One-year-old shincha

Spring 2012 shin cha
($12, or maybe $10 per 3-oz [85-gr] bag) – from Yaoya-san Japanese Grocery in El Cerrito, CA


Last spring, I got two bags of last-spring (Spring 2012) shincha (新茶) from Yaoya-san in El Cerrito. The soft green color of the bags was so pleasing, I like shincha so much (it immediately became my number-one favorite green tea when I first discovered it), and the store is so out of the way for me (read: impossible to get to) that I couldn’t open the bags.

Now it’s almost spring again.

Finally I worked up my courage. I figured, as a tea lover I should open the bags and appreciate the tea. What’s the point of loving someone if you keep your distance from them, right?

Everything about the shincha is perfect. “Shin cha” (新茶) mean “new tea”, this shin cha is not so “shin” anymore (it’s 古茶 now), but still so beautifully delicious. What I remember from the shin cha that Yuri shared with me still shines in this 1-year-old shin cha: the gentle sweetness with a hint of seashores that is notably different from sencha but still unique to Japanese teas. I had the nagging feeling that I oversteeped it this time because the color is the green inside a green grape (too green), but now that I read my old post, which says it should look green like a 3-week-old onion sprout, than maybe I didn’t oversteep it. (How the heck did I even conjure up that description?!) Or maybe I did, this looks too yellow… Anyway. Oversteeped or not, it is the taste that I idolized.

It also didn’t help me stay up to study at all (>.>). I drank 6 cups starting at midnight. At 1 am, I slept like a rock.

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