Gyokuro Shaded Imperial - Japanese Green Tea Co

 This Japanese Shaded Gyokuro is a beautiful dark green color and has a strong scent of buttery sweet grass. 

 I used roughly 3g of tea in this beautiful 80ml kyusu that my Mom got me as an early graduation/holiday/birthday present. 

 When I drink tea alone I tend to ignore steeping times, instead I steep  based off of feeling or intuition, at some point I say "ah that feels like enough time" and pour it out. This has actually worked quite well for me but I steeped it both my way and a standard way(when I prepared this for my boyfriend to try with me) - starting with a one minute infusion. 

 The leaves unfurled into a beautiful dark emerald forest green. I love this pot because it allows me to admire the leaves. 

 I steeped this tea 3-4 times before I felt the flavor was starting to subside. 

If you see any color shifts or differences in my images - it's largely due to the white balance. In general the infusion came out a warm yellow green, sometimes more green depending on how light the infusion was.

So how did this tea taste? To preface, I've been gyokuro shopping for a while, buying from various retailers like sazen tea, yuuki-cha and hibiki-an, so I was excited to try another gyokuro to see how it stacked up against the other ones I've purchased.
This gyokuro had a pleasant but very strong umami flavor. There was a sweetness that coated the back of the throat but I was most surprised how buttery it tasted. It would be like having a sheet of seaweed that is slightly buttered with a pinch of sugar sprinkled on. Maybe that sounds weird, but I definitely enjoyed this tea. I'm still new to Japanese green tea as a whole, but I hope to grow my knowledge of different cultivars. If this tea interests you - you can purchase it here.

-but I might be doing a giveaway soon so also keep an eye out for that-

Teapot

Teacup

If you have any questions comments or concerns please feel free to send me a PM! Want to decide which tea I review next? Don’t hesitate to ask! 

xoxo

Jordan

P.S. I've obviously been really inactive for a long time. A year and a half on this blog. Between moving in with roommates and not feeling like I have my own space, to moving again, to doing an internship, to finishing up my last semester of college, life has been kind of busy. And on top of that I felt like I had to take pictures every time I sat down for a tea session. This largely contributed to it feeling like a job. While I enjoy photography, I don't enjoy it -that- much. My photos have largely become my brand and in the end all I saw were number son my Instagram page(I also felt like I needed to buy teaware so my photos didn't become stale($$$$)... and because I have such a hard time explaining flavors of tea, I had impostor syndrome for a while), I forgot how to just sit down and enjoy tea. So, I stopped drinking tea for almost a year. But now I'm back, trying new mediums and taking it slow - I've been doing tea reviews on my youtube channel and have just enjoyed exploring the flavors of tea all over again, surprisingly I like shou puerh now! Something I never thought would happen. Anyway - thank you for your continued support and for reading this. <3