Gyokuro Green Tea Loose Leaf (100 g) – Shade Grown Jade Dew Leaves – Smooth, Umami-Rich Brew from Japan – High-Caffeine, Cold Brew Friendly

I love green tea and have been drinking it all of my life, and since discovering this wonderful tea company I am so happy that I have excellent green tea once again.

Firstly, it's a single packet of loose green tea instead of the 3 that they show in the main picture. I got three 8 oz cups out of it. I followed the instructions on the page to steep the tea in hot water for a minute. Even while boiling, there was an unpleasant smell, similar to that of boiling spinach. I am not a big fan of such smell and it was a huge turnoff to want to try and drink this thing. After straining it, I had a sip of the tea and it wasn't as bad as the smell but it wasn't that appealing either for me to continue drinking it. Unfortunately I had to throw the rest of it away. I do drink green teas without any sugar or honey, but those are usually the ones you get in single use sachets. Those don't smell or taste this bad. If you're OK with such smells and want to try it further, maybe this gives the benefits it claims.

Gyokuro is one of the most expensive types of sencha in Japan. It is shaded with straw mats from the sun for at least 20 days before harvest. This increases the theanine level and the caffeine level. The leaves are also darker due to the increase in chlorophyll. It is high in polyphenol, catechin and EGCG Element as well. This Gyokuro from the Japanese Green Tea Company is of an excellent grade. It is from the Yabukita cultivar, the most popular cultivars for Japanese green tea, and sourced from the green tea farms in the Shizuoka prefecture in Japan. It has a beautiful emerald green color with a rich aroma. This tea is in a different league from sencha when it comes to quality and taste. It has a sophisticated flavor with subtle delicate sweet notes. It is rich, smooth, mellow and less bitter. Richly aromatic as well. The brewing instructions provided are more for sencha. For Gyokuro, it is recommended to steep it at a lower temperature, around 120-140°F, in order to bring out the sweet notes and less bitterness. It can be re-steeped multiple times at a slightly higher temperature each time. This comes sealed in a little foil bag inside a sturdy paper tube canister. Mine has a best before date of 11 months from now. Keep it in a cool, dry place. Overall, I'm very pleased with this Gyokuro. It is an excellent-grade shaded green tea. The price seems high but not unreasonable for a quality Gyokuro. It is the type of Japanese green tea you want to enjoy slowly on a relaxing day.

We drink green tea almost every day, but I admit that we usually drink the medium-quality tea that costs $10 to $15 for 100 grams. This tea is $65 for 100 grams. No, it isn't 5 times as good (if that is even possible to measure) as what we usually drink, but it is noticeably better than our every-day tea. We plan to use this for special occasions only. The flavor is smooth and delicate. There are brewing instructions included with the tea. We use 2 teaspoons of tea in a small teapot with 2 cups of 175F water. Don't use boiling hot water with Japanese-style teas. A teapot with a large and ver fine mesh infuser works a lot better than a tea ball that doesn't let the water flow freely. Steep the tea for 2 minutes and pour. If you want a richer flavor, use more tea leaves, do not steep for longer than 2 minutes or the tea will get bitter. You can steep the tea leaves twice. The tea has a beautiful green color, nice fresh aroma, and rich flavor. The flavor is noticeably richer than our $10 tea, but $65 wine isn't 5 times better than $15 wine either.

This product is clean and full of flavor. After few days of use I got big headache due to increased hypertension.. Headache stayed days and nights ane it went away after next day after stop using this green tea. My doctor told me not to drink this brand again. I'm bern driving green tea 'Sencha' Japanese organic green tea since 2017 never have any problems!!

This loose leaf green tea contains Gyokuro leaves, which are made with only the earliest leaf buds of the spring tea harvest. They are shaded from the sun for 20 days using special straw mats that are placed under bamboo, reed or straw slats that resemble giant horizontal venetian blinds. Growing the tea in diffuse sunlight reduces the level of photosynthesis in the young spring leaf buds. This results in the tea plant producing higher levels of chlorophyll, which modifies the relative proportions of sugars, amino acids, caffeine and flavanols that contribute to the color, aroma and taste of the young tea leaves and buds. This also causes both the amino acid theanine and the alkaloid caffeine in the tea leaves to increase, which helps to yield a sweeter flavor. The tea also gains a distinct sweet asparagus aroma from the covering process. Ultimately, this reduced level of sunlight yields a milder and sweeter flavor, aroma, and significantly less astringency. As a result, Gyokuro green tea is perhaps the most esteemed tea produced in Japan. Gyokuro green tea should be steeped at a lower water temperature. One major reason for the lower steeping temperature is to preserve the subtle and nuanced sweet notes that are present in most Gyokuro teas. I steeped a teaspoon of this Gyokuro in cup at a temperature of 175-185 degrees by allowing freshly boiled water to cool for three minutes. If you steep at higher temperatures, you will bring out more of the vegetal qualities of the tea, but at the risk of removing the sweet notes while increasing astringency. I thoroughly enjoyed the sweetness, the additional complexity and the higher caffeine levels of this Gyokuro. It is a green tea with exceptional finesse and depth. It's also rather pricey but most worthwhile things are. I recommend finding a way to sample this excellent Gyokuro in order to learn how great a green tea can be.

I think I'm actually being generous with two stars because of all of the things wrong with this product. Taste-wise, it was good, a bit different from the generic green tea bags I buy from Whole Foods. But the product page shows three packages, when really you only get one tiny envelope. It's so small that when it arrived with other things I'd ordered, I almost threw it away. It's like getting one tea bag in the mail. Granted, it's loose leaf, so you can get about 3-5 cups from this depending on how strong you like your tea. But the instructions on the package are sorely lacking. It just says to steep for "30 seconds to 1 minute" in 8oz of water. But they don't say how much tea. And if you look at the product page here, it says 2 tsp tea in 8oz of water for 2-3 minutes. So which is it? It's my fault for not reading the size more carefully, but I really feel like they mislead customers with the picture of three bags. And it's one a teeny tiny silver bag with no way to re-seal it. Sure, I can put it in a container, but it's such a small amount that I've just stuck it in a snack-size ziploc bag. Anything else is just a waste of space. My guess is they're selling this as a sampler for a larger product, but given how poorly this was executed, I don't have a lot of faith in any of their other products.

This green tea did not have much flavor in my opinion. It tasted just like any other generic green tea, subtle hints of grassiness. Even when I added twice the amount of leaves as recommended and steeped for a longer period of time, I could not discern any special qualities. The tea does brew to a beautiful chartreuse shade of green. This is not a whole leaf tea, it’s mostly fragments of tea leaves and quite powdery, but it at least did not have loose stems in the mix. This may be good for those who first start drinking tea and are not use to a good strong cup of tea. I didn’t feel like it had any more caffeine than any other green teas as I drank this after dinner and it did not keep me up and prevent me from getting a good night’s sleep. I only received one Mylar pouch (3”x4.25”) in my order (not the 3 that are pictured on the web page); I was only able to brew 4 cups of full strength tea from this one pouch. Due to the size and flavor of the tea, I gave it three stars. This product will be most useful for those that travel and don't have access to their everyday tea. It transports well and has enough tea leaves for a couple of days. Thank you for reading this review. I hope you found it helpful.