Review of Yamamotoyama Genmai-cha Green Tea with Roasted Brown Rice

Yamamotoyama genmai-chai green tea with roasted brown rice is a tea with a very long name that can be described in a very short phrase: it is delicious. If you like green tea, and if you'd be interested in trying something a little different, you may become as much a fan of this tea as I am. The brown rice gives the tea a subtle nutty flavor which combines perfectly with the flavor of the tea itself.

Ingredients

The tea contains green tea and roasted brown rice. That's it.

Packaging

Each tea bag is individually wrapped in an aluminum wrapper, which keeps it fresh. The 16-tea-bag box has an attractive design, with English on the front and Japanese on the back.

Company website

Yamamotoyama of America

Where to buy

I've bought this tea in a mom-and-pop corner produce store in San Francisco and in a Japanese grocery store in Queens, New York, where it cost $1.79 for a 16-tea-bag box.

While it may be hard to find in many places, it is available on Amazon.com, and you can also order it directly from the company's website.

If you order a 16-tea-bag box from Amazon, the cost of the shipping may be more than the cost of the tea itself. At the time I wrote this article, the cost of a 16-bag box ranged from $2.40 to $5.99 on Amazon, depending on which merchant you select, but the price after adding on the shipping charge came out to $7.93 to $8.44.

A more economical option would be to order a larger quantity. If you want to have a lot of this tea, or if you split a shipment with some tea-loving friends, you can get a better per-box price.

A pack of 12 boxes of the tea (with 16 tea bags in each box, for a total of 192 tea bags) was $21.18 on Amazon at the time I wrote this article, which came out to a very reasonable $1.76 per 16-tea-bag box. Best of all, the order ships from Amazon's own grocery, so it is eligible for free shipping for orders totaling over $25. Buy a book to read while you sip your tea, and you should be all set. The only catch is that the 12-pack is not always available.

Amazon also offers a 90-bag value pack which is not eligible for free shipping. With shipping, the 90-bag pack cost (at the time this article was written) about $19.

How I discovered this tea

I have been drinking green tea (in addition to brown tea) for years because of all the health benefits green tea is reported to have. I also like the taste.

When I was living in San Francisco, I used to buy my green tea in the supermarket, but one day I ran out and didn't have a chance to get over to Safeway. I stopped at the little family run corner produce store. They had a small section of non-produce gourmet items and I braced myself for a sky-high price -- but what could I do, I needed my green tea fix. To my surprise, one of the brands, which I had never heard of, was very inexpensive. Not expecting much, I decided to give it a try.

I loved it! It was much better than any green tea I had ever bought in the supermarket. That's when Yamamotoyama tea became my regular tea, and the corner produce store, my regular supplier.

All this time I was buying the plain green tea, and was happy in my new tea-buying routine. Happy, that is, until one day I went down to the produce store, and they were out of the Yamamotoyama regular (plain) green tea.

All they had was the green tea with roasted brown rice. To be honest, I thought that sounded rather disgusting - -why would I want rice in my tea? But, once again, I was desperate for my green tea fix, so I bought a box, not expecting much.

And again, I was surprised by how delicious the tea was. The roasted brown rice tea became my new regular tea, and everything was fine ... until I moved to New York.

Another tea crisis! I bought other green teas, but was missing my Yamamotoyama brown rice tea. I was still trying to resign myself to this being one more thing I had to give up when I switched coasts, when one day, I discovered a small Japanese grocery store in the neighborhood, and it had a shelf full of the Yamamotoyama teas. And once again, all was right in the land.

I hadn't known that Amazon also sold the tea until just today, while I was doing research for this article. I'm glad that I learned about that, because that means that no matter where I go, I can bring my favorite tea with me.

Moral of the story: If you love green tea, don't wait years to try this.