Matcha

• 1. Introduction

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  Matcha is a fine powder of green tea, made from leaves grown in shade, and for centuries its ideal color was not green at all. In Song dynasty China, the perfect powdered tea was supposed to look white. Today the vivid green is exactly what people prize, and the powder is whisked into bowls, blended into lattes and frozen into ice cream across the world. How did a drink that China abandoned survive across the sea? What does shade do to a tea leaf? Who guarded the finest tea, and why does the world's appetite for this powder now strain the farms that grow it?

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• 2. Powder in China

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  Sometime between roughly 760 and 762, the tea master Lu Yu wrote The Classic of Tea, and it describes a powdered drink far from modern matcha. Compressed tea was roasted over a fire, then ground in a wooden grinder called a niǎn. Water was boiled in a pot, salt was added once it bubbled, and the powder went in until the pot foamed. Green onions, ginger, jujubes, mandarin orange peels and mint sometimes joined the mix. The Tang dynasty ideal was a taste described as bitter when sipped and sweet when swallowed.

  The Song dynasty, which ruled from 960 to 1279, brought new tools. Whisks, bowls and other equipment appeared, and with them a frothed drink called mo cha, meaning powdered tea. It was made from steamed and dried leaves. Katharine P. Burnett, a tea scholar at the University of California, Davis, notes that Japanese Zen monks were visiting China in this era to obtain books and sutras. In Chinese temples they often met mo cha. The habit of whisking powdered tea in a bowl is believed to date to no later than the 11th century.

  Two Song texts are the most famous. Cai Xiang wrote his Record of Tea between 1049 and 1053, and Emperor Huizong produced his Treatise on Tea in 1107. Both describe high-grade compressed tea such as Lóngfèng Tuánchá. A metal niǎn crushed it, a sieve sorted the powder, and hot water and a whisk finished the bowl. Cai Xiang noted that a finer sieve made the tea float and a coarser one made it sink. That suggests the particles were larger than in modern matcha. He also objected to the tea sent to the emperor, which was mixed with borneol and coated in oily flavorings until its natural aroma disappeared. Two temples, Kennin-ji in Kyoto and Engaku-ji in Kamakura, are thought to preserve traditions from this period.

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• 3. The Ming Ban

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  Making a single lump of Song tea demanded heavy labor and money, and even a slight error could ruin the batch. Ordinary people could not afford it. The Treatise on Tea also replaced the old Tang ideal with four qualities: aroma, sweetness, richness and smoothness. The aim was to erase the leaf's natural bitterness. Some scholars suggest that this expensive, fussy product was already fragile, which helps explain its rapid decline after the Ming dynasty arrived.

  In 1391, the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang banned the production of compressed tea. Shen Defu recorded the episode in his Wanli ye huo bian. According to that account, tea from across China was once ground and kneaded into shapes called lóngtuán for the court, with Jianning and Yángxiàn teas the most valued. In September of the 24th year of Hongwu, the emperor ended the practice because of the burden it placed on the people. He ordered that only tea buds be picked and offered instead.

  Some historians point to the emperor's own background. The Ming dynasty stressed agriculture and a strong military spirit, and Zhu Yuanzhang had risen from the lowest social class. He may have looked down on such a refined and elaborate product. Whatever the motive, loose tea steeped in hot water became the mainstream method, and the powdered tea tied to compressed cakes fell out of use in China. Across the sea, monks had already carried the old method to Japan, where it would not be abandoned.

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• 4. Monks Carry It East

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  An entry in the Nihon Kōki records that in 815 a Buddhist monk named Eichū prepared and served tea to Emperor Saga during an imperial excursion to Karasaki, in present-day Shiga Prefecture. Eichū is believed to have brought tea back from China, and what he served was probably Chinese compressed tea. In 816 an imperial order established tea plantations in the Kinki region. Public interest soon faded.

  Powdered tea arrived later, around the 12th century. The monk Myoan Eisai traveled to China in the late 1180s and met mo cha in the temples there, where hot water was poured over the powder and whisked with a bamboo whisk. Eisai is credited with bringing this Song style home, around 1191. Japan's government later wrote that during the Kamakura period the new way of drinking tea came with Chinese merchants or with monks who had studied in China. Guests held dark tenmoku bowls while servants carried a jōhei and a chasen, poured the water and stirred.

  In 1214, Eisai wrote the Kissa Yōjōki and presented it to Minamoto no Sanetomo, the third shōgun of the Kamakura shogunate. Tea was then regarded as medicine. The text describes leaves picked in the morning, steamed at once, and left overnight on a roasting rack. The result was a brownish-black lump, not a bright green powder. Eisai's disciple Myōe received a tea urn of seeds from him and sowed them at Togano'o, near Kyoto. Togano'o tea earned the highest reputation of its day. Myōe also planted at Uji, which became Japan's foremost tea region.

  The word matcha itself has a murky origin. Illustrations of matcha jars appear in the Kundaikan sōchōki, in versions dated 1476 and 1511, so the term was in use by the late 15th century. A Japanese dictionary, the Unpo Iroha Shū, also lists it in 1548. Wang Zhen's Book of Agriculture, from 1313, uses the Chinese terms mòchá and mòzichá, and one theory says Japan adapted them. No documents confirm that, and those terms mean tea reduced to powder, while matcha means tea that has been ground. The oldest surviving manuscript of the 1511 version, dated to 1559, spells out the characters with the reading Surichatsubo, hinting that the word was once pronounced suricha.

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• 5. Shade and Stone

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  The Portuguese missionary João Rodrigues Tçuzu arrived in Japan in 1577, and in his 1604 History of the Japanese Church he wrote about tea plants grown under shade. For a long time, historians took that as the date shading began, in the late 16th century. Recent soil analyses of Uji tea plantations point much earlier, to the first half of the 15th century at the latest.

  The first purpose of the covers was to protect young tea sprouts from frost. The side effect transformed the drink. Less sunlight slows photosynthesis in the leaves, which stops theanine, the compound behind umami, from turning into tannins that taste bitter and astringent. The leaves keep more umami. Shading also raises the chlorophyll concentration, which produces a vibrant green. This led to tencha, the unground leaf that becomes matcha, and it also gave Japan new tea styles such as sencha and gyokuro.

  Grinding improved too. Until the 13th century, tea was ground in a simple grinder, and the particles were rough and coarse. In the 14th century a stone mill made specially for tea appeared and produced a finer powder. The Japanese word for brown, chairo, literally means tea color, a reminder of what imported tea once looked like.

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• 6. Masters and Monopoly

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  Murata Jukō and Sen no Rikyū, two tea masters of the 16th century, turned away from showy display. During the Muromachi period, which ran from 1336 to 1573, tea had spread among ordinary people. The elite, meanwhile, drank it from costly Chinese ceramics. Jukō and Rikyū stressed simplicity and introspection and favored plain utensils. Their approach gave rise to the Japanese tea ceremony, which grew tied to wabi-sabi, an aesthetic that finds beauty in modesty, simplicity and imperfection.

  In the Edo period, from 1603 to 1867, a tea producer's status became official. The Tokugawa shogunate guaranteed the position of the tea masters of Uji, who were split into three ranks. They could use family names and carry swords like samurai. They dealt only with the shogun, the imperial court and feudal lords, never with commoners. Only they were allowed to grow tea in shade, which gave them a monopoly on high-grade matcha and gyokuro.

  The oldest known matcha brand is Baba Mukashi. It honors Myōshūni, who died in 1598, a daughter of Rokkaku Yoshikata and wife of Kanbayashi Hisashige. Tokugawa Ieyasu called her Baba, meaning grandmother, and often drank her tea. Her method produced the matcha later served to the shogun, and one theory says Ieyasu himself named it. Each year, jars of tencha traveled from Uji to Edo, now Tokyo, in a procession so grand that even feudal lords had to stand aside. The custom ran from 1633 until 1866.

  The Meiji Restoration of 1868 swept away the shogun, the feudal lords and the court nobles who had bought the tea. Uji lost its privileges, and shading spread to other regions of Japan. The industry adapted. In the Taishō and early Shōwa periods, machines using radiant heat replaced hand drying over charcoal hearths with paper supports. Through the 20th century, major schools such as Urasenke and Omotesenke kept the ceremony alive, joined by school tea clubs and public workshops.

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• 7. Leaf to Bowl

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  ISO standard 20715:2023, on the classification of tea types, sets out strict rules for matcha. Japan's food labeling standard agrees on four requirements. The tea must come from Camellia sinensis var. sinensis, the small-leaf Chinese variety. It must grow in shade, be steamed and dried without rolling, and be ground to a fine powder. The Japanese standard adds that leaves must be shaded for 2-3 weeks before harvest, under covers such as yoshizu, komo or cheesecloth. ISO also allows buds and shoots, while the Japanese standard permits only leaves. Cheap green tea made from crushed, unshaded leaves is sometimes sold as matcha anyway.

  In Japan, tencha leaves are steamed at 100 C for 10-15 seconds, which softens them and switches off the enzymes that cause oxidation. A drying machine then carries them on a conveyor belt at 170-200 °C, although the leaves themselves reach only about 70 °C. The dried tencha is aged for several months in cool, dry conditions and blended by expert tasters. Grinding was once done by hand in a stone mill used only for tea. Now mechanically turned stone mills do the work, slowly, in cool rooms so the heat does not damage the flavor.

  The result holds twice the amino acids of sencha, the source of its umami. Theanine, succinic acid, gallic acid and theogallin are the main contributors. Its aroma, called ooikou and likened to green laver, comes from dimethyl sulfide. Shading raises caffeine and free amino acids and lowers catechins. One study in Soil Science and Plant Nutrition suggests shading may also raise oxalates, so matcha could contain more than unshaded sencha.

  There are two ways to prepare it. Koicha uses 4 g of higher-grade matcha with 30 ml of water at 80 C and is not foamed. Usucha uses half as much powder in twice the water at 90 C and is foamed to soften the astringency. Koicha is the main part of the Japanese tea ceremony, with usucha the lesser part. The powder is sifted, scooped with a spoon and whisked in a bowl with a bamboo whisk. Guests eat the sweets first and drink the tea afterward, which lets the taste linger.

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• 8. Boom and Shortage

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  Matcha probably reached American shelves first through Japanese grocery stores in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and for decades it stayed obscure. In the early 2000s, specialty brands began approaching health food retailers such as Whole Foods Market. Its bright color suited Instagram and TikTok, and wellness enthusiasts and influencers spread it widely. Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts added matcha drinks to their permanent menus. Brands such as Jade Leaf, Kettl, Shinzo Matcha and Encha Matcha appeared, and so did lifestyle brands like Chamberlain Coffee. Starbucks had borrowed the idea from Japan, where its green tea lattes first succeeded. In 2025, matcha also grew more popular in Thailand, as part of a trend for affordable luxury.

  The rush created a shortage. In late 2024, the Japanese producers Marukyu Koyamaen and Ippodo announced limited availability or suspended sales of some matcha. The 2025 harvest came in 20% below the year before. In August 2025 the United States imposed new 15% tariffs on Japanese imports, on top of wholesale prices that had already doubled. This raised ethical questions about whether Western trends were putting unsustainable pressure on traditional Japanese tea farming. Some Kyoto tea companies set purchase limits on premium first-flush matcha, which was once reserved for tea ceremonies and is now widely enjoyed overseas. Labor-intensive production, limited grinding capacity and a shrinking number of tea farmers add to the strain.

  China has responded in a different way. Since 2018 it has promoted mass production in Guizhou Province, after inviting Japanese specialists for technical guidance and introducing the necessary equipment. Japan still makes the finest matcha, but Chinese quality is improving quickly enough for food processors, at more competitive prices. Vietnam also produces some matcha for export. Meanwhile, Japanese government and industry are weighing policy reforms, subsidies and regional diversification, and producers promote exports under regional brands from Uji, Nishio and Shizuoka Prefecture. Uji is the same region where Myōe once planted his seeds.

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