Contest Grade Matcha by Noritual Lab
My mum came over today and brought me a birthday gift - the Contest Grade Matcha by Noritual Lab. I was very intrigued, I have never heard of Contest Grade before - just Culinary, Premium, and Ceremonial. I searched a bit online and only found one other product using this label. Maybe it is an emerging new trend to call your matcha this if it is a ceremonial one that won some contests and awards?
General Info
This one has reportedly won two taste contests - it was awarded the gold medal at the International Premium Tea Appraisal and the "One-Star Award" at the Great Taste in UK according to the company. I can't find anything about the International Premium Tea Appraisal online, sadly.
The matcha is from Yame, Kyushu in Japan and made of the youngest leaves of the first harvest, shaded for 40 days (according to the label). Super interesting: They mention that only Okumidori leaves are used, which is a hybrid between Yabukita and โShizuoka Zairai #16โณ. I haven't seen any other matcha I have bought mention the exact variety of tea leaves before.
It's an Amazon exclusive store (sadly; I myself do not have an Amazon account anymore for 2 years now, but my mother keeps ordering) and costs 27,90 Euro at the time of this writing. That is remarkably low for an award-worthy ceremonial matcha. It comes in a little tin, but is filled to 40 grams. That is unusual - usually these tins sell 30g of matcha. Cool to have 10g more.
The tin contains a tiny folded manual on how to make matcha correctly. Pretty cute.
Color and Smell
The color is a very saturated and full green. No yellow tint in sight. It looks amazing, healthy, nutritious, fresh.
I really love its scent. I think it must be one of the best matcha powders I have ever smelled. You can already detect the high level of umami and sweetness just smelling the powder in the container. It reminds me of pine, a bit of candied walnuts, if that makes sense. The smell while you drink it reminds me of delicious melted butter in the pan.
Taste
The taste has something of that melted butter, too. The feeling is very creamy, dense, very buttery. I think this is also my first matcha that has a more noticable sweetness that is overt enough even for first time matcha drinkers to notice. Usually, when I talk about a subtle sweetness in a matcha, it is a tiny bit sweeter than other matchas, or sweet for a matcha if you know several brands. But this one is stronger, without feeling like there is any added sugar. Drinking it makes me feel like I am drinking something akin to high quality, high % cocoa powder hot chocolate (with the dark brown fine powder that's bitter, not the Nesquik stuff).
It reminds me very much of a Cha-Do matcha that I've been trying to get my hands on again for this blog, but it's not been getting restocked for a while now! That one tasted and felt very similar and blew me away. It too reminded me of fancy hot chocolate.
I've also tried it in an iced matcha latte, and drinking it reminded me of eating green tea mochi :)
Conclusion
I think this is an incredible price and amount for such a high quality, amazing looking, smelling and tasting matcha. This must be one of the most affordable ceremonials out there that have such a special and intense taste. I can only recommend it. I would love though if the company got off of Amazon or at least offered their matcha somewhere else, too.
๐ต๐ต๐ต๐ต๐ต 5 out of 5 matcha bowls.