Tencha

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.

• Yamato (Nara) — 200–600 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.

• Ujihikari — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

  Soft, thin leaf that responds strongly to extended shading. Low yield and demanding to grow, and grown almost exclusively for gyokuro and tencha.

• 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.

• Kyomidori — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

  Strong colour retention under shade and after milling, with a mild, sweet profile. Grown mainly in and around the Kyoto tea district.

• Izumi — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

  Fine soft leaf under shade, used for tencha and ground matcha rather than for rolled sencha.

• Yamatomidori — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

  Selected for performance under extended shade rather than for open-field yield, which is a different set of traits: soft thin leaf, a strong colour response to covering, and low productivity.

• Samidori — Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

  Frequently blended with Gokou: Samidori for body, Gokou for aroma. Single-cultivar matcha is the exception rather than the norm.

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.

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, Chlorophyll, Dimethyl sulfide, Free amino acids, L-theanine.

• 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

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

The base material for matcha and the reason the shading tradition exists at all. Tencha production in Uji predates gyokuro by centuries, and gyokuro was created by applying tencha’s shading to leaf intended for steeping instead of milling.

Brewing

• Western brewing (teapot or mug)

  1.5–2.5 g/100 ml · 65–75 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Needs: Western teapot

  Open in the brew assistant

• Gongfu brewing (gaiwan)

  3–4 g/100 ml · 75–85 °C · 4 authored infusions

  Needs: Gaiwan

  Open in the brew assistant

• Kyusu brewing (Japanese style)

  2.5–4 g/100 ml · 65–75 °C · 3 authored infusions

  Needs: Kyusu

  Open in the brew assistant

• Low-temperature brewing (gyokuro style)

  5–9 g/100 ml · 50–62 °C · 3 authored infusions

  Needs: Houhin, Shiboridashi, Kyusu, Thermometer

  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.

• 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.

• Stone tea mill — Tencha is the input to the mill; it is not matcha until the granite has sheared it.

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.

• Tencha vs gyokuro — Two shaded Uji teas that diverge at a single step, and the divergence explains why one becomes powder and the other does not. 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

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.
• Chatsumi — the Japanese tea-picking season — The eighty-eighth night, the first flush, the song every Japanese schoolchild knows, and the modern reality of a harvest performed almost entirely by machine and celebrated with a hand-picking that is mostly for the cameras.
• Edo-period sencha — The eighteenth-century Uji process that produced the needle-shaped steamed green tea Japan now drinks — invented by a named grower, marketed by a named merchant, and adopted by a counter-cultural movement that wanted nothing to do with the tea ceremony.
• 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.
• 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.

Journeys featuring this tea

• Understanding matcha — Someone who drinks matcha lattes, or has bought a tin and a whisk, and wants to know what the thing actually is.

Guides covering this tea

• Shade, and the two completely unrelated reasons it is used
• Storing matcha, the most fragile thing in the cupboard
• Ceremonial grade, and the other words nobody defines
• What shading does to a tea bush, and why it changes the chemistry
• What matcha should cost, and what you are paying for