This tea from the fine folks at Mellow Monk (whose teas I have consistently enjoyed) is a bit different from their usual unflavoured traditional teas. This is a tamayokucha, (lit. curled green tea) in Japanese, a shade-grown steamed tea. It's flavoured with small pieces of yuzu peel, a citrus fruit I have never encountered before, but is akin to a sour mandarin or a grapefruit.
The leaves are curled or in pieces, and a deep forest green punctuated with contrasting orange-coloured yuzu peel. The aroma of the leaves is strongly fragrant, of tangy dried citrus with an edge of earth dried mango underneath.
The liquor is a slightly hazy yellow with a creamy, buttery aroma with a citrus undertone, not unlike a citrusy of a milk oolong!
The first sip is tart citrus, followed by a milky, sweet, graham cracker note, with a vegetal undertone, followed by bold sharp citrus in the aftertaste, with a similar mouthfeel to biting into citrus peel, but with no bitterness. Yuzu seems to me, at least what I can tell from the tea, to taste like a grapefruit wrapped in an orange skin. This is a gorgeous tea, and I'd strongly recommend it even to people who don't like flavoured teas.
Yuzu Dream at Mellow Monk
It's a very unique tea that I have never tried. I want to try it myself to see how the yuzu and green tea flavors fuse and create an unbeknown taste.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of this tea, or even of tamayokucha before. I really like it!
DeleteTamaryokucha doesn't seem to be that well-known in the US, although there is one example of a widely-distributed one, sold by Two Leaves and a Bud. They shorten the name to "Tamayokucha" but I think the full name is "Tamaryokucha". I think it is also called Guricha.
ReplyDeleteI wrote an article on RateTea some time ago about this type of tea, guricha or tamaryokucha. Apparently there is a pan-fired tea by this name that was invented to be sold on the market to Muslim countries, which tend to prefer Chinese-style pan-fired green teas. I'd be really curious to try this, but I have only ever tried the steamed variety, and only the one example from Two Leaves.