Tasting Notes: buttered greens, seaweed, vegetal

Description:  Gyokuro, a shade grown steamed green tea, is Japan's most premium tea and accounts for under 1% of Japan’s total tea production. Gyokuro is one of the world's very best teas. The umami (pleasant savory taste) of this green tea is powerful and complex. This ceremonial green tea is unlike any other tea on the world's market. A complex and satisfying tea that is meant for special occasions. 

This premium green tea has a savory taste with notes of buttered greens, seaweed, steamed vegetables, and sweet nuts. A complex tea that is soft on the palate with a brothy lingering finish.

Gyokuro is a superb example of a premium tea that is crafted in a precise fashion to yield a particular taste. To produce this premium green tea, the leaves are shade grown before they're plucked. This shading process is also done to produce matcha, the difference being that matcha is stone-ground into a fine powder while Gyokuro is a whole-leaf tea.

The process of shading tea leaves from the sun for 3 weeks before the leaves are plucked results in the tea being higher in chlorophyll, which explains the vivid green color, and higher in amino acids, most notably L-theanine, which accounts for the smooth and soft flavor. Gyokuro is also lower in polyphenols which results in the more umami notes present in this tea.

Ingredients: shade grown green tea from Fukuoka, Japan