O-Cha's Shincha Yutaka Midori

After hearing about the folks of TeaChat rave over this sencha for sometime, I finally decided to use the shincha as an excuse to give it a shot. This being the only fukamushi I've ordered this year so far, as I'm more of an asamushi girl.

First impression was pretty good. The leaves smell wonderful. Not as good as the Kinari, which I could probably just sit and breathe in all day if it wouldn't pose any issues to the tea, but still splendid. Very green, vegetal.

Using 170° water, I've heard lower temp water does good things to it so I'll play with that later, and steeping for 45 seconds with the lid off, the first cup was a little pale, though offered an introduction to how delicious it is. Sweet, rich, decent umami, with an underlying almost spinach? taste to it.

The second steep was rapid, pouring the water in, putting on the lid, and pouring the tea out into a glass fair cup to admire the color and cool it down. Appearance-wise, I was wary, this cup taking on the soupy and thick look that is part of the reason I like asa more, yet the taste and smell easily pushed any concern aside.

That is, folks, this is easily the best fukamushi, and one of the best senchas, I've ever tasted. Even the leaves afterward taste delicious. It's just fantastic. Tends to drop off sharply at the fourth steep and isn't worth much more from there, but my only remorse with this tea is my having not tried it sooner.

I definitely plan to grab some more of this shincha while it's around, and continue to order YM in general, and recommend others do the same.

That said, I think this is my first decent shot of this cup, so I'll bring it up for the closer. Nothing too special, origin-wise, though a favorite. Gotten from a ceramics booth at the Highlanders Festival at Radford University. Not sure of the artist's name as I'm bad at making things out, anyone care to take a shot?