Hi friends, it’s been a while. I intended to at least blog weekly about what sencha I was drinking but life got very intense for a while and everything blog related went on pause. But, I was still drinking tea so I thought I would do one round up of the three teas that I’ve drunk since then!

Although I’ve not been blogging about tea, I have been trying to get back in the habit of writing my thoughts on a physical notebook while drinking tea. I’ve developed a habit of starting my day with tea, which is a nice calm moment before anything occurs, but I tend to drink my tea quickly, while reading or crocheting (or checking my phone, if I’m not good at putting it away). Having to write things down helps me to slow down and focus on the tea itself – I’ve found that compared to a few years ago, I’m less able to pick out notes! Really, even something like tea tasting is a use it or lose it habit!

First up we have the sayama kaori, which smelled rather tame. But the tea itself was a nice bright green with grassy and umami notes. It’s one of the few teas that I didn’t find sweet, which made it a nice change of pace from the other senchas.

One thing I noticed about this tea is that the tea leaves seemed finer than the rest, which meant that my T2 tea maker had issues pouring the tea and the second steep was slightly bitter from an extended steeping time.

The second tea is the fukumidori (tea 101 post), which I also found different from the others. The first sip of this tea made me think “fruity”, which tracks with my first review of the tea where I said there was a citrus note. But this “fruity” note does not mean it’s like a tea steeped with fruits – it’s really just a note in this tea that made me think of fruits.

Overall, I thought the fukumidori this year was a nice, refreshing tea that has a constant flavour profile across steeps.

The last tea, which I drank after a very, very hard week, was the okuharuka (tea 101 post). The okuharuka cultivar is one that I always look forward to because of the unpredictable floral notes. While I have found other cultivars that have the floral notes (and the black tea versions definitely deliver this in spades), okuharuka will always have a special place in my heart for being the first sencha cultivar that taught me just how varied the taste profile of sencha can be.

This year, I found the tea leaves to have a rich, refreshing smell, which was very welcome on a queasy stomach. The tea had a clean taste that helped cut through the richness of a buttery sugar danish that I was (unadvisedly) eating. It was sweet and grassy with just a hint of umami. While I didn’t get a floral note this year, I still enjoyed this tea very much.

And that wraps up the 2025 sencha that I had the pleasure of trying. Drinking them brought small moments of joy and comfort that helped carry me through the past few weeks. I have a few black tea versions, so I’m thinking about how to best enjoy them and, if possible, write about them as well.