I will freely admit to not being much of a green tea connoisseur. I like to drink it every so often, but I can’t really tell the difference between specific kinds of non-flavored green teas (at least not the way I would be able to with black tea). Still, this is a nice green, delicate, not too grassy. I don’t know that I’d be able to recognize it out of a line up, though.
Preparation
Comments
The trick to sorting out greens is to start broad, and then get more precise within each broad area. Start with Japanese and Chinese (ignoring anything else as “fringe” for the short term). By and large, the Japanese really only do green tea one way, with a huge spectrum of quality available within that style. It is shade grown and steamed, and thus vividly green both in the leaf and the cup, and tends to be very vegetal in flavor, but usually in a good way. It is also one of the highest caffeine content teas, because the stress of shade growing causes the plant to produce more caffeine (which the plant uses as a pesticide, actually). Chinese can then be divided into roasted and unroasted, etc.
The trick to sorting out greens is to start broad, and then get more precise within each broad area. Start with Japanese and Chinese (ignoring anything else as “fringe” for the short term). By and large, the Japanese really only do green tea one way, with a huge spectrum of quality available within that style. It is shade grown and steamed, and thus vividly green both in the leaf and the cup, and tends to be very vegetal in flavor, but usually in a good way. It is also one of the highest caffeine content teas, because the stress of shade growing causes the plant to produce more caffeine (which the plant uses as a pesticide, actually). Chinese can then be divided into roasted and unroasted, etc.