Sencha "Matsuri"

This note is probably much too long for the tea. But you have to understand, I have been out of sencha for what feels like ages. I don’t know how much longer I can wait on my shincha pre-orders to get harvested and turn into actual orders, especially since the weather has virtually been begging me to have sencha. Thankfully, Lupicia to the rescue! This little teabag of joy came in the mail with their newsletter – a bright spot of green in an otherwise black and murky landscape.

Opening the packaging was delightful. The smell was so sweet! Ah! Even if the tea was horrid, just having such a delicious whiff made my sencha-less existence easier to bear. The sweet smell plus the tea being in tiny little dusty particles makes me think that this is a fukamushi. Which is awesome because I much prefer fuka- to asamushi. So not only do I get random sencha in my time of need, I get random fukamushi sencha in my time of need! Rejoice!

With much anticipation, I popped the teabag in a half-way preheated cup, poured in the water and did a little I’ve-got-sencha dance for 45 seconds, pulled out the teabag, gave it very gentle hug to stop the dripping and yay! Sencha!

Oh yes. Yes. Fukamushi. Oh. How I’ve missed you. Sweet, pungent, thick. Ahhh. Just give me a moment…

This is a nice, standard (though not really stand out) fukamushi – thick, strong and sweet. I could have dealt with it being a little thicker but that’s a personal taste thing… I sometimes enjoy my sencha the consistency of used motor oil. But you can do that with a fukamushi since they tend to lack astringent, just like this one – zero astringency or bitterness. Just delightful sweetness.

Okay, it’s probably not the absolute best sencha I’ve ever had but as a teabag, it totally rocks. And I’d even pick this up loose if there was nothing else that just screamed “BUY ME!” when meandering through the virtual aisle at Lupicia. It’s not really a special tea but rather a solid daily-type tea. And considering when it came, this was probably my most perfect cup of tea ever.

Though now that I have used my free teabag, I am once again sencha-less. So sad.

I’m taken back to a happy place when I was staying with a friends family in Japan. Every morning when we woke up, we ate thick toast with yogurt and a cup of sencha tea. We’d eat while huddling under the kotatsu and trying to plan out where we’d go that day. That was 6 years ago and I am overdue for a return. Maybe after I graduate and when I save up some money after finding a job.
Enough down memory lane and onto the tea! It’s smooth but full bodied. You can distinctively taste the grassiness but that seems to disappear on the tongue after a sip. There’s no hint of bitterness, just happiness. :)

A nice sencha. A right enjoyable cup. Salty, sweet, thick but not overly so. I prefer mine a bit thicker but this will do. Came in my Lupicia Happy Bag.
I would order it again for sure but I can’t say it is THE best sencha I have ever had, still very lovely.
I do love a good sencha – I am asking myself why I don’t have it more often. Hummmm I shall start drinking more sencha. :)

Green tea of the morning here. I’ve been trying to decide if this is worth saving because it came in the Lupicia Happy Bag of last year, isn’t at its prime and I also have green teas I like a lot better. This is a very full bodied and vegetal tea and I prefer my Japanese teas to be a bit on the sweeter side. It’s kind of like drinking a cup of boiled spinach broth. I am thinking it might be good to drink some other green teas today.

This is Lupicia’s April 2010 ‘Tea of the Month’, so I got a free teabag with their newsletter. It uses very small shavings in the teabag; the leaves are nearly dust and leak out of the teabag. That’s rather annoying.

This is a salty tea. I drink it and instead of my thirst being quenched, I feel like drinking more. I wonder if I prepared this wrong? Three minutes, hot-but-not-boiling water…

Salty and grassy. A little bitter. Meh.

(Also, hi everybody! I haven’t been here for a while now…stupid school takes over EVERYTHING.)

Oh wow, this is pretty extreme! The leaves are almost powdered into some matcha-like form. I knew some of them would fall through my infuser – they are smaller than rooibos! – and they did.

I usually steep my greens for 2 minutes, but with this one I thought it would be wiser to just steep for 1. The brew I got is very foggy and… actually GREEN, not yellow :D It smells like green beans & asparagus casserole… I am not sure how to feel about that!

Ooh, the flavor! It hits you in the face! It sure is extremely vegetal but does not taste like soup (which was what I was afraid), there is this lovely grassy sweetness that comes right after the vegetal kick that sets everything right. There is also some bitterness coming up, the longer the tea sits. It could be because of the pieces that got their way through the infuser and that somehow still keep on steeping in the cup. I might try brewing this tea in a tea-bag, actually, to avoid the chunks.

This is definitely a unique experience. I do prefer the straight teas to be more subtle, but I can also see myself reaching for this when I need something more in-your-face obvious and at the same time “different”.

This is a pretty good tea. I haven’t had a solid bright green tea in a while. This made me happy today. I love when the color of the tea is bright green. This tastes great! It is sweet and thick. There is no astringency to this as well.

I’m finally feeling well enough to be adventurous with tea again, so this is the first new tea I’ve tried for a while.

The liquor is a typical sort of sencha colour, maybe a little more yellowish than usual. The aroma of the dry leaves is strongly vegetal, and really put me in the mood for that distinctive sencha taste. Sadly, the brewed tea really didn’t quite deliver. I’m used to delicate teas, but this one wasn’t just delicate; it was dull. While the taste wasn’t at all astringent it also didn’t have a lot of sweetness or personality. Once it had cooled, there was a little more sharpness to it. All in all, really not a memorable tea. I liked the last sencha I tried – Ariake, also from Lupicia – a lot more.

Damn. I really wanted to like this more. I might go and dig out something else to drink to finish the evening on a less disappointed note.

Let me preface this note by saying that my experience is probably just a matter of personal preference, so I’m not rating this tea. I love some green teas, but they tend to be mild and sweet varieties, with delicate vegetal and/or floral notes. The stronger a green becomes, the less likely I am to love it.

I wanted to like this tea. There was a strong green-bean aroma in the dry leaf and the broth was very green, thick, and salty, like soup. Unfortunately, with each sip it took on a bitterness that crept in incrementally until its presence was overpowering. I actually had to spit out the last sip I took because I thought about it too hard and the bitter notes in the cooling tea activated a gag reflex (I’m sure you wanted to know that…?).

The good news is there’s probably someone out there who would love this freshly-opened package of tea.

I tried all my Lupicia senchas on the same day, so I’m going to compare them to each other.

“Matsuri” is not as spicy as “Nara,” but better than “Chiran.” It is very mellow, as the package describes. I can’t comment on the full-bodied part. My taste buds are only just now becoming accustomed to green teas.

I think flavored green tea is more my preference than pure, authentic sencha.