I wanted a light and simple tea to accompany my dinner tonight, so I decided to sipdown another of the T2 samplers I got from my massive T2 sampler sale haul. This is their genmaicha. I’ve actually only had one other genmaicha to date, so I haven’t exactly had a lot of tasting experience with them yet. I will say that when I tasted my first genmaicha (which I picked up at American Tea House in San Diego, which I’m going to guess is an average quality genmaicha at best), I really fell in love with that tea. It is probably one of my favorite kinds of green tea, and I find myself craving it often. I’m fairly certain that the genmaicha I’m used to is a standard blend using bancha leaf, so I was curious to try this one out, which uses sencha.
I guess I was expecting something different about the flavor, but I couldn’t really discern anything different in the taste from my other blend (perhaps it is using sencha leaf as well, or the difference is just too subtle for my under-developed palate to pick up on). The tea is tasty though, with the toasty, nutty, crisped rice flavors that made me such a fan of genmaicha tea. The green tea is very smooth and vegetal. The sampler had enough for two cups, and my first cup I made with my typical lighter steep (2 min) which was more subtle on the vegetal notes, which I enjoyed better than a darker steep (3 min) which I felt brought out some slight astringent qualities in the leaf, but also emphasized the vegetal flavors more. The tea held up to resteeping very well, and I managed to have several nice relaxing cups off only a two-serving sampler.
I have no doubt there are fancier genmaicha out there, but I found this tasty and enjoyable.
Flavors: Nutty, Roasted, Smooth, Toasted Rice, Vegetal