Sencha Uji

I really needed something to pick me up today. Lazy Saturday morning, I need to do my taxes and I just can’t seem to get my head together. I was hoping this would help. This tea is so much lighter than I remember it but it could also have been my steeping temp. since I didn’t measure it with a thermometer. I am wishing for a tad bit more sweetness here, today I seem to be getting primarily seaweedy notes.

This is among the absolute best green teas I’ve ever had. Made right, with a one minute steep in 165F water, it is pure fresh first-flush. Everything about it screams fresh, grassy, alive, and the aroma alone is worth the price of admission.

Flavorwise, it’s an especially mellow and smooth green, astringent without being bitter, grassy without being earthy, and unusually umami in the mid- and after-taste, shifting from the grassy freshness into a faintly salty savoriness that doesn’t disrupt the fresh and clean feel one bit.

This is how green tea is supposed to taste, this is green tea in the purest of forms. The blue-rare Kobe steak of green. Just a touch of oxidization on the best leaves, letting the tea speak for itself, not the process… and what a tea it is.

With the proper steep time and temperature, you’ll be able to get a second brew out of this that comes very close to the first, just steep for 15s longer or so.

I brewed this per the Lupicia’s directions.
This tea is pretty darn good. The tea leaves look like tiny evergreen needles.

The color is a delicate cloudy light green. The brewed tea smells of damp chestnuts.
The tea starts of very delicate in flavor — a light green tea — with a nutty finish. There are flavors that I cannot quite discern, but read to me as Asian (growing up in an Asian household).

This is a sipping tea and requires some thought to really taste the distinct flavors. My palette isn’t mature enough to discern all the flavors yet, but I hope to explore it more.

Now this is green tea! Wonderful grassy flavor. Slightly bitter tang. A nutty, just lightly aftertaste follows with the grass. These days I tend to avoid tea bags because of the CTC method of processing but The Book of Tea is comprised of all tea bags save for one loose leaf tin. However, not all tea bags are made equal. Take the tea I have in my cup at the moment; Sencha Uji by Lupicia. While it still is a bit sad to see how torn the leaves are (sorry I have a thing for whole leaves) I am still impressed by the green color and fact that they aren’t all completely torn. The flavor is quite enjoyable. When I think of what a high end green tea tastes like it’s something like this.

Sipdown no. 59 of the year 2016 (no. 270 total).

I found more of the Maeda-En 2010 Sincha, which I thought I had sipped down. Apparently I had three containers of it originally, and am now down to part of one, so that has been my go-to green tea for work lately. But I’ve mixed it up some by having this as my Timolino accompaniment on some days to break up the Sincha stream.

Yesterday I was reminded how much I love this. After drinking a sweeter green for several days, the difference is much more pronounced. I’m bumping it some points.

The fact that I haven’t been Steepstering shouldn’t lead you to believe there hasn’t been any tea activity. There were moments of supreme tea bliss in California in the fall, where I managed to visit no fewer than three Lupicia stores in the Bay Area… with predictable subsequent stash-killing results.

It did help me forward with poor neglected Project Green, to some degree, which will hopefully see more action in 2015. This is one of the California teas, chosen especially as a Project Green participant.

It’s a first flush sencha (Does that automatically make it a shincha? Or is that an additional category within the first flush senchas?) from Uji, a city right outside of Kyoto. Things I knew about Uji that made me pick this one up: parts of the Tale of Genji play out there. High-quality green tea is made in Uji. The world’s oldest tea shop (Tsuen Tea) is located in Uji. It seemed like a good start, right?

I obviously realize the ridiculousness inherent in picking something like this up from Lupicia, rather than just ordering it online from a(n even more) local company that carries Uji-produced teas, but it’s convenient, which is a major bonus in these times of carpenter/painter/electrician-propelled chaos.

Obviously, I could keep talking about other things, but you’d know it’s because I’m just trying to avoid exposing my painfully inadequate green-tea-tasting skill to the world, so let’s just do this.

In the bag, this is all long, skinny needles of dark green. Dry, it smells very sweet, but with a baked note to it as well – light and elegant, though, like the most delicate of green tea-infused sponge cakes.

In the pot (for I made a whole pot of this, as has become my habit, and I will soon be out) some of the sweetness evaporates nose wise, and it comes off more as a light, mellow cloud of…light brown. My synesthesia screws me over here, because I don’t have better words than this very plain cross-sensory experience of colour. The liquid is a yellowish green, though, and the flavor is all green, all the way.

What’s so terrifying about green tea – and I know I’ve said this before – is that it is its own flavor. It tastes of green tea. In addition to that, I can speak of notes of hay or grass or sweetness, but no full-fledged mango is ever going to spring up and punch me in the face. No childhood memories will be evoked, because the first time I tried green tea (and I grimaced, and I complained, and I vowed never again) I’d already taken and discarded more lovers that I have fingers on my hands.

And that makes this very scientific, rather than emotional. And science, in its turn, is obviously terrifying, because it suggests unnegotiable truth. Two of the most intimidating words! Unnegotiable. Truth.

On the tonguetip, it’s vegetal. No salty weedness, but boiled grass – the good boiled grass, too; the top-shelf boiled grass. The main body of the flavor hits mid-tongue; mid-swallow. There is surprising complexity, and it’s a light, late spring, early summer type of flavor. The aftertaste is heavy on the grass, but it’s more of a full-on meadow than just the sweetgrass, so the complexity lasts throughout the sip.

All in all, a complex, mellow, smooth sencha that makes me want to explore more Uji teas.

Once I was trying a Sencha from the book, I decided it would be a good idea to try another side-by-side to see how they differ. Like I said before, green tea is not really my thing so I doubt I would be able to pick up on the subtle differences from cup to cup, hence I figured drinking them at the same time would highlight each cups unique qualities. Honestly, I am still getting hay but it is more of a sweet/grassy hay than the buttery hay I was getting in Sencha “Tosa”. Again, not bad, just not for me. Though, I think I might prefer this of the two I have tried so far. Then again, if I had a blind taste test, I doubt I would really be able to tell them apart easily. 293.

Love green tea as always, and Japanese sencha rarely disappoints! Love the grassy aroma, savoury taste, and the slightly sweet finish. It’s just lovely!

Sancha Green available from WHITTAD,nice to drink in
The evening or before bed. In this tea I prefer one spoon of
Sugar.

Really wonderful tea! I adore Lupicia. Perfectly light, subtle flavors, and a nice umami. I usually wait five minutes after the water boils to begin steeping this tea, and brew for the full one minute.