I just got some crazy expensive sencha (green tea) today that I ordered in a moment of tea-madness from Gypsy Tea. How expensive? It was $36 for 3.5 ounces (? there is some confusion surrounding this number, but we'll go with it) which multiplies out to $165 a pound. Holy Snap! My previous record for expensive tea was also a nice sencha, but scored at only $56 a pound. But really, to rationalize here, since I tend to go light on the leaves per cup, personal preference, I'll probably get about 100 cups of happiness out of this $36 of tea, from past measurements, which is only 36c a cup. Even if I doubled that estimate, it still beats the pants off of a coffee house drink, so I'm being frugal! Really! Heh. This tea is about as good as my previous record nice tea though, Rishi Sencha Superior, so I think I'll be going back to that one, assuming subsequent crops are as good.

My second rationalization was that I got a cute glass teapot with glass infuser free with my order, since they just redid their web shop. Since my last one broke and I wanted to replace it, rather than this being free stuff I didn't want, that cuts the cost of my tea in half! Woot! Let's just sweep that $165 a pound number deep under the carpet for now. It may be called out later when I need numbers backing up how much of a crazy tea snob I've become. Although I do like milk in my green tea, which I think might disqualify me. :-D

Hey, I just noticed both senchas are from Shizuoka, which isn't crazy because I think a lot of them do, but I also realized I've seen the tea fields in Shizuoka, from the Shinkansen. Groovy!