Heavenly Drop Gyokuro

Tea type
Green Tea
Ingredients
Green Tea
Flavors
Broth, Cantaloupe, Creamy, Floral, Garden Peas, Honey, Honeydew, Melon, Pear, Peas, Smooth, Soybean, Spinach, Sweet, Thick, Umami, Vegetal
Sold in
Loose Leaf
Caffeine
Medium
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Cameron B.
Average preparation
140 °F / 60 °C 1 min, 30 sec 5 g 4 oz / 120 ml

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2 Tasting Notes View all

  • “Gyokuro intimidates me. Like anything higher-end and expensive, I worry about doing it wrong and wasting something lovely. I’ve brewed a gyokuro only once before, and I was too stressed out to even...” Read full tasting note
  • “Sipdown! (13 | 143) So… I haven’t had much gyokuro. For some reason, I’m very intimidated by it, even though I drink sencha all the time. I guess it’s because it’s supposed to be this precious...” Read full tasting note
    88

From Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms

Heavenly Drop Gyokuro is a rare tea with a silky and rich umami flavor accompanied by hints of caramel and a lingering melon aroma. Its elegant and slender dark green needles create a vibrantly pale green liquor. Shaded from the sun for three weeks before its spring harvest, Heavenly Drop Gyokuro is a truly luxurious tea.

Taste: Umami
Body: Rich
Texture: Rounded
Length: Long
Harvest: May
Tea Cultivar: Gokou
Origin: Wazuka
Cultivation: Shaded
Processing: Lightly Steamed, Rolled, Dried

About Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms View company

It started with a single cup of tea. As the legend goes, our president Akihiro Kita, or Akky-san, visited Wazuka, Kyoto one fateful day. At the time, Akky-san was still a college student in search for life's calling. After trying the region's famous Ujicha (literally meaning tea from the Uji district), he immediately fell in love and his passion for green tea was born. He had finally found what he was looking for in that one simple cup of tea. After fifteen years of learning to master the art of growing tea from tea farmers in Wazuka, Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms was born and as they say, the rest is history. So what's an Obubu? Obubu is the Kyoto slang for tea. Here in the international department we call ourselves Obubu Tea. That's "Tea Tea" for the bilinguals. We love tea so much, we just had to have it twice in our name. Now Obubu means more than just tea to us. It means, family, friends, passion and the place we call home. More than just tea. Though the roots of Obubu stem from tea, it has become more than that over the years. Obubu is an agricultural social venture, operating with three (1) bring quality Japanese tea to the world (2) contribute to the local and global community through tea (3) revitalize interest in tea and agriculture through education.

2 Tasting Notes

76 tasting notes

Gyokuro intimidates me.

Like anything higher-end and expensive, I worry about doing it wrong and wasting something lovely. I’ve brewed a gyokuro only once before, and I was too stressed out to even really enjoy it.

But… I’m too tired to fuss over the details. This is the second to last tea in this sampler and I have more tea coming Friday from Den’s (sigh, I wanted so badly to reorder of my favorites from this sampler but I just can’t swallow $30 in international shipping costs right now), and it’s been such a week, I need to stop putting off the nice things.

This is definitely different from the other sencha. The dry leaves smell….deeper, certainly a darker green, and …..something else. Something I haven’t sensed before. I really can’t believe how deeply emerald these leaves are.

135F for two minutes and… the cup is …. strangely both very pale and very cloudy.

It’s certainly quite unlike any of the sencha. Astringency— is it really astringency? There a lot of it, but it’s also very mild, somehow, It make my mouth water but it doesn’t dry me out nearly as much. It’s full and rich and brothy, savory, something in the aftertaste is almost meaty. Not grassy at all. Fascinating.

The second steeping is brighter, a little thinner, a little grassier, but every bit as savory. The damp leaves smell like dried dates and maybe nuts?

There’s a nuttiness to the third steeping too, I feel like, the richness is starting to fade, but that alkaline-noodle-soup flavor lingers on and on.

The leaves are just so pretty, floating there under the water, almost blue-green, watching them is so relaxing, like an underground jungle. It makes me sort of miss when I kept heavily planted aquariums.

I don’t think I quite love gyokuro enough to justify the price, but it is always a unique and wonderful thing to try every now and then when I get samples.

Cameron B.

I’m with you on being intimidated by gyokuro, just because I’ve only had it a few times. It’s such an interesting experience though!

Also, I have so much Obubu tea. So please send me a message and let me know which ones you love, I’d be happy to send you a care package!

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88
3986 tasting notes

Sipdown! (13 | 143)

So… I haven’t had much gyokuro. For some reason, I’m very intimidated by it, even though I drink sencha all the time. I guess it’s because it’s supposed to be this precious thing, and I’m afraid of messing it up? I ’unno…

But today I said YES, let’s steep it up! This was a single sealed 5g packet leftover from an Obubu sampler I had. I used a 120-ish ml shiboridashi for this tea, and 140°F water.

Wow, it’s really a punch in the mouth! Such an intense vegetal and umami flavor, but without any bitterness at all. Very thick with a lovely honeyed sweetness, and also some sweet fruity notes. The first thing I thought of was maybe cooked pear? But I see that the description mentions melon, which I also agree with. There are also sweet and creamy veggies, like edamame and fresh garden peas, and a strong note of steamed spinach. Perhaps a hint of floral at the end?

This was just so yummy. Very thick, brothy and satisfying, yet also sweet and fruity. I have a few more gyokuro samples from Obubu, so I’ll have to give those a try soon!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMF7qB6gOBM/

Flavors: Broth, Cantaloupe, Creamy, Floral, Garden Peas, Honey, Honeydew, Melon, Pear, Peas, Smooth, Soybean, Spinach, Sweet, Thick, Umami, Vegetal

Preparation
140 °F / 60 °C 1 min, 30 sec 5 g 4 OZ / 120 ML
Mastress Alita

The one time I tried gyokuro, I found it a little too seaweedy for me, at least on the first steep (subsequent steeps were better). But I really liked it cold steeped.

It sure gave me an energy boost, though! I only drank gyokuro stems today and was unable to take a nap, heh.

Kittenna

This sounds so good. My experiences with gyokuro have been pretty good as long as I’m very careful with time, temp, and leaf amount. Finicky, but rewarding!

Cameron B.

@Alita – I definitely felt a little rush of energy for a few minutes after sipping this! But nothing more than that, as I don’t tend to be affected by caffeine.

@Kittenna – Luckily I had a video from Obubu with parameters specifically for this tea! But they didn’t have any instructions for second or third steeps, so I’ll have to experiment with that more.

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