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The dry leaves of this Wuyi Oolong are very different from other Wuyi Oolongs. They are yellow and olivine in color, rather than the heavily roasted leaves that are usually brown or black. From what I can tell, this tea is not heavily roasted like most other Wuyis. The leaves smell fruity like raisins. I’ve decided to brew this tea in my Yixing pot, which is seasoned for lighter Taiwanese oolongs with a fruity/floral/creamy slant. This should add to the flavor of the pot nicely from what I can gather, despite this is not in the same type of teas I usually brew in this yixing pot. The leaves of this oolong came in a tin and were wrapped in a very thin plastic lining inside the tin. They were packed in very well without much room to move, nor had they been crushed and there were practically no broken pieces of leaf whatsoever. These are very well handled leaves.

DO NOT…. I repeat, DO NOT RINSE THIS TEA. Drink the first infusion. It is where almost all of the most amazing flavor of this tea is. Even a single flash infusion discarded will rid this tea of its most incredible qualities. You’ll be missing out on the reason it is so good. Trust me. Drink the first infusion.

The smell of the leaves after sitting for a minute in the warm Yixing pot is heavenly. It mostly smells of toasted almonds and honey, or an almost horchata kind of smell, creamy and mildly spiced. After a 10 second infusion, the leaves smell fruity again, with notes of fig and plum and a strong mineral smell that is to be expected from a Wuyi rock oolong. The tea is a subdued yellow and looks slightly hazy, not cloudy. It isn’t as if there is particulate floating in the tea, it is more like the haze you see from tiny fluffy hairs floating in the liquor of really downy teas.

The tea smells like warm vanilla pudding. The flavor is incredibly complex, with a little more tanginess and mineral quality than i’d expect. It contrasts the aroma so that as you take sips and breathe in between, you get an alternation between the sweet vanilla cream scent and the mildly vegetal corn-like, nutty, creamy, yet slightly tangy tasting tea.

Legend has it that this tea gets its name (which means White Cockscomb) from a moment in time when a monk witnessed a rooster fight an eagle to defend its baby. The rooster, sadly, did not live. In memory of the rooster’s brave sacrifice, the monk buried the rooster’s body in respect and a tea tree sprouted and grew from that spot. This was the first Bai Ji Guan tree, from which all others today are derived.

If ever a tea legend seemed palpable to me, it’s this one. This tea is so complex and graceful, it feels like it could be an expression of a beautiful spirit, a legendary rooster’s swansong. The nature of it is unlike any other food or drink I have experienced. It is otherworldly.

It can be difficult as a tea reviewer to not get caught up in the hype and reputations of a tea, especially when it comes with a serious price tag (shipping costs considered, this tea was close to $1 a gram). It can be hard not to want a tea to be good so badly due to all this that you actually perceive it as something more pristine than it is.

But there are teas that come in huge bags for a few bucks that are incredible, and there are teas that come in small tins for a large sum that are incredible. I try not to consider these things at all when I sit down to have a tea. I clear my mind and focus on the tea alone, not how I got it or what I’ve heard of it. All that considered, this tea is an exceptional work of art on its own.

The second infusion is the same color as the first, with a lot more mineral quality emerging. The brew still smells a bit of vanilla but the flavor of it is more on the tart and tangy side, similar to pineapple or other fruits that are slightly astringent. There’s still a backdrop of cream and nuts, but it is in the background now below the mineral and tangier flavors.

The third infusion is similar to the second, but even more mineral-heavy, tasting more like a roasted oolong, though with the yellow color of the infusion I don’t think this is very heavily roasted tea. The leaves have brewed up a nice green color with red-brown tinged edges.

Over the next few infusions the mineral taste remained strong, but by the sixth or so it died off to a light and fruity taste with a syrupy consistency, like white wine, sharing some of the flavor profile of second flush Darjeeling teas, especially with the hints of grape.

While I think the first infusion is the real show-stealer with this tea, it’s still a nice journey and one I definitely recommend if you can afford it (or rack up some Green Points to spend on it on ESGreen, like I did, or go halfsies with a friend).

This is my first Gyokuro time! Aaaah!

This review will be broken into three parts because I prepared this as Gyokuro first then read that Kabusecha is meant to be prepared like Sencha, rather, so I tried both ways. Last, I took some tips from online and made a salad from the used leaves.

PART I: KABUSECHA PREPARED AS GYOKURO
10g tea per 100ml water at 122F/50C for 2 min

The smell of the dry leaves in the warm kyusu is incredibly sweet and umami. This smells very rich and delicate. After brewing, the wet leaves smell similarly but with more vegetal notes. The brew is very thick, syrupy looking and green-yellow.

Let’s take a sip… and… what… whoa… what the… o___o < – (my face right now)

That is a pure shot of umami in the mouth. Wow. It tastes like a very rich broth. The way the flavor just stays there in your mouth for so long is really impressive. The flavor is incredibly intense and has a pretty nice little kick of bitterness to it.

At first I was thinking it was slightly disappointing that it makes so little tea for such an expensive tea, but as rich as this is… wow. I don’t think I’d want to drink much more than this tiny little tasting cup full. This is intense!

My second infusion was much shorter and produced a translucent bright yellow-green liquor that looks like Mountain Dew. It smells a little more sweet and grassy, and tasting it now it is more of a blend of umami and salt and grassy, whereas the first infusion was just straight up umami in the face.

I did a third infusion and it started to taste more like a regular sencha but with a bitter finish. On the fourth I decided to up the temperature to around 176F to try a hotter brew and bring out some of the astringency. The tea tastes quite bitter and has a seaweed flavor. There is still some umami richness though and a lingering sweetness after sipping it. At this point I think it is undrinkable, but I have done this step to prepare the leaves to make a tea salad. It is necessary to get out some of the bitterness so they will be tastier to eat.

PART II: KABUSECHA PREPARED AS SENCHA
2.5g tea per 100ml water at 158F/70C for 1 min

Flavor-wise, the result is similar to the first method of preparation but much more diluted and more like what we think of as tea, liquidy. It is really similar to Sencha but with a much more umami-rich flavor. It still has the strong trailing bitterness that comes in the later part of the sip, though the umami lingers in your mouth much longer and outlasts the bitterness.

I can really see this tea going either way as far as method of preparation. I say do what you think would suit you best. Do you want it in a small amount and really strong or more diluted with more to drink?

PART III: TEA SALAD

I just took the leaves and dressed them with a Japanese style dressing (3 parts ponzu, 1 part soy sauce, 1 part sesame oil, and some toasted sesame seeds). This is really tasty! I think I like the salad more than I liked the tea (uh-ohhhh, hahaha). I’m kind of scared of the insane caffeine rush I’m going to get from this though, but I wanted to try eating it. I’ve been known to get caffeine-induced panic attacks from matcha particularly. Consuming the whole leaf, especially with these fresh green teas, seems to pack an insane caffeine punch.

It was an interesting experience either way. I’ll have some higher quality Gyokuro reviews up soon, as I have the Kurihara sampler pack, and this was just the gateway in. Kabusecha is the ferryman between Sencha and Gyokuro, after all.

All-in-all, I’ll be honest. This was really hard for me to drink. Something about it was kicking in my gag reflex a little, maybe just the pure foreignness of this type of flavor. It is just really crazy rich and you might get a similar experience from dissolving a teaspoon of MSG into a shotglass of water and sipping it (though I don’t recommend it).

I can’t rate this tea terribly high because it was not one I’d like to drink again, but if you are an umami nut and like some bitterness, this might be one for you. My score is a reflection of how much I liked it, not on the quality of the tea.

This tea is roasty and comforting. It isn’t as sweet as some houjicha I’ve had but it is really mellow. There’s a bit of sweetness in the aftertaste. The aroma gives hints of burnt cedar… and as usual with me and heavily roasted teas there is a note of dill. The flavor is of toast, a little bit nutty, mild and very relaxing. The wet leaves in the teapot smell like cigar tobacco. Now that I’ve noticed that and the tea has cooled some, I can definitely taste cigar smoke in the taste.

Not a lot to say. This is a really great houjicha.

The dry matcha powder smells like autumn leaves and spices, cinnamon primarily.

The taste of the whisked matcha is really interesting. Take a really good white peony and just imagine that flavor stacked upon itself until its no longer a delicate white tea, but a woodsy, earthy, mushroomy brew with a rich, strong flavor. There is not much in the way of bitterness though it is a little astringent on the tongue. The flavor is really intriguing though. It’s like an autumn walk through the woods. The mouth feel is really thick and creamy and there are tiny hints of chrysanthemum flower in the taste.

This is a nice alternative to matcha for those who don’t like the flavor of the traditional green type, and even for those who do, I think this would make a wonderful late summer or autumn seasonal drink.

The dry matcha in my warmed chawan smells fruity and sweet.

After whisking the matcha, the smell is more vegetal and nutty with maybe a little hint of popcorn. The matcha tastes a little roasty and very umami rich like spinach with an accompanying bitterness that lingers on the tongue. It’s got a hint of fruit flavor hiding in the background, but mostly what comes through is a roasted taste. It is rather biting on the tongue.

Up to that point I was indifferent about it, but the drying texture of it is rather offputting to me. Nothing bad on Red Leaf Tea, I have rated another of their matchas “100” in another review.

I prepared this traditionally in a chawan with whisk.

The initial smell is very mild and sweet, like sweet bread or a field of wheat. The onset of the taste is bitter but only lightly so compared to most matcha I’ve tried. The taste evolves from grassy at first to mild and grainy like sweet bread or sweet greens (baby butter lettuce?).

This tea was very relaxing. It reminds me of the tall prairie grasses of late summer. I live in the great plains region of the US, and there’s a very distinct sweet smell in the air as the grass reaches its full growth in late summer, a mix between that which is fresh and green and that which is becoming golden and drying out. This matcha seemed to capture that essence for me, so I feel at home and at one with the nature around me when I sip into this tea.

This was easy to drink and had just the right amount of bitterness for those who like a little bitter taste in their tea. I have noticed lots of lower grade matchas can be offensively bitter to me, but this one complimented the flavor and was enjoyable. I wasn’t waiting for the bitterness to pass to actually taste something.

The dry matcha in the warm chawan smells sweet and citrusy like limes and other tropical fruit.

Oh my goodness this matcha is laden with sweetness. The taste also comes with a slightly fruity aftertaste that reminds me of limeade or key lime pie, the flavor of fresh lime that has been in some way sweetened. There is absolutely no astringency in this matcha at all. The flavor is so sweet and mellow, not overly grassy. It has a hint of dandelion flavor in the finish.

Wow, I am pretty new to matcha. This is probably the fifth one I’ve tried in the traditional method with a whisk and bowl. For the first few I was worried matcha just might not be for me. The taste tends to be so overpowering and bitter most times, but this matcha is just so incredibly refreshing and sweet! I love it! This has set the gold standard for matcha for me. I’m eager to see if anything else in my matcha sampling journey lives up to this one. I’ve got just shy of 20 samples, most are from Red Leaf Tea, so I’ll keep adding reviews as I try them.

The price tag on this tea is not to be taken lightly, but neither is the quality of the flavor. Time for me to start saving I guess.

Let it be known, I am pretty new to matcha.

Prepared the traditional way in a chawan, this matcha smells and tastes a bit like toasted cereal grains. The flavor is tangy, robust, and astringent. There’s a strong grassy taste.

I am getting acquainted with matcha slowly, so my ratings and descriptions may be a little inadequate for now.

This tea tastes very green in the vegetal sense, and there are bean-like flavors present. If I didn’t know any better I might think this is a Chinese green tea. It has more of that flavor profile. There’s a nice sweetness to it and it is lacking the ocean and algae flavors I tend to encounter in a lot of Japanese green teas. There’s this subtle tang on the back of the tongue that is really interesting to me. It kind of reminds me of the tangy feeling of ginseng on the tongue. It’s only just slightly bitter in the finish.

The leaves of this sencha are very long and unbroken. There seems to be a lot of care in their production and handling. Often I encounter senchas with very small and broken up pieces. It makes for a cloudier brew and can be a bit of a mess, but this sencha brews up crystal clear with a ghostly pale green tinge. There are many factors in brewing this tea that make it clear to me these are very high quality leaves, and as this is a sample from a friend I have no idea about the source, company or price at this point.

A second infusion yields a heartier brew with a nice sweetness to it and some interesting notes of cinnamon, camphor, or clove… something on that spiced spectrum. The flavor is just wonderful. I find nothing lacking or “missing”. There’s nothing I can imagine that would improve this tea for me. It’s not the kind of flavor that knocks my socks off, but it is pristine, and that is saying a lot considering I’ve had this tea in a tiny ziplock bag for at least a couple months, so it has not been stored the way sencha aficionados would suggest you need to store it. It has maintained great qualities despite not being kept airtight.

I brewed this tea in a gaiwan. The first infusion was at 158F and I increased it to 167F on the second infusion and 176 on the third. This gentle way of brewing Japanese green teas has never done me wrong. As for infusion times it was 1 min, then 20 seconds, then 30 seconds.

The third and final infusion I drank was even more mellow, with similar flavors to the second infusion but a sort of “bready” taste in the background. This tea is very comforting. I had meant to drink it on a wonderfully warm and sunny day in the summertime to do justice to its name, but I kept forgetting about it and finally just got to it here in the crisp, cool beginnings of Autumn.

I can feel the sunlight and warm breeze and smell the green leaves, regardless.

EDIT: I am revisiting this tea after eating some Barbeque (a suggestion they made on the website, hehe). I brewed it a little stronger than the last time. It’s got a very zesty flavor with hints of pleasant bitterness. There is an almost orange-like flavor that lasts in your mouth. It’s great stuff!

The dry leaves in the warm kyusu smelled faintly of fruit tree flowers. After the infusion the wet leaves smell sweet with a slight green bean or snap pea scent.

The flavor’s really milky and creamy to me. It’s light and delicate with a very full mouth feel that makes me salivate. Predominantly the flavor reminds me of sweet cream with a mild grassy backdrop.

The second infusion was mildly floral and sweet, and left a sweet sensation in my mouth for quite a while after.

This is perhaps the most delicate of the Obubu senchas, really lacking in astringency and not a really bold flavor either. It’s really smooth.