Nina's Japon

400th tasting note and I drank this hours ago but I never wrote down how I felt about the tea because I was skyping with one of my friends ahhh!

But I saved #400 just for this, because VariaTEA loves this tea so much!
From what I remember, this was darn good tea :)
I could taste each of the teas separately, and each tea brought out each flavour. I read the ingredients and was quite surprised that this blend had several distinct flavours, but dang it was good :)

Hopefully next time I have this tea, I’ll actually jot down what I actually felt about this tea instead of leaving to write it nearly 4 hours later! But definitely a great tea for tasting note #400 :)

I was wrong. I got in one more sip down today.

TTB&C #1

It seems like every time I check my dashboard VariaTEA has written something amazing about this tea. NayLynn was so nice to add a sample of this to the TTB and so when I saw it in the box it was the first tea I grabbed. I would say this lives up to the wonderful reviews. Sweet, toasty, caramely, vanilla all in one cup. This is a tea I could easily drink at night as a dessert and a relaxing cup. There is enough for a few more cups and I think I am going to have to hide the rest in the box so someone else will get the pleasure to try this tea.

Hmm, I am not sure what to make of this tea. I brewed it at a hotter temp this time to try to bring out more flavor (not boiling, though not quite sure what temp; more below), and it backfired on me. It’s not bitter or astringent or anything, but it’s like a mild mannered person who is really sweet and then you make them angry and they surprise you. This cup has a burnt-toast/burnt-rice/burnt-nuts scent and flavor that actually reminds me of coffee. Um, what? Where was that mild-mannered caramel vanilla tea again? How can these be the same teas?

I’m rating this based on a combo of my two experiences. Steep it like a green tea, and it is sweet and caramelly, but lacking depth and body from the base teas. Steep it closer to a black tea, and it turns into some kind of weird caramel-flavored weak coffee. So although I wouldn’t turn down another cup or the chance to go for it again, this isn’t really doing it for me.

Finally, the reason I don’t know what temp this is really at is that my Adagio UtiliTEA kettle may have finally kicked the bucket. It worked this morning but when I tried to make some water at ~195°F, I noticed that it was just boiling forever without shutting off. It boiled so hard that I lost probably two ounces of water out of the pot through boil-off. I stopped it, let it cool for a bit, and then ended up putting in a bit of room temp water to top off my cup since the water had boiled off. Will have to try going to a lower temp and seeing if it works that way; otherwise I may be in the market for a new office kettle.

This tea… puzzles me.

First off, it’s a green & black blend, which is pretty unusual. How in the world do you steep it? That’s one of the many occasions when Steepster is indispensable. I steeped it according to the average preparation then.

The liquor looks clear, and the color is something like coppery brown, which is what I would expect from a green & black tea mix. Smells like caramel (seriously, I’ve been on some caramel streak recently. I swear I typed this word a million times today whe writing tea reviews), sweet popcorn and vanilla toffee. Wow.

The first few sips underwhelmed me, in a way. It tasted like a really good genmaicha with a little bit of black tea’s boldness to it. I just shrugged and continued drinking and then I noticed… these shy but charming little notes of vanilla that made me reach for the cup almost compulsedly obsessively :D It’s like… having a spell put on you.

I think it’s one of these teas that is going to grown on me more and more with time – much like this first cup unraveled for me. And it’s kind of unusual because I don’t remember a tea that felt like this to me recently.

I am still puzzled, though.

Many heartfelt thanks to VariaTEA for giving me the opportunity to try this. Genmaicha is my deserted island tea. Always has and always will be. So I’m fascinated by trying these flavoured genmaichas, which are very hard to come by.

And this is seriously marvelous enrapturement in a cup. The caramel is so smooth and adds an extra dimension of depth to the toastiness of the rice. Nina’s did a smashing job blending this one. Now there is absolutely no excuse to run over to Amazon and order this beauty.

And on that note, I shall go back to having zero life for a while. To go with such an exquisite tea, I shall leave thee with one of the most beautiful songs (longer than what the average human is used to, but complex and sheerly brilliant, with a spine-tingling build-up) on this planet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLS-EM3kCKo

Ummmm, yum? This is some seriously tasty tea, and everything I expected it to be, really. I’m just sad that I only have one more serving left, though hoping for a resteep with tonight’s brew.

Warm and toasty from the genmai cha, but also warm from the caramel as well. Almost like burnt sugar. This is probably my favourite genmai cha ever!

Would I recommend this to a friend? Heck YES!

A super big thanks to Cavocorax for sending a few teaspoons my way.

I quite liked this tea. The dry tea greeted me with the smell of caramel, coconut and the tang of fruit. It appears when dry that there is more black than green leaves but once steeped the bancha leaves opened up quite a bit. I steeped it at the temperature at which I would steep bancha.

When steeped the first scent that hits my nostrils is that of the toasted rice followed by a sweet scent tempered by vanilla and the buttery scent of caramel. The sweet taste is pleasant when steeped about a minute. The first notes I taste are the bancha and black tea with the black tea producing a slightly citrousy note and tempering the sweetness of the bancha, followed by a sweet fruity note, and a sweet buttery and slightly salty and nutty note from the caramel and rice. The caramel and vanilla and salt remain on the tongue. The green tea leaves me with that clean pleasantly aware feeling I get when I drink it. For me the tea is sweet enough as it is . The empty tea cup smells of vanilla and caramel. I would not add sugar to it.

I probably wouldn’t drink this everyday as it is approaching too sweet for me but it is all over a nicely balanced tea which is fun to drink and I wouldn’t mind keeping a bit of it in my cupboard.

Thanks to Sophie and Laurent for the sample!

note: The 2nd steep was not as sweet, the vanilla and fruit were more present. It was not as buttery but the nutty flavour of rice was more present. It was slighty astringent and more flavour contributed by black tea.