Tagged with green tea

Delicious Sip: Organic Kyoto Cherry Rose

Photo: Delicious Sip
Dry Leaf

Description

This is a fresh and smooth green Sencha tea with excellent body and depth. The bright cherry and subtle rose flavors give this tea a wildly exotic character unique in its own right. The tea used in this savory blend is grown only from March to April and the quality is clearly tasted in every cup. The Hunan Province is renowned for producing excellent Japanese style green teas and our Organic Kyoto Cherry Rose tea is a prime example. We invite you to brew a cup and taste the difference.

Ingredients: Organic Green Tea, Rose Petals, and Natural Flavors

Available through: Delicious Sip | Facebook

Tasting Notes

Smells: Buttery, sweet like candied flowers.

Taste: Wow. I don’t like floral teas but this tastes great. Like a tea time cake topped with flowers while rolling around in the spring grass outside. It is very smooth and not astringent at all. Not too vegetal or grassy as some green teas can be. The after taste at the back of the throat is reminiscent of lettuce, but very faint.

This is one of the best green teas I’ve tried recently and it is very easy to brew. The rose does not add a perfume or soap taste like I’ve had in the past and it blends well with the green tea. The packaging recommended 3-7 minutes and I brewed it for 3 minutes with slightly cooled 175 degree water.

Flavors: Cake, Dry Grass, Marzipan, Rose, Violet

About Delicious Sip

Delicious Sip Teas are harvested in a three to five week window and the process occurs but once a year then blended in small batches by true tea masters to capture the most subtle flavors. They are organic, fair trade, and socially responsible.

Product provided for review.  All notes & opinions are my own.

Nina’s Paris Tea Store Sampling

Marie Antoinette

Marie-Antoinette

Description

A very delicate tea, flavored with apples & roses, with a touch of strongness with ceylon tea basis Apple aroma done with apples coming from King’s Kitchen Garden – Versailles.

Ingredients: Black Tea, Ceylon, Rose petals, Apples and Roses

Available through: Nina’s Paris Tea Store | Facebook

Tasting Notes

The dry leaf smells of apples, sweet plums, pear, and a hint or fruit orchard flowers.

I brewed this at 200 °F for 4 minutes. Once steeped, the tea tastes very strongly of fresh green apples, with a bit of pear and finishes with a floral bitterness.


This tea is the most popular from Nina’s Paris because of its unique story. The original Marie-Antoinette tea is made of apples and roses hand-picked from the Le Potager du Roi of Versailles (King’s Kitchen Garden).

Mon Secret

Description

Keemun tea with all the succulence of sunny fruits. You will be seduced by the naturally sweet flavours of melon, peach, and papaya.

Ingredients: Keemun Black Tea, Papaya pieces, melon, peach

Available through: Nina’s Paris Tea Store | Facebook

Tasting Notes

The brewed tea smells malty, sweet, delicate with a general “tropical” aroma. The taste itself is smooth and light with a hint of astringency.

Magicenne

Magicienne

Description

The magical combination of pineapple and coconut. This tea, with a hint of tartness, will pleasantly surprise you. An exotic blend that will satisfy all seeking enchantment.

Ingredients: Green Tea, pineapple, coconut, cream

Available through: Nina’s Paris Tea Store | Facebook

Tasting Notes

This tea smells tropical, light, and sweet. I brewed this to share with a friend and we really enjoyed it. The green tea was not too over-powered by the flavors, but it was subtle enough to be a good “intro tea” for people just starting with tea. It would do well with a little bit of sweetener or iced.
Continue reading →

Green Tea Sandwich Cookies with Honey Cream Cheese Filling ♣

hapatite-1070636

I like St. Patrick’s day because it gives me an excuse to make and eat green food. Other than that, I don’t really celebrate it — in fact I’ve never even seen a green beer! These cookies are naturally colored with some beautiful sencha green tea powder gifted to me by Sugimoto America. This sencha powder had a nice strong earthy taste that paired naturally with the honey cream cheese filling.

hapatite-1070639
The recipe for these cookies came from my co-worker who had brought them into the office but I never got to try them. I usually avoid making sandwich cookies since they’re twice the amount of work for one cookie, but these just might be worth it. Not as much work as linzer cookies, but a little more work than whoopie pies. I also got to try out my new rolling pin so that I could make sure the dough was uniform in thickness.

If you’re in the mood for a seasonal treat that isn’t tooth-achingly sweet, these are right up your alley. I’ve stuck a few in the freezer to give to my friend this weekend when we meet up for the NYC Coffee & Tea Festival; I’ll report back on how they fared.

hapatite-1070641

This recipe is very easy and has a limited number of ingredients. I added heaping tablespoons of green tea powder because I had only a little left in my container (total amount = 227 grams). The cookie is a little dense, but lighter than shortbread. When eaten fresh, the filling will ooze out a bit. I stuck them in the fridge overnight and the filling firmed up for easier chomping.

Sugimoto America: Gyokuro 玉露

hapatite-1070592

Description

Gyokuro is green tea that was cultivated in the shade and is considered one of the finest green teas in Japan. It has a unique sweetness since the shade allows the tea to retain a high Theanine content. Only the first flush tea leaves are used for Gyokuro.

Available through: Sugimoto America | Facebook

Tasting Notes

This is a very typical green tea. Smelling it is very buttery and then a hint of grassiness. The butteriness is missing almost completely from the tea when drinking and is instead replaced with a slight bitterness at the end.

The leaves are a very pretty blue-green color and are smaller than most other leaves, brewing up like spinach. The packaging suggested 140 degrees for steeping but I think this would have done better at either a lower temperature or lower steeping time since it did have a tad of bitterness.

Flavors: Butter, Grass, Spinach
Preparation: 2 minutes, 15 seconds @ 140 °F

About sa

Sugimoto America is a complete supplier of Japanese green tea and a subsidiary of Sugimoto Seicha, a Japanese green tea company founded in 1946. They have been awarded both the Green Tea Connoisseur Award as well as the prestigious Prime Minister Award for its superior quality of tea leaves.

Tea quality is determined by tea farmers. Our Tea Maestro has selected 11 artisan farmers in his local area of Shizuoka prefecture. He and his farmers work toward the same goal — to produce the highest quality green tea possible using the traditional Japanese steam processing method (Fukamushi), and without using large machines to harvest from their farms located on mountain slopes.

Product provided for review.  All notes & opinions are my own.

ShiZen: Organic Houjicha 有機ほうじ茶

Dry Leaf
Brewed Tea

Description

Houjicha is a roasted green tea that has a smooth and mellow roasted nut flavor. Our houjicha is grown on the family farms in the foothills of Mount Fuji that is organically grown for over 25 years and roasted by a tea artisan that has the top quality roasting technique in Japan. Houjicha’s refreshing taste will be suitable when served with a meal, and of course great for after meals and simply for tea time too. Read About Our Farmer.

Available through: ShiZen | Facebook

Tasting Notes

The dry leaf for this tea might be a bit intimidating for some. Not as strong as some lapsang or genmaicha I’ve smelled, but it is a slightly funky, earthy, and straw-like scent.

The brewed tea is much more mild and smells almost like roasted corn. I was afraid this tea would be similar to barley tea (mugicha), which for some reason I don’t like the taste of, but I was pleasantly surprised by the taste of this tea when brewed. It stood up to a nice long brewing of 3 minutes since it is less fragile than a non-roasted green tea. There is absolutely no bitterness, astringency, or even the slight acidity that regular green teas can sometimes have. It does inherit the grassiness and smooth buttery finish of a high quality green tea.

The finish is sweet and smooth, reminding me of a non-salted version of those grocery snack corn nuts. The after taste has a bit of tannin that reminds me of oolong teas served in restaurants to help with digestion, but it is more of a nostalgic reminder and does not affect the overall taste of the tea at all.

Flavors: Butter, Hay, Roasted nuts, Straw, Toasted Rice

About

Shizen’s mission is to support sustainable organic farming for the better environment and safer health foods by becoming a bridge between organic farmers and consumers around the world. In Japan, there are farmers who have strong commitments to organic farming. Most of these farmers believe that organic farming is the sustainable way to keep their land healthy so that future generations can enjoy the same beautiful nature. However, Japanese consumers do not have as much appreciation in organic products as consumers in other countries do.

Product provided for review.  All notes & opinions are my own.