Kimberley's Kyusu

In my last Sakura Sessions post I told you all that just like the Sakura season is coming to an end, so too is this series, until next year. I also told you all that I still had three blends from Obubu Tea Farms that I wanted to feature before I rounded off the series. The last post for this series featured the first of those three, which was their Hoji Sakura Sencha. Today however, I’ll be featuring their Sakura Mint Tisane, a sample of which was very kindly sent to me by my friend Cameron (@tea.n.pugs) over on Instagram. 

”This herbal tea is made from Wazuka’s wild cherry tree leaves, roasted blossoms and wild mint. It has a very gentle, spring-like, flowery flavour and a refreshing mouthfeel. The fantastic aroma of the roasted blossoms makes this herbal tea very soothing and relaxing. It doesn’t contain any tea and as such, this product is 100% caffeine free and can be enjoyed hot or cold.” – Obubu Tea

My main worry I had going into this session is that usually mint is a huge trigger for my migraines and there are only certain levels of it I can manage before. Luckily I need not have worried, as the mint in this blend is very much on the softer and sweeter end of things and only gets overly stronger if it is left to brew for too long, so luckily it didn’t end up triggering a migraine attack at all. With the aroma of the mint being quite strong in the dry aroma, I expected it to be the most powerful element of the overall flavour profile. However it in fact took way more of a backseat and the roasted sakura elements of this blend were much more prominent.

I was incredibly happy about this, because I loved the roasted blossoms in the Hoji Sakura Sencha and I had hoped they would be just as prominent in this blend as they were in that one, which they absolutely were. I would love to try them steeped on their own one day… maybe I’ll have to try home roasting some blossoms at some point in the future.

Its flavour profile is soft, sweet, floral and subtly fruity (dried cherries) with fantastic roasted underpinning, all of which can be attributed to the sakura elements within the blend. The mint is soft and smooth but it’s what makes this blend so refreshing. It is both sweet and savoury with a herbaceous quality to it which does a great job of helping to keep this blend well rounded and stops it from being overly sweet.

It’s incredibly relaxing to drink when steeped hot, which is how I chose to drink it during this session. I was shocked by how many times I was able to re steep this and still get balanced flavourful cups of it, I used one of my biggest kyusus and was able to do four full steeps in total with the sample bag I had. Before I had even finished this session, I was straight on the Obubu website to order more.

Sadly it isn’t currently available but this listing is still up on their website so I am hopeful that they might bring it back at some point in the future. I would really love to experiment with this tea and see what changes when you cold brew or iced it. It was incredibly refreshing even when brewed hot, thanks to the mint and the long lasting cooling effect it leaves behind  that builds after each sip. I can only imagine how perfectly refreshing this could be iced during the warmer months.

Sadly this blend is not currently available over on the Obubu Tea website but if you want to keep an eye on it for when it hopefully comes back you can find it here.

Until next time, Happy Steeping – Kimberley