Tarui Tea Farm Ranryu

Tarui Tea Farm Ranryu

This tea has a fancy name: orchid dragon (蘭龍).

The name comes from its floral aroma.

I received this sample from Ian of Yunomi.life.

The tea is made with the Shizu inzatsu 131 cultivar. It originally comes from Assam, I would consider it to be rare.

This cultivar’s most notable characteristic is its floral aroma.

Ranryū is an organic fukamushi sencha from Nearai town, Shizuoka prefecture.

I believe that the maker is Nihon Nosan. I met them at a previous World Tea Expo.

The orchid dragon

Because a lot of things happened today, I couldn’t drink any tea until now.

It’s already past dinner, but I can’t wait to drink a green tea.

This one seems very promising, since as soon as I opened the package I could tell that it is from the first harvest.

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It has the familiar sweet aroma of a shincha.

The tea leaves also look good. Small and thin, with an intense green color.

I used the following parameters: 4 grams of tea, 60 ml (2 oz) of water at 80°C (176°F), for an infusion of 40 seconds.

As one would imagine, the wet leaves have a floral aroma.

To be honest, I don’t remember ever smelling an orchid, so I can’t tell you if that’s what this tea smells like.

But it’s less powerful than jasmine. Lightly sweet and fresh.

Not very marine either for a sencha.

Tarui Tea Farm Ranryu brewed

Once poured into the cup, I can see a pale yellow color.

I find the taste to be fresh and floral, but slightly astringent. Is that why there’s a dragon in its name?

The delicate aroma contrasts with a brisk flavor.

It has some body and low sweetness as well.

I used 30 seconds for the second infusion.

Now there’s a light bitterness, it reminds me of a black tea.

I decided to lower the infusion time to 20 seconds for the third infusion.

This time there’s less overall flavor, but still some astringency.

For the last infusion I just used 10 seconds and the same temperature as before.

I liked this one better than the second and third, because it’s lighter.

The best infusion was the first one. I finally drank a good green tea today 🙂

While it has a good aroma, this tea can easily become bitter.

One way to diminish the bitterness is to use a lower temperature, but there’s a trade-off because the aroma would not be as intense.

Nevertheless it’s a rare cultivar that’s worth trying out.

Here’s the product page from Yunomi.

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