Ocha & Co. is an online tea store that ships worldwide from Japan.
The tea for today’s review is an organic sencha from Shizuoka prefecture.
It comes vacuum-sealed in a 100 gram bag and has a JAS organic certification sticker.
The website doesn’t mention the cultivar, so I guess it’s probably Yabukita because that one is the most common in Japan.
Let the tea tasting begin
After opening the bag I felt a sweet aroma with a touch of citrus. It feels quite fresh.
The leaves are tightly rolled and have a nice green color to them, but unfortunately a good portion of them are considerably broken down.
In the product’s page, the company recommends a lower temperature. But for the sake of comparing to other sencha, I’ll use 60 ml (2 oz) of water at 80°C with 4 grams of tea leaves in order to infuse for one minute.
I used my kyusu for brewing, it has a fine mesh that’s useful for filtering small bits of leaves.
After the time was up and I served a cup of the tea, I payed attention to the wet leaves. The aroma is very straightforward: vegetal with a hint of seaweed.
The liquor has a pale green color with a slight yellow hue.
Now let’s see what it tastes like.
It has a slight bitterness, very few astringency, and a good umami content. The flavor results in a very refreshing green tea.
For the second infusion I could sense that the bitterness increased, but it was tolerable. I suggest that you shorten the infusion time for this one.
My overall thoughts are that this tea has a standard sencha flavor, with no serious flaws. If interested, click here.
May 4, 2019
Thanks for this review of Ocha and Co sencha. I’m considering trying their gyokuro because it’s affordable (oh, to try the higher grades from Ippodo) but I’ve tried gyo from a different “lightweight” vendor and that, like the sencha you reviewed, had a lot of dust and broken pieces. I don’t know if maybe the breakage occurred during shipping, and I don’t mean to disparage the vendor. I enjoyed it anyway (though I half suspect it’s actually kabusecha, not gyo) but I’d really like to try authentic gyo with whole leaves, even if it’s not the highest grade gyo. I’ll probably chance it. Even if there’s some breakage, I do trust that this company is probably at least selling authentic gyo.
May 5, 2019
Thank you for your comment.
I hope that find the gyokuro that you are looking for.