This is the sencha that I have been drinking almost every day for the past few weeks. I found it in a health food store downtown in Montreal, near the McGill campus. It was on sale, so I thought I’d give it a try, instead of ordering Japanese tea online (as I often do). It is labeled ‘Sencha-Uchiyama’ by R. Uchiyama (who was born in Japan to tea-farming parents, and has a shop in Montreal which I cannot find!) and was grown in Kawane, Japan. It is a second harvest tea (which is why it wasn’t very expensive) and I bought it in an 100g tin, at $16 CDN for 100g.

Don’t let the blah photo fool you, I’m really happy with this tea. However, the camera and I are having issues. The smell and taste of this sencha remind me of ‘Sencha Ashikubo’ which I have purchased a few times from Camellia Sinensis, a wonderful Montreal tea house/shop. The taste of the tea itself is basically that of a typical middle-of-the-road sencha–it is not too bitter, a bit sweet, and vegetal without being grassy. What makes it similar to ‘Sencha Ashikubo’ is that they both have a wonderful aroma of tropical fruit in their dry form. It’s worth buying this tea for the smell alone!

I brew this tea in my kyusu (which is not the same as the one I’ve linked to, just similar) using 1-2 tsp of dry leaf and 150-200ml of water at 70-75 degrees Celsius. For the first steep I leave it to brew for a few minutes, but for the second and third I pour it out right away when I don’t forget about it and leave it indefinitely. This tea can be brewed three or four times before it is tired out, but I often brew it more times than that, until the leaves are completely exhausted. It’s more cost effective that way.

that's my kyusu teapot, in the corner.

Right before I bought this tea, I asked the cashier if she had tried it before. She responded with “No, I’m not much of a tea person, but it’s got to be good at that price!”. Hmm. She wasn’t much of a saleslady, but I was definitely happy with this tea, and would buy it again. I finished the rest of it off just now, and will be opening a new package of sencha fukamushi (deeply steamed sencha) tomorrow.

Chinese gardens, Olympic Stadium, moon.

This is a photo from our final trip to the Botanical Gardens Chinese lantern festival, which ended on November 1st. It was a lovely night to drink jasmine tea and watch the crowds, and the moon.

Do you enjoy green tea?

Sayonara!

love,
meg

Tags: botanical gardens, Japanese, Tea

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 7:09 pm and is filed under Tea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.