Having ran out of a previous bit of sencha I had acquired from a tea store in Denmark (gift from my father), I was in the market to find something similar, and had wanted to try out Tealyra after being recommended the store/merchant from a coworker. I, like many I presume, are still mourning the loss of Teavana. Perhaps my age and nostalgia for it paints it in a fairer light (becuase lets be honest, how authentic can a tea chain owned by Starbucks really be?), but I do fondly recall all of the teas I could easily purchase there and their excellent selection of loose leaf teas, and have been searching for a retailer similar, and I had hoped that tealyra was such a replacement. I had ordered two white teas (my favorite type) and this sencha to give them a go, all loose leaf. This sencha was probably the best of the three, I wasn't all too impressed with the whites I had gotten, but I'll write more about the other two elsewhere.
_Image of dry tea needed
The Sencha Tenkaichi was rather fine, far finer than previous senchas I've had, with a lot of powderized leaves and stems, little to no larger leaves. After prepping my tea pot the contents looked more like the end result of scraping a tea brick, and after finishing the tea the contents resembled a wad of algea or seaweed. Nothing necessarily wrong with any of that per-se, I don't mind having "floaters" in my cup from the small bits that make it through my teapots filter, but there is definately a limit to how much one can take before their cup begins to resemble more of a soup than a beverage.
The flavor of the tea has a faint earthy nutty flavor, similar to that of an oolong or rock tea but fainter. With the addition of course of grassy-ness that you'd expect from a member of the green tea family, overally a very positive flavor profile and one I enjoy, I just wish it were a little stronger, it seemingly requires more tea in the pot than I'd normally want to divulge to get the flavor to the level I prefer. A longer steep to meet this need is out of the question, I found it gets quite tannin-y and bitter if steeped too long, or with too hot of water.
Overall, good tea, I would rate it: 7.5/10