Hello all! I am dipping my toes back into the tea writing experience (and really, tea journalling) with the 2025 musashikaori sencha. So this is a bit of a less serious review, because I have realised that not exercising the tea review muscle has caused it to greatly atrophy.

If you need some information on what this cultivar is, I had previously written a post about it. In that post, I mentioned that the two times I drank this tea, I found the flavour profile to be very consistent. Well, third time is not the charm because reviewing my notes, it does feel like I had a different experience this time.

The dry leaves were dark green with a rich umami smell, keeping in previous years, but I didn’t get the umami note in the steeped tea this time! Instead, the tea was more grassy and sweet, with what I thought was a floral note. I thought it was interesting that I didn’t get any umami this time since it was present before.

I do wonder, however, if I’m starting to see floral notes everywhere, especially after my experience with the Sayama black teas that have such amazing floral notes. I’m not sure if there’s a change in the processing method or the climate, but I did expect to review my notes and see very similar things!

But I will be slowly drinking through the green teas before moving to the black teas so I’m excited to see what happens next.