Sakura Vert

Tea type
Green Herbal Blend
Ingredients
Not available
Flavors
Cherry, Floral, Sakura, Salty, Smooth, Sweet, Warm Grass, Cherry Blossom, Sweet, Umami, Grain, Grass, Spinach
Sold in
Loose Leaf, Sachet
Caffeine
Medium
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Cameron B.
Average preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 2 min, 0 sec 4 g 56 oz / 1668 ml

Currently unavailable

We don't know when or if this item will be available.

From Our Community

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23 Tasting Notes View all

  • “I’m trying a mug of this thanks to CHAroma and I have to say, I am befuddled by the strong negative responses to this tea. I can’t detect anything offensive at all. It tastes floral and fruity. ...” Read full tasting note
    79
  • “SIPDOWN! I’m sad to see this one go. It’s uber delicious when fresh! Once the leaves get old, it becomes soapy and heavy and weird. So definitely consume this one quickly! I’ll have to watch...” Read full tasting note
    95
  • “‘Disappointing’ doesn’t begin to describe this tea. I’ve rarely tried a tea that I’ve disliked quite so much as this one. It’s salty and bitter and I’m struggling to find any redeeming features....” Read full tasting note
    3
  • “Sometimes, I get tired of straight tea, the gongfu style of brewing, the mess, the ritual, etc., and this seems to happen more often during hot summer days. Looks like it’s time for some flavored...” Read full tasting note
    70

From Lupicia

We are happy to announce the arrival of our seasonal SAKURA VERT: Salted cherry blossom leaves blended with traditional Japanese green tea for a fresh clean taste. Excellent accompaniment to Japanese style sweets, the slight saltiness and fresh scent call to mind the vision of young cherry blossom leaves swaying in the wind. Only available in limited quantity.

About Lupicia View company

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23 Tasting Notes

78
1216 tasting notes

Happy National Fragrance Day!

I have been really into sakura flavor lately, and its aroma is one of its biggest appeals to me. I love that combination of floral/fruity/candy/umami notes that dinstinctly define “sakura”.

These sakura teas from Lupicia are quite old now (I just finished off the Rooibos one as warm lattes in the evening!) and I still need to finish off the others. Lupicia Hawaii doesn’t carry them anymore, but my palate has gotten to the point where I’m not quite as pleased with the salinity in the cup caused from the salted preservation of the leaves than my past reviews seem to indicate, so I don’t feel so bad saying goodbye (and at least I still have Chasandai’s sugar-preserved sakura tea, which is phenominal). I do however like “salty teas” used in cooking, so I thought I’d try this tea as a base for sakura rice.

I used an ample amount of leaf since it steeps quickly in the boiling water and needs a strong infusion before adding the rice to the tea water in order to get the flavor to carry through. I loved the sakura rice I made using preserved Obubu sakura leaves, but wasn’t sure how well just using a sakura flavored tea would work, but the results were much better than I’d expected! The rice really did have quite a lovely sakura aroma, and had stained a slightly goldenrod color from the tea. And I got a nice flavor of subtle and sweet cherry, as well as the saltiness.

Nice! This will probably be how I finish off this tea, as I like the saltiness of the leaf in rice, but find it a bit of a turn off in a teacup.

Flavors: Cherry, Cherry Blossom, Floral, Sakura, Salty, Sweet, Sweet, Warm Grass, Umami

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1
1557 tasting notes

Tea #2 from teaswap with Mastress Alita.

I’ve never brewed sencha, so I have no idea what I’m doing. Lupicia says 2.5-3 grams, boiling water, 1.5-2 minutes. Boiling water seemed like an unfair treatment to green tea, so I’m a Woman Going My Own Way. Whole 6 gram sample in uncovered 150mL glass gaiwan, 170F, 1min.

Dry leaf smells floral, cherry, with an earthy basic (as opposed to acidic) pungency and finally some grass. Lots of activity going on in the gaiwan. Saponins, bunch of leaves sitting on the bottom and a layer floating on top with lots of movement of leaf up and down in between. Never seen such a stratified brew. Almost neon green-yellow in color and cloudy with a chance of butt. Smells like some weird medicinal red/orange/green butt. Oh, it smells like chewable vitamins and butt. HA! Tastes repulsive going across my tongue. Weird lightly salty thickslick with soapy floral cherry green butt. Persistent aftertaste. The smell wafting from the empty glass a foot away makes my stomach retch. What tea got on my hands from pouring through a strainer made my fingers smell like butt. Smell my finger!

This is literally the first tea ever that has left me incapable of doing a second steep.
I’m glad I got to try something so offensive! Gotta set the low bar somewhere.

Thanks Mastress Alita :)

Preparation
170 °F / 76 °C 1 min, 0 sec 6 g 5 OZ / 150 ML
Mastress Alita

Heh, sakura leaves is one of my favorites (with jasmine and chamomile being my meh florals) though they get the “seasonal” treatment so I always have to stock up around March-ish. It is a strong floral cherry-ish flavor, but the stuff passing as sakura tea here in America always has that artificial cherry flavor added with rose petals instead of actual sakura petals or leaves that really does taste just like cough syrup to me; I never get that from actual sakura petals or leaves. I hardly ever do gong fu but I think even then I’d be hesitant to go very leaf heavy on greens; seems these days I go with what the OCTea app recommends for the water amount and it turns out aight. Good call on the water temp, though. Boiling?! I wonder if something got lost in translation on Lupicia’s part, because that’s just shear craziness!

derk

I hardly ever gong fu green tea but I’ll do white and yellow. For some reason I decided to go with an uncovered gaiwan today. I could definitely taste a difference between cherry flavored green tea and this, and granted it’s a pickled leaf and not cherry blossom, it still tasted like natural cherry blossom.

If I ever find myself in San Jose in the spring, I’ll stop by Lupicia and ask them for a sample tasting if they do that.

Mastress Alita

Ya, I think I tried gong fu of a green tea once and my leaf to water ratio ended up too high and it was soooo bitter… I had to dump the whole thing, and start over with half the leaf. Felt like such a waste at that point. I’ve only gone western since then! I’m sure I’ll make another attempt at some point, it’s lack of time that keeps me from getting more practice at gong fu more than anything, since the sessions take so long (and I’m typically just not down to drink that much tea in a sitting). I do have a 50ml gaiwan coming, which I’m hoping will help at least with the “too much tea” problem… I’m only ever preparing tea just for myself, so I only need a little amount per infusion if I’m going to be going for 5-10 steeps…

I’m not sure if Lupicia does in-store sampling since the storefront in Mitsuwa appears a bit small on Google/Yelp (I haven’t had a chance to visit them in person yet, though I think my BFF has, I’ll have to ask him), but I bet anything they probably would offer sampler take home teabags around then if asked, because I always get a free teabag of one of their teas included in any order I place with them. Those teas seem to come out right at the beginning of March, and they also offer the sakura leaves mixed with black tea and houjicha, too.

__Morgana__

175 for 1:30 works for sencha for me. I use the Breville for green tea. It does its thing while I’m doing other things in the morning. Then I transfer to the Timolino and run off to work. Seems to work well.

derk

Mastress Alita: I don’t know why I dumped all 6 grams in when I vaguely remember reading about some bad experience you had with high leaf to water ratio.

Morgana : Breville, as in a French press?

__Morgana__

Breville as in the 1.0 version of this: https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/tea/btm800.html

I got it as a Mother’s Day present a number of years ago and I adore it.

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49
15 tasting notes

Was too salty for me. It may be that I am at the end of the tin and the salted leaves are more plentiful. I prefer an unflavored green tea, so I don’t think I will buy again.

Preparation
170 °F / 76 °C 1 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 200 OZ / 5914 ML

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55
116 tasting notes

This is a little too mild in my opinion. I could steep this longer but Lupicia recommends 1.5-2 minutes and I already threw away the sachet. If I were to steep this longer I think it would have too much green flavor, like matcha powder flavor – some might like this though. The salty sakura flavor isn’t very pronounced.

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 2 min, 0 sec

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82
3986 tasting notes

Hello again, Steepster! I’ve been absent for the last couple of days, and I’ve missed you. I did Tough Mudder over the weekend, and between getting ready for it and lying about like a dead person afterward, I didn’t have much time to drink tea or read notes. Luckily, I’m now caught up on all the reading I missed while I was away! And since my cupboard is now overflowing with swap samples (Dexter pushed it over the edge with her generous care package…) I’m going to try to write notes that are less formal and shorter so I can pump them out faster! So, here we go!

This sample came from Dexter’s ridiculously large box of samples. It’s a mixture of darker sencha leaves with lighter crumbled leaves (“salted cherry leaves”). It smells a little bit like vinegar, but there’s also a powdered sugar note.

Steeped, it smells much more like sencha with a little bit of a salty note. Wow, this is definitely an interesting one! It starts out quite salty and grassy/spinachy from the sencha, but the tastes changes a lot by the end. It grows sweeter and there’s an almost grain-like flavor in the aftertaste, and possibly some floral (thinking cherry blossom here). Not at all bitter for me, but I did use the lower end of the time because the leaves are so broken. Quite yummy, and unique!

Flavors: Floral, Grain, Grass, Salty, Spinach, Sweet

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 1 min, 30 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML
Mikumofu

Welcome back! I could have sworn I’d rated this one before…in any case, I really liked it!

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1711 tasting notes

I’m not sure what I was expecting with this tea. Salted cherry leaves?! What would those taste like? Turns out it is very savory and almost broth like. I’m not sure if the cherry leaves add any flavor or if they are only a vehicle to transport the salt. As it cools, it gets bitter and I have already had to reheat this cup twice. I’m going to have to say I really don’t care for this tea, which is surprising considering how much of a Lupicia fan girl I have turned into. Oh well, can’t love em all!

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 1 min, 45 sec

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63
1598 tasting notes

Another tea from Dexter3657! (198)
I’m really really happythat I was sent this sample because it was a tea I was interested in trying, and nearly bought on my last order just because I was curious.

Boy… am I glad I didn’t. It’s an ok tea, but it’s not for me. It’s not what I wanted. :P

So thank you Dexter3657 for letting me try this out first!

Dexter

That’s what swapping is all about. Sometimes you fall in love with a tea that you would never have bought for yourself, and sometimes you get to avoid one that you would have. Always happy to share. :))

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661 tasting notes

Wow , is this tea ever different! This is a sample from Dexter3657. I didn’t really follow the brew times since it had boiling water for green tea. I infused it at 185F for 3 min.
Definitely an acquired taste for this one. Just brewed it just tasted a bit strange but not bad. As it cools down it becomes more salty and bitter. The bitterness at the end of the cup is really strong.
I have one more tsp left of this so I think I will try it with boiling water next time and the shorter infusion to see if there’s that much of a difference.
Thanks Dexter3657 for this sample. I’m glad I got a chance to try it.

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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71
35 tasting notes

If I had to use just one word for this tea, it would be “clean.” Inoffensive, not too strong with the salted cherry leaves. I wish it was a bit stronger, actually. The sencha base is decent and the saltiness is very, very subtle – though you do get that scent that is just spot-on for sakuramochi. Tiny bit soapy, but not in a bad way. Works well with ice. One of those for the “nice to have tried it, but probably won’t repurchase after I finish this packet” list.

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 2 min, 0 sec

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