Matcha

Where it grows

The districts recorded against this tea, all of them in Japan. Elevation is given as the band the district is recorded at, not a measurement of the garden this leaf came from.

• Uji — 30–300 metres

  How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. Uji’s tea land is low-lying by international standards; the figures here are approximate and should be replaced with a sourced range before publication.

• Nishio — 0–100 metres

  How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

• Wazuka — 100–500 metres

  How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

The plants it is made from

Cultivar is the level below the variety group: a named selection of the tea plant, propagated as clones from one parent. Most consumer writing stops at the country and the category, which leaves out the layer that decides how the leaf behaves before anyone picks it.

• Yabukita — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

  Balanced rather than distinctive: a dependable base for sencha, which is precisely why it was planted so widely.

• Asahi — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

  Low-yielding, slow and vulnerable, with a fine soft leaf that grinds to a notably smooth matcha. Used for koicha-grade material where cost is not the constraint.

How it is made, in order

Read top to bottom: the list is the production sequence, and the sequence is what makes this tea its category rather than a neighbouring one. The same leaf from the same bush becomes a green tea or a black tea depending on where the heat falls relative to the bruising, so reordering these steps would not vary the tea — it would produce a different one.

1. 1. Shading — Restricts light to the growing leaf, shifting its amino-acid and polyphenol balance and deepening its colour before harvest.
2. 2. Steaming (Japanese fixation) — Denatures polyphenol oxidase using saturated steam, arresting oxidation without applying dry contact heat to the leaf surface.
3. 3. Drying — Reduces residual moisture to a level at which enzymatic, microbial and oxidative change effectively stops, stabilising the leaf for storage.
4. 4. De-stemming and de-veining — Separates leaf blade from stem and coarse vein, standardising the material that goes into the finished tea.
5. 5. Stone milling — Reduces tencha to a particle size of a few microns without heating the leaf enough to damage its aromatics or colour.

The route it is made by

The steps above are what happens; this is the named production route they belong to, with the other teas made the same way.

• 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.

  Where it is practised: Japanese, and concentrated in Uji, Nishio, Yame and Kagoshima. Powdered tea is made elsewhere by grinding ordinary green tea, which produces a different product by a different route.

What its chemistry turns on

Every true tea contains caffeine, catechins and amino acids, so listing them would say nothing about this one. What differs is what the processing above does to them — and that is the same list of steps, read for its chemistry instead of its craft.

The compounds that substantially decide what this tea is: Arginine, Caffeine, Carotenoids, Chlorophyll, Dimethyl sulfide, EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), Free amino acids, Glutamic acid, L-theanine, Leaf lipids, Pheophytin, Tea saponins.

• Shading
  • raises Arginine
  • raises Caffeine
  • raises Chlorophyll
  • raises Dimethyl sulfide
  • raises Free amino acids
  • raises Glutamic acid
  • raises L-theanine
  • raises Strecker aldehydes
  • lowers Carotenoids
  • lowers Catechins
  • lowers EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate)
  • lowers Flavonol glycosides
• Steaming (Japanese fixation)
  • creates Dimethyl sulfide
  • lowers Green-leaf volatiles
  • locks Chlorophyll
  • locks EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate)
• Drying
  • creates Strecker aldehydes
  • raises Beta-damascenone
  • raises Thearubigins
• De-stemming and de-veining
  • raises L-theanine
  • lowers Caffeine
  • lowers Strecker aldehydes
  • lowers Tea saponins

These are statements about the leaf and the cup. What any of these compounds does in a body is a different kind of question and is not answered here or on the pages linked from it.

History

Powdered tea reached Japan from Song-dynasty China with the monk Eisai around 1191, and survived in Japan after the practice died out in China itself. The tea ceremony developed around it over the following centuries, which is why matcha is culturally central in Japan and marginal in the country that invented it.

TeaHQ synthesis — TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.

Brewing

• Whisking (bowl-prepared powdered tea)

  2–4 g/100 ml · 70–80 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Open in the brew assistant

Where this tea sits in the history

Events on TeaHQ’s chronology that this tea belongs to. Each carries its date and what kind of date it is, because a good many of the confident years in tea writing are traditional ones.

• Roughly the tenth to thirteenth centuries — Whisked powdered tea and the Song tea competitions
• Returned from China c. 1191; wrote Kissa Yōjōki in the early thirteenth century — Eisai, and what he actually did
• From around the sixteenth century — Uji starts shading the bushes
• The technique matures across the Edo period and is mechanised in the twentieth century — Tencha, the stone mill, and why matcha is expensive
• From the 2000s, with acute supply pressure from the mid-2020s — The matcha boom, and the shortage it produced

Vessels this tea suits

Recorded against the tea rather than against a brewing style, because the vessel does not always follow from the method — a whisk needs lateral room whatever the schedule says, and compressed leaf needs a pick before any method applies at all.

• Chawan (matcha bowl) — Not a preference. A whisk needs lateral room to suspend the powder, and a mug does not provide it.
• Chasen (bamboo whisk) — A milk frother is a workable substitute; a metal whisk is not, and will mark the bowl.
• Matcha sieve — Compacted clumps do not break apart under a whisk; sieving is the only step that removes them.
• Stone tea mill — Slow grinding keeps the powder cool, and heat during milling is what dulls the aroma of the finished tea.
• Jian ware tea bowl (jianzhan) — The historical bowl for whisked powdered tea; froth reads clearly against a near-black glaze.
• Hagi ware — A crazed, open-bodied ware widely used for tea bowls, which changes colour visibly over years of use.
• Oxygen absorber — Ground leaf has an enormous surface area, which is why matcha is packed commercially with an absorber and usually a nitrogen flush.
• Vacuum canister — Domestic storage for a powder that goes flat quickly; the modest claim about less air in the container is the true one.

Common mistakes

• Using water at or near boiling, which produces bitterness nothing can undo
• Skipping the sift, which leaves lumps
• Storing an opened tin at room temperature, where it dulls within weeks

When the cup goes wrong

Written against green tea as a category rather than against this tea in particular, and worked back from the symptom to the likely causes in order. 37 apply to the category; the first 6 are shown.

• I bought a big bag to save money and it was stale before I finished it — A large quantity bought at a good unit price faded well before it was drunk, so the saving turned into waste.
• I bought a water filter for my tea and it changed nothing — A filter jug or tap filter was bought specifically to improve the tea, and the cup tastes the same as it did before — with the same dullness, the same film and the same scale in the kettle.
• I have too many teas open and most of them are going stale — A dozen or more packets are open at once, three or four get drunk regularly, and the rest fade quietly on the shelf until they are thrown away.
• Leaves stick to the cup, the pot and my teeth — Fine leaf clings to the inside of the vessel, comes through into the cup, and ends up in the last mouthful.
• My bamboo whisk is losing tines — Fine bamboo tines snap off during whisking and turn up in the bowl, and the whisk feels stiff and splayed.
• My cold brew tastes like faintly flavoured water — After a night in the fridge the jug is pale and tastes of very little, with none of the sweetness cold brewing is supposed to give.

Every diagnosed brewing problem

If you like this

Grouped by why they were suggested, strongest reason first. Nothing here is a blended score — a suggestion appears under the best reason that exists for it, and never under a weaker one as well.

Compare this tea with another

Written comparisons

Where TeaHQ has set this tea against another in full, rather than deriving the comparison. Each one is a written page with the points of difference argued out.

• Green tea powder vs matcha — Both are green and both are powder, and only one of them is matcha. The difference is three production decisions that happen before any grinding, and it is visible in the colour. Put the two side by side
• Gyokuro vs matcha: where the money goes — Both are expensive shaded Japanese teas and the cost sits in different places, which changes what you should check before buying. Put the two side by side
• Japanese matcha vs Chinese powdered tea — Powdered tea was Chinese first and the practice died out there. What is sold as Chinese matcha today is a different product with a shared ancestor. Put the two side by side
• Matcha vs green tea — Posed as a choice between two things, this question has no answer, because matcha is green tea — it sits inside the category rather than beside it. What is worth knowing is the one structural difference behind the confusion: with matcha you swallow the leaf, and with every other green tea you throw it away.
• Matcha vs Gyokuro — Both are shaded Japanese green teas and both taste savoury rather than grassy. The difference is what happens after shading: one is steeped as leaf, the other de-stemmed, milled and drunk whole. Put the two side by side
• Matcha vs hojicha — Two Japanese green teas at opposite ends of everything: one shaded and milled, the other roasted from the coarsest leaf. They are the strongest and gentlest things in the Japanese range. Put the two side by side
• Matcha vs sencha — Both are Japanese green tea and only one of them is drunk as an infusion. The difference is not grind — it runs back to how the bushes were grown. Put the two side by side
• Matcha vs sencha: which is stronger — Strength means several different things and matcha wins on most of them, for a structural reason rather than a chemical one. Put the two side by side
• Shincha vs matcha — Two Japanese teas bought as seasonal indulgences, one defined by its harvest date and one by a process that takes months. Both reward buying in season, and both are more perishable than a buyer usually expects. Put the two side by side
• Tencha vs matcha — Tencha is matcha before milling. They are the same leaf at two stages, and knowing this explains most of what determines matcha quality. Put the two side by side
• What is matcha? — Matcha is shaded green tea leaf, de-stemmed and stone-milled to a powder, then whisked into water and drunk whole. Every part of that sentence is load-bearing, and powdered green tea that skips any of it is not matcha. Put the two side by side

Where this tea is drunk

Documented practices that name this tea. Each page describes what is done and by whom, and separates what is recorded from what is repeated.

• Chanoyu (Japanese tea ceremony) — A formalised practice of preparing and serving whisked matcha, organised around hospitality, attention and the arrangement of a whole occasion — of which the tea is one element among many.
• Japanese tea farming practice — A highly mechanised, tightly specified growing and processing culture organised around cultivar selection, shading and steaming — and a smallholder structure that is under real demographic pressure.
• Song whisked tea and the tea competitions — The period in which tea was whisked to a froth in a bowl and judged competitively on the whiteness of that froth and how long it clung to the rim — which is why the prized bowls were black, and why Japanese matcha exists.
• Sweets with tea, and matcha as a flavour — Why a bitter bowl of tea is served with something intensely sweet, how the sweet is chosen for the season, and how matcha travelled out of the tea room to become a flavour on everything from ice cream to a chocolate bar.
• The chanoyu schools, and why TeaHQ does not adjudicate between them — Japanese tea practice is transmitted through named schools with headmasters, licences and fee structures — which means there is no neutral account of correct procedure, and an outside catalogue that gives one has silently picked a side.
• The global matcha boom — A worldwide surge in demand for a product whose supply cannot be increased quickly — because the raw material must be shaded, harvested once and stone-milled — and the grade vocabulary that grew up to paper over the gap.

Prepared drinks built on this tea

A drink is a recipe rather than a leaf: the tea above is one ingredient in it, and the method, the additions and the ratios belong to the drink rather than to this page.

• Matcha latte — Whisked matcha combined with steamed or cold milk. A modern café preparation rather than a traditional one, and the drink through which most people outside Japan first meet matcha — usually sweetened, and often made with a grade that would be harsh drunk plain.

Journeys featuring this tea

• Discover Japanese tea — Someone who has had sencha or matcha and wants the rest of the picture.
• Understanding matcha — Someone who drinks matcha lattes, or has bought a tin and a whisk, and wants to know what the thing actually is.
• Learning to taste tea — Someone who can tell they like one tea more than another and cannot say why, and would like to be able to.

Guides covering this tea

• Making matcha at home
• How tea spread across Asia
• Refrigerating and freezing tea: when it genuinely helps and when it is a mistake
• Storing matcha, the most fragile thing in the cupboard
• Ceremonial grade, and the other words nobody defines
• Tea and Japanese Zen
• What a best-before date on tea is, as a category of food labelling
• How old is this tea? Reading age from the leaf when there is no date
• How tea is sold by quantity: grams, jin, tongs and cost per cup
• Buying tea as a gift, which combines every risk at once
• Vegetal, grassy and marine: the green family and the seaweed question
• What colours a tea liquor, and why colour is a poor guide to strength
• What matcha should cost, and what you are paying for
• Choosing a matcha without a grading system to lean on
• Cold matcha, and the mixing problem
• Matcha and coffee, compared on what can actually be compared
• Using someone else's tea practice