Ratings and Reviews of Shirakawa Gyokuro

Not my cup of tea, amd miss the Gyokuros of old. This one taste like sweet wheatgrass, as the green chlorophyll taste is very prominent. For most people, they will love it.

Really great gyokuro. One of the best I've had.

I've drank many teas in my life: white teas, sencha greens, a few gyokuro's, different quality matcha's, etc... So I thought I had a pretty solid idea of how teas tasted. And then I got this one...

This is a very special tea. I had no idea tea could even taste like this: big, buttery, solid and evolving. With a long aftertaste, where other teas have long lost theirs.

I brew it with a small shiboridashi teapot, 5 grams tea, 80 ml of bottled water around 50 degrees Celsius. Perfect that way for about 5 servings.

Highly recommended for that special tea moment.

WOW, I am so Happy to have found O-Cha online, I use to live in Japan for five years back in the 90's, and how i missed that local green tea. Since then I have buying Gyokuro from Teavana, and let me tell you, once I got my Shirakawa Uji tea, talk about night and day difference. I am not sure where Teavana gets there green tea, but from now on I would rather and will get my tea straight from the source. The taste is just phenomenal. O-Cha has a customer for life. Oh and one thing, the shipping had me at a surprise, it super fast from Japan, very very Happy.

One of my favorite green teas. No bitter taste. Simply delicious!

I am using a shiboridashi and a thermometer or the shibordashi and a yuzamashi to prepare gyokuro. Wonderful tea. Simple and easy to control process. Could not imagine this quality of tea from any other source since I live on the Oregon Coast.

Yum on this tea ... Highly recommend on this one ... I use 1 tsp leaves n 20 ml cold spring water ... Let it sit 7 min ... Wow sooo sweet ...I brew about 6 times in less water ...I love this tea so much ... Thank you O-cha for great Tea !!!

My second pack of Uji Shirakawa Gyokuro. I recommend this to all lovers of Gyokuro. It is an experience not to be missed.

Amazing! Remarkably sweet and rich, with aromas of corn and grilled vegetables, not even a hint of bitterness. This may be the smoothest gyokuro I've tasted - a personal favorite.

I recommend brewing it with a high leaf-to-water ratio, particularly for the first infusion.  I just barely submerge the leaves with 140 degree (F) water for 2-3 minutes. You only get a few drops of tea, but they're exquisite.

At the first infusion you are met with a seemingly mild and gentle tea, slowly unraveling its rather thick umami flavor combined with balanced sweetness and vegetal notes. The tea will then start to guide you through its elegant and complex spectrum of flavors, ranging from sweetness and the savory to the freshly floral. Give it your attention, and it will give you so much in return. Also the aftertaste is some of the best I have ever experienced – it is a marvellously delicious and quite distinct reminescence of flowers and maybe even a hint of vanilla, that lingers through after every subsequent infusion.




Upon starting to believe one has figured out what this tea has to offer as one finishes the second steeping, it will prove you wrong as it starts unveiling yet new flavors for you to explore. Now in my humble and novice experience with different Gyokuro's, I often get the impression of the third infusion – at least from the lower grade ones – as being somehow a copy the first two but lacking the umami flavor. This tea, however, still has so much more to give, and it felt almost as if it went through a metamorphosis from the second to the third brew. While the first two infusions are packed with umami, the third brew offers some deep and surprisingly fresh oceanic notes combined with some really vivid vegetal ones. It feels as if this tea takes me from the treetops in a vast forest, to the sea bed at the bottom of the ocean and back again. This tea was a mindblowing experience. It is as if it was somewhat shy at the very beginning, but as it «gets to know you» it will rapidly start to reveal all its layers of flavor and prove that it has so much to offer, yielding at least five delicious brews each time.