Matcha Labeling (Part 1): What is Matcha?

Matcha labeling is confusing, perhaps more confusing than any other specialty product. Pick any two random matcha powders from most Japanese or western vendors and it will be very difficult to differentiate them. They’ll use vague language, poetic names, and unclearly specified product details.

Why is labeling important

It sets expectations for the consumers about what it will taste like and educate them on all of the context needed about why that particular product is specialty. It allows us to contextualize what we know about the origin, cultivar, harvest method, and many other factors to pre-determine a matcha’s quality or if we’ll like it.

This is even more important in specialty products. Consumer’s not only expect transparent labeling like we see in wine, bean-to-bar chocolate, and coffee, but it’s critical for the cultivation of preferences.

A rich and thriving specialty market is full of consumers that can predict their own preferences. I like high mountain oolong from Shan Lin Xi in Taiwan. I don’t like most natural processed coffees. I love asahi cultivar matcha, and I’m neutral to yabukita cultivar on it’s own, but love it in blends. Labels need to help consumers not only navigate which products to buy, but help them predict what they like and what they don’t like.

The murky world of defining matcha

Turns out there isn’t really an agreed upon definition of “matcha”, which is both a problem and an opportunity.

“Matcha”, 抹茶 in Japanese, literally translates to “powdered tea”. Matcha’s historical antecedent in Song Dynasty China , Mo Cha, 末茶 in Chinese, literally translates to… “powdered tea”.

Matcha is a self-descriptive name and at the very least it can and should refer to powdered tea.

Defining what matcha is, is both a legal argument and a semantic one.

In Japan, tea sold as matcha must come from tencha which is then ground into a fine powder. In order for a tea to be sold as tencha, it must be processed in a specific way which includes being shade grown, steamed, and not rolled to keep cell walls in-tact to preserve the flavor before milling. However to our knowledge the rest of the world has no such regulations or definitions.

There are many definitions with different semantic arguments about what matcha can and should be. They range from very loose interpretations to very traditionalist. They include:

• Where the tea was grown: some people will argue that only tea grown in Japan should be considered matcha. There’s real merit to this argument. The legacy and the history of modern matcha production is distinctly Japanese, and the best matcha being produced right now is in Japan. However, modern tea companies, even Japanese matcha brands might disagree with this argument who outsource some of their production to mainland China. In reality, there is matcha that’s being sold, and that consumers are developing a preference for, that’s produced in China, Korea, and other tea-producing countries. If matcha continues to grow and as foreign markets develop a taste for it, the specialty market will expand to terroirs outside of Japan’s borders.
• If it was shaded: by the Japanese definition, all matcha should be shade-grown, but in reality there is matcha that’s sold outside of Japan that has had minimal or no shading. To the modern purist this is not matcha, it’s low-quality industrial green tea powder. And they would be right! However there’s a historical argument for the opposite case. Purposeful shade-growing matcha is a Japanese innovation, but matcha existed in Japan before this was common practice. The historical antecedent to matcha, Song Dynasty mocha, also wasn’t purposely shade grown. While most companies that sell non-shade grown matcha are doing it as a cost-cutting measure, there’s no reason why an artisan producer couldn’t create high quality matcha without shade growing it as it was done centuries ago. Arguing the opposite side, shade growing matcha gives the tea it’s specific color, taste, and nutritional profile. When consumers buy matcha they expect the color, taste, and nutritional benefits they’ve been promised and know expect when they purchase matcha.
• How it was milled: for over a thousand years matcha milling hasn’t fundamentally changed, stone millstones have slowly ground tea into powder. Some people might argue that all matcha should be stone milled; it’s traditional and it is generally agreed that it creates the highest quality matcha. However, there are probably not enough ishi usu’s in the world to mill the matcha to satisfy demand. With a yield of 20-40 grams of tea an hour, traditional stone milling is only viable for the upper tiers of ceremonial grade matcha. The rest sold is milled using industrial equipment such as a ball mill, which can mill on the order of kilograms an hour but at the expense of particle morphology (it produces round particles which sink more easily) and heat damage during milling. A lot of matcha sold is also a blend of traditionally milled and industrially milled tea, usually in unlabeled proportions.

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