Sip of the Month: Oi Ocha Green Tea

 お茶 (Ocha) - Japanese Green Tea. In the Red box with white font - ryokucha (緑茶, green tea) 

I've had this tea on my shelf a while, it was a gift from family stationed in Japan. The label is in Japanese (which I'm not trained in) so figuring out what I'm drinking here has been a bit of a puzzle. With the help of google I learned the characters for "green tea" and the one above is the kana "o" but I didn't know, at first, what they meant together. With a little research I was able to put together most of the label: the big black font is the brand logo: Oi Ocha - which means something like "Tea please!" or "lets have tea!" I know from the leaves it's green tea, I thought it might be sencha - because they are pressed-looking, and bright green. It's got a lot of tea dust, and tastes like a toothy matcha (which is why I was leaning toward sencha). When I looked up the characters for Sencha, I couldn't find matching ones on the label - instead I found the two characters in the darker green box  抹茶 (which mean matcha)! I think it must be a combination of the two. Apparently the company changes their packaging from season to season - and the English facing part of the company doesn't have Japanese labels, so I wasn't able to figure out exactly which tea this is - but I strongly suspect it's Ito En's Sencha with Matcha. 

I brewed a pot (which holds about 4 cups) with 2 spoonfuls of tea for 3 minutes. Sometimes drinking mystery tea can be scary, but this was promising from the start: the dry leaves smell clean; refreshingly fragrant. They're small slivers, but consistent in color and size. When you open the canister a very fine tea dust rises from them, like a puff of smoke. The wet leaves open up and darken quite a bit - you'll noticed they're chopped up very precisely- I think that's why this tea is so bitey. 

The color is not the bright green depicted in the vibrant label, it's more a green tinged gold. The flavor is more what I expected: pretty typical to what's found in your average green tea flavored candy or icecream. It's sweet, bright, pungent, a touch grassy, very similar to matcha - but a little sharp at the end - and a little saltier too. The dust gives it a thickness, but it's not cloudy - or creamy like matcha is. Drinking this tea is a nice way to wake up. I'm thinking of taking it to work and having some at break time as a pick-me-up. It's also pretty good iced.