoms.

This was another tea that I had gotten from Wegman's Food Markets. When I thought I would get some they told me that the sakura was primarily a visual thing, similar to the pellets in Champagne Rose, but it turns out that they were wrong. Don't get me wrong though, this tea is very visually appealing, the sakura petals give a nice pink contrast to the regular spectrum of green/yellow/brown natural colors of sencha.

When you brew the tea, if you look closely in it you will notice small pieces of the sakura petals floating about, but it is much more noticeable when you look at the actual leaves / petals themselves. There are whole sakura petals strewn about in the leaves. The liquor itself has a very sweet aroma.

When tasting the tea the first thing that you notice is a certain sweetness on the onset. It is not a vegetal sweetness like a gyokuro, nor is it a sugary sweetness. It is somewhat unique in its own right. This then leads up to a typical sencha flavor, and then has a tiny bit of astringency when finished. The taste is very sweet in general, and very unique as well. I don't really know how to describe it, but it is a delicate flavor that is easy to overlook if you are not looking for it.

Rating: 7/10

Conclusion: While the sencha portion of the flavor isn't particularly spectacular, the sakura portion is unique and interesting. Considering the relatively low price of this tea I would say that it is a good tea to have around, although I wouldn't give it a special occasion rating. It's worth a try, not much more than that though.

Sencha Matcha

Tea: Sencha Matcha
Vendor: Wegman's Food Markets, Pittsford, NY / Ito-en
Cost: $2.75/ 2oz.

I happen to have been in NY a bit ago for work and was told to try out the tea bar in a grocery store called Wegman's Food Markets. This was a rather unique experience in and of itself. They had installed a tea bar inside of their store. That was a rather unique experience in and of itself. I ended up bringing back quite a few different teas.

After a bit of research it looks as though their teas are supplied by Ito-en, a company that is more known for their bottled teas than for their loose leaf tea. I don't have any concrete evidence to prove this, but the similarities between their tea that they offer and the lineup offered by Ito-en is very suggestive. Along with one of their suppliers for cookies (http://www.amainyc.com/) also serves Ito-en tea at their cafe. And they list that it is on their menu. Their cookies are delicious by the way.

Anyway to the tea.

This is by no means my favorite sencha, but it is a unique sencha. The processed tea leaves are combined with matcha powder, and guessing by the price of it, the matcha is cooking grade matcha. But it provides a very unique tea experience. There are really two different cups of tea that you get out of two infusions of this tea. The first is a very sweet cup of tea that is predominated by the matcha powder that the sencha is rolled in. Compared to a cup of matcha this is quite bitter (a characteristic of the sencha), but compared to a cup of regular sencha this is very sweet. The second infusion is almost purely sencha, because by this point almost all of the matcha powder was washed off in the fist infusion.

Both the sencha and the matcha are not of any particular quality themselves, but combined make a novel tea experience. While I don't expect that anyone would use a spectacular sencha combined with a high grade matcha to make this experience, this combination will work just fine.

Rating: 6/10

Conclusion: While this is not a spectacular tea experience, it is a novelty. Also at the price this is quite suitable for a daily tea.