This interesting green tea was one of my Christmas pressies the other month.

It’s produced by a Portuguese concern, Chá Camélia. You can read all about them here.

The package also included a free 10 gram sample of their Oolong, Pipachá, a tea I looked at in a previous post.

Chá Camélia’s notes tell us that Nosso Chá is an organic green tea made from their spring harvest material, and “…is the result of the first harvest of green tea in continental Portugal.” They go on to say that they use “…only organic, artisanal production methods…“, and that “…Nosso Chá is picked by hand and processed in an Asian style.“

The dry leaf surprised me with its aroma that suggested milk chocolate, but after a few seconds in the warmed up pot it was all about honey nut cornflakes, and a hint of that crisp, clean feel of the sea so well known to all lovers of Japanese green teas.

The small, fine leaves had me thinking that a fast initial infusion was the way to go.

More often than not small, fine leaves also means that a lot of dust and particulate ends up in your tea strainer, and that was certainly the case here. Right throughout the session I was having to clean my strainer in-between rounds.

The liquor was interesting to say the least. It was an interesting mix – on one hand there was that Longjing like sweet nuttiness, as well as that fresh seaweed note I mentioned earlier, but there was also something else, something that took a good while to pin down. It came to me in a flash – wheat beer! – a refreshing, crisp, but light taste sensation that triggered memories of hot summer days under parasols.

By the second steeping the body had really got its act together, and it peaked on the third infusion, weighing in at just shy of a lipsticker, not too shabby at all for a green tea.

From that point on, though, the tide was turning, but the usual assortment of cunning tricks and clever techniques managed to ensure that the final return on those 6½ grams of leaf was a very respectable 7 steepings.

In conclusion, then – the major point of interest as far as this tea goes has to be its terroir, to wit Portugal.

It might just be the case that the tea’s unusually heavy body for a green tea and that wheat beer taste component are down to the influence of the Portuguese terroir. I think I’ll have to file this one under “more tasty research needed“.

Watch this space, etc…