What is Matcha?
If you’re new to matcha, welcome!
If you are already a tea person, we hope you find this article novel in answering the question “what is matcha?”
The following perspectives are based on over two decades of cumulative experience from the team: studying at the Tea Institute at Penn State, hundreds of conversations with experts, travel to origin, and working in product development in the food and beverage industry. So, what is matcha?
Tea Master, what is matcha?
Matcha is a special powdered green tea from Japan that’s used in Chanoyu (茶の湯) Japanese Tea Ceremony. The two largest schools of Japanese Tea Ceremony are Omotesenke and Urasenke. Each school has variations on the exact preparation and presentation of the matcha, but both draw on similar aesthetic and philosophical ideologies largely rooted in Zen Buddhism. Matcha can be prepared in two ways: as thin tea or usucha (薄茶) and thick tea or koicha (濃茶), and is usually served with a Wagashi (和菓子) sweet.
While matcha preparation and presentation are the center of the tea ceremony, the tea itself is usually not the main focus. It’s a highly ritualized tradition centering on intentionality and hospitality, reaching deep into the appreciation of related arts such as flower arrangement, calligraphy, incense, and ceramics. Full of implicit gestures of respect and grace, a tea ceremony practitioner will never turn their back to a guest unless specifically to remove the wastewater and used/dirty implements.
The occasion to drink matcha is to create one moment in time that can never be replicated, ichi go ichi e (一期一会), and bring everyone’s minds and bodies to the here and now. To cultivate a sense of presence.
11/11/1983 Trip to Japan, Lunch at Prime Minister Nakasone's Private Retreat with Nancy and Ronald Reagan, Yasuhiro Nakasone, Mrs. Nakasone. Photo by: White House Photographic Office. 1981-1989 Source: Wikimedia Commons
Tea Farmer, what is matcha?
Matcha is a special tea from Japan that’s shade-grown and then milled into a fine powder. Specialty matcha production is a labor of love that requires careful attention at every stage of production. One of the most prized characteristics of matcha is the umami taste. This starts with the soil. Nitrogen-rich soil is critical to increasing the concentration of amino acids in the leaf which help give it strong umami characteristics. From here, the tea plants need to be carefully looked after, protected from frost and eventually shade-covered. The tea farmer will shade the tea plants 20-40 days before harvest to boosts the umami flavor even more and gives it a more vibrant and bold green color.
Uji, Japan 2022
The best matcha is harvested in the spring. Matcha can be harvested by hand or by mechanized methods with varying precision and yield. After harvesting the tea is steamed, dried, sometimes lightly roasted, and de-stemmed to create a product called ten cha (碾茶) or unmilled matcha. Ten cha is then milled on a traditional millstone called an ishi usu (石臼) to create matcha powder.
Botanist, what is matcha?
Matcha comes from different cultivars of the tea plant Camellia sinensis.
Tea plant (チャ、チャノキ), Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture (長崎歴史文化博物館). Source: Wikimedia Commons
The government of Japan has a list of registered Japanese tea cultivars, a subsection of which are considered suitable for making matcha. There are tradeoffs to using different cultivars of tea plants including taste, color, yield, fragility, frost resistance, and many others. The most common cultivar for making matcha is yabukita, and other popular single origin cultivars include asahi, samidori, and okumidori cultivar.
Shading is by far the most unique farming step that sets matcha apart from other teas, especially when considering globally popular teas (note: there are many other types of Japanese tea that are shade grown such as gyokuro, but they are not milled into a fine powder). Reducing the amount of sunlight that gets to a plant prevents the conversion of certain amino acids and proteins such as l-theanine into catechins which make the tea more bitter and astringent. It also forces the tea plant to create more chlorophyll, turning it a vibrant and deep green color to compensate for the lack of sunlight.
Chemist, what is matcha?
Matcha is in many ways an incredibly weird beverage product due to the fact that it is a suspension. Most beverages we consume have compounds that are completely dissolved - the coffee industry, for example, focuses a lot on extraction and the total dissolved solids (TDS) of different brew methods. But you’re actually consuming the entire leaf when you drink matcha.
A single matcha particle has an average size of 5 microns (about 10x smaller than coffee). When milled on a traditional mill it also has a high surface area morphology or shape. When you whisk matcha with water you are separating all of the microscopic matcha particles and creating a suspension in the water. So what makes a good suspension? The smaller the matcha particles, the higher quality a suspension you make because the forces of Brownian motion are stronger than the force of gravity. The more surface area the particles have, or how jagged they are, also produces a more stable suspension due to the higher surface energy they have; this is the same principle that makes starchy water thick when you heat it because you create larger and larger surface area molecules. Matcha also contains surfactants which give it foaming properties that greatly contribute to the sensory joy of consuming a bowl!
Milling matcha to 5 microns without heat damage is quite difficult. It’s a constant battle between yield and temperature due to the friction generated between the two millstones turning against each other.
A traditional millstone called an ishi usu (石臼) must be turned very slowly and kept in a temperature-controlled room and can only produce 20-40 grams of tea an hour.
Sommelier, what is matcha?
The things that matter when it comes to matcha quality are very similar to the things that matter in fine wine or specialty coffee. Terroir, processing, and cultivar among many other factors not only differentiate products but create an entire sensory universe for the curious to explore and cultivate an appreciation for.
There is a shocking amount of variation in the flavor, aroma, and texture characteristics of matcha. Some are light and refreshing, some are deep, contemplative, and umami, and some have roasted and earthy profiles. These flavor variations are largely driven by the origin and terroir, processing, and cultivar of the tea plant used to create it. There is a whole world of flavors to explore that are both inherent naturally and expressed through the decisions of the producer.
Traditionally, most matcha was blended. These blends, like any great wine cuvée, were often given poetic names to express their unique personality. Nowadays you see more and more producers offering single origin (such as Uji or Yame) and even single cultivar products. We are thankfully moving away from a world where the biggest differentiators were “ceremonial” and “culinary” grade matcha to a more complex specialty market where consumers are developing more sophisticated preferences for a product that deserves the “specialty” status and treatment.
Unlike wine, there is no internationally recognized geographical control for matcha like a DOP or AOC designation. But it is largely agreed upon that the best matcha comes from Japan. While other countries such as Korea and China do produce tea that goes through the same steps as matcha, the skill of production and tradition in Japan are unmatched.
Historian, what is matcha?
Matcha is actually a Chinese invention that made its way to Japan during the Song Dynasty. Matcha, or Mo Cha as it is referred to in China, was how tea was consumed in the Chinese Tea Ceremony until the 13th century. It was whisked in a similar way and they would even hold competitions for who could whisk the most and longest-lasting matcha froth. So matcha froth has a long and rich history of being enjoyed by generations of tea lovers.
Mo Cha came to an end when the Mongols invaded and set up the Yuan Dynasty and when the first Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋) formally abolished powdered tea. There was no living continuous lineage of Mo Cha production in China and all modern versions you see of Song Dynasty tea ceremony and Mo Cha are a modern attempt at recreation. However, the tradition of consuming powdered green tea did live on in Japan where it was adapted into a formal ceremony known as Chanoyu (茶の湯).
The Buddhist monk Myōan Eisai (明菴栄西) is largely attributed to the first successful attempt to bring back tea plants to Japan from China where it gained popularity.
Sen no Rikyū is the godfather of the formalization of the Japanese tea ceremony into the modern institutions that practice tea ceremony today, with the most direct lineages being Omotesenke, Urasenke, and Mushakōjisenke.
Portrait of Sen no Rikyū by Tōhaku Hasegawa (長谷川等伯) (born in 1539 and dead in 1610), calligraphy by Shunoku Sōen (春屋 宗園) (born in 1529 and dead in 1611). Source: Wikimedia Commons
Dietitian, what is matcha?
Is matcha a superfood?
There are people that claim matcha is the elixir of life and can cure every ailment from cancer to weight loss. However, let’s focus on the things that we know are true and have research-based scientific backing.
Let’s start with functional benefits. Matcha contains stimulants like caffeine, calming compounds like l-theanine, and antioxidants such as catechins and EGCG. Caffeine can make you more alert and l-theanine is generally described to have a calming effect. This combination is said to be a less jarring type of caffeination where it slowly sets in and slowly leaves.
So, is matcha healthy? It depends on how much sugar you drink it with. It depends on how caffeine-tolerant you are and if it affects your sleep. And it depends on how much you drink. In moderation, it is fairly safe to say that is good both for the mind (mood and alertness), body (antioxidants), and soul (the pleasure of drinking it).
So… now the big question: What is matcha to you?
