Shaded, unrolled and milled (tencha to matcha)
The route defined by an omission. Everything else in green tea rolls the leaf; this one deliberately does not, and the whole product depends on that refusal.
What makes this route what it is
No rolling, and the omission is irreversible in one direction only. A route can always decline to roll a leaf; it can never un-roll one. That is why a producer must decide before the leaf leaves the steamer whether the intake is going to be sencha or tencha, and why the decision is effectively taken months earlier still, when the covers went on.
The route, in order
Each note describes what the step is doing in this route. The same operation does a different job in a different chain.
- 1.
Shading
The only step in the route that happens in the field, and the only one that cannot be added later. No factory operation reproduces its effect on an unshaded leaf.
Selective picking of the softest shaded leaf. Shading has already reduced the yield severely, so what is taken has to be worth taking.
Volume tencha for culinary grades is machine-harvested from shaded fields, which is most of the price difference between a ceremonial-grade powder and a baking one.
Identical to the sencha steamer at this point. The two routes are the same tea until the next step.
- 4.
Drying
A slow oven in still air, with the leaf never worked or twisted. This is the position where the sencha route rolls, and leaving it empty is the whole of what makes tencha tencha.
Vein and stem are separated from leaf flesh. They grind differently and would show as pale flecks in the powder, so removing them is a requirement of the milling rather than a grading nicety.
Granite wheels turning slowly enough that the powder does not warm. Speed is limited by heat, not by the machine, which is why output per mill is measured in tens of grams an hour.
How it differs from its neighbours
A route described on its own teaches very little. The useful fact is always which other route it is nearly identical to, and where it leaves it.
This route leaves out an operation the other performs. Omissions are usually irreversible — the step cannot be added back later.
The sencha route rolls at this position and this route dries flat instead. Everything downstream — the de-stemming, the milling, the existence of the product at all — is a consequence of that empty slot, and there is no later step at which the omission could be reconsidered.
This route inserts an operation the other does not have. Nothing is substituted and nothing is removed.
Weeks of shading before the first pluck. It is the only operation in any of these routes that acts on a living plant rather than on harvested leaf, and it is therefore the only one whose timing is measured in weeks rather than minutes.
Where it goes wrong
A tencha oven that runs hot or fast browns the leaf, and browning shows in a powder far more plainly than in a leaf because the whole of it is consumed. Grinding too quickly is the other failure: a stone mill turning fast heats the powder and flattens its aroma, which is why the mills run at a speed that yields a very small quantity per hour and why that speed is a cost rather than a piece of theatre.
In full
Matcha production begins in the field, weeks before anything is picked, with cover placed over the bushes to cut the light reaching the leaf. The plant responds by shifting its composition towards the amino acids associated with savoury depth, and the leaf darkens. What follows is a green tea route with one operation missing: leaf is steamed, and then it is dried in a slow oven WITHOUT being rolled, in still air, so it dries flat and brittle rather than being twisted into a needle. That flat, unrolled, papery material is tencha, and it is a finished tea in its own right that almost nobody drinks. Its veins and stems are separated out, and the remaining leaf flesh is ground between slow-turning granite wheels into a powder fine enough to suspend in water. The whole product is an argument for a single omission: a rolled leaf has ruptured cells and a tightened structure, and neither grinds into anything but a coarse, gritty flour.