Sencha Henta Saemidori

NIO Advent 2023
A lovely looking sencha. Dark green with a bit of light green. Pleasant aroma filled with stone fruit, grass notes, and a bit of cream. I still haven’t gotten the hang of this shiboridashi but it’s so beautiful I can’t bear to let it just sit around. My first sip was a bit overboard. I could sense the vegetal, fruity, and grassy notes but the immediacy of the pairing was almost too much. Even my second steep is a bit too astringent on the tongue. Okay… This one just straight-up needs a bigger steeping vessel. Even at five seconds, my mouth is going wthecks… I reduced the amount of leaf now. That was a messy process. The flavor is a bit more palatable now, much grass, so wow.

Edit. I’m not sure if it was bc I drank this on an empty stomach or something else but I felt quite nauseated…

I’ve been neglecting these samples from Nio, but decided to pull them out again while they’re still good. (I have some time, as the best before date is December 2024.) I steeped 5 g of leaf in 150 ml of 160F water for 60, 20, 20, 30, 40,60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of red apple, spinach, and grass. The first steep has notes of red apple, apple skin, asparagus, kale, cream, spinach, and grass. The body is nice and thick and there’s some balancing sweetness. The next steep also has a distinctly apple flavour, though with a stronger chlorophyll punch provided by the spinach, kale, asparagus, and grass. The apple persists through the next few steeps, and I also get hints of florality along with the greenness. The final couple steeps are completely green, though that’s my fault for wringing every last drop of flavour from this poor sencha.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to how green these Japanese green teas are, but I found the apple very prominent and pleasant. If fruitiness is typical of this cultivar, I’ll look for more Saemidori teas in the future. I’d say this is one of my favourite senchas from Nio so far.

Just a reminder that Nio’s Black Friday sale is going on, and when I last looked at their website, this tea was more than half off. Take an additional 10% off with LEAFHOPPER10OFF (I get a small commission for sales through this coupon).

Nio Teas Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 22 (2/2)

Ooh, this is a nice one.

The first steep is quite golden in color, and it has a smooth and thick texture and intense vegetal flavor similar to a shaded tea, but with a bit more toastiness and nuttiness to it. But then in the middle of the sip, the flavor completely flips to being refreshing, slightly grassy, and tasting just like biting into a tart, crisp apple, like a Granny Smith. The finish is still somewhat grassy, but also some of those vegetal and nutty notes come back into play.

Subsequent steeps are very grassy, and interestingly a floral note comes out as well? Still a bit of that slightly astringent apple flavor at the end, but it’s more of an apple skin now as opposed to the flesh. I’m not sure I can identify the floral, but it reminds me of an oolong.

Very tasty, love the distinct apple notes!