Tea: Premium Gyokuro
Reviewer: homais
✓ 21 teas reviewed
✓ 1 of Gyokuro
✓ 9 of Green Tea
✓ 3 of Aiya
✓ 5 from Japan
Review of Premium Gyokuro
February 10th, 2013
Aroma | Flavor | Value | Total |
7 of 10 | 4 of 5 | 3 of 5 | 73 of 100 |
Very Good | Good | Reasonable |
As a matter of preference, I should say that my 'ideal' Gyokuro tastes strongly umami, a bit sweet, and grassy/vegetal on the finish. I was able to get Aiya's Gyukuro to display something like this flavor profile - along with a pleasantly sharp, matcha-like aroma - when I brewed a relatively heaping teaspoon of it for 3 minutes at about 155 F, though the grassiness on the finish was not very prominent.
However, brewing it other ways produced different results, which I guess shouldn't be surprising given this is a high-end, complex tea. Brewing according to Aiya's instructions at about 122F made it smooth, and, at least to my taste buds, both very savory and very sweet.
Brewing it hotter (175 or more) muted the vegetal and savory qualities, and brought out more of a toasty and nutty quality to the flavor and aroma, though it started getting acrid as the brew temperature approached 190.
So, for me, what that adds up to is a versatile and complex tea. In general it's more nutty than I'm used to from Gyokuros, but depending on how you brew it, you can get a whole range of flavors, ranging from really sweet and savory, to very nutty and toasty. Somewhere on that spectrum may be a flavor profile you love, though replicating it exactly from brewing to brewing could be tricky.