Matcha beyond Japan: origins and where it grows
Matcha beyond Japan: origins and where it grows
Matcha is not a Japanese invention. It is a Japanese perfection. Grinding tea leaves to powder and whisking them with water began in China. The practice reached Japan with Buddhist monks, and there it became a ceremony. Today matcha is grown in both countries, in Korea, and in small volumes elsewhere.
The road from China to Japan
The technique of powdering leaves and whisking them belongs to the Chinese tea culture of the Tang and Song periods. Japanese monks carried it home, and the monk Eisai described the tea in 1211 in his text Kissa Yōjōki. In the monasteries the powder first served to keep people awake through long meditations. Out of that plainness, over centuries, came chanoyu.
What the shading does
The decisive step is not the milling, it is the shading. Twenty to thirty days before harvest the field is covered with a structure known in Japanese as tana. The plant answers the lack of light with more chlorophyll and more amino acids, L-theanine above all, and that is where the green and the umami sweetness come from. Skip that step and milled green tea gives you nothing but milled green tea.
From harvest to powder
After picking, the leaves are steamed so they do not oxidise, then dried and stripped of stems and veins. What remains is called tencha and goes to the stone mill. One millstone yields only a few grams an hour. That slowness is not folklore: it keeps the temperature down, and with it the colour and the aroma.
Where matcha grows today
- Japan. Uji (Kyoto), Nishio (Aichi), Shizuoka and Kagoshima. The highest auction prices and, at present, a tight supply situation.
- China. Zhejiang, and within it Jingshan, plus Fujian and the highlands of Sichuan. The same shading technique, the same stone milling, none of the scarcity premium.
- Korea. Small volumes, mostly from Jeju and Boseong, largely for the domestic market.
What ends up in the cup
Because the whole leaf is drunk, catechins, theanine, chlorophyll and fibre all come along. The much-quoted figure on catechin content comes from an analytical paper in the Journal of Chromatography A in 2003 (Weiss and Anderton, PMID 14518774), which quantified five catechins and the caffeine of matcha by micellar electrokinetic chromatography and measured, per gram of dry leaf, an EGCG concentration 137 times higher than the green tea China Green Tips. On effects in people: a systematic review with meta-analysis of 31 randomised trials and 3,321 subjects in Nutrition Journal in 2020 (Xu et al., PMID 32434539) measured the blood lipids of green tea drinkers against controls.
Three tea ceremonies, three temperaments
- Chanoyu or sadō, Japan. A choreographed sequence around one bowl of matcha, with fixed movements and an attention that belongs to the tea rather than to the conversation.
- Gongfu cha, China. Literally "making tea with skill". Not built around matcha but around drawing out the character of each tea through short, repeated infusions.
- Darye, Korea. Quieter and less formalised, usually with loose green tea and occasionally with matcha as a treat.
And in a British kitchen
Between a tea room in Kyoto and a worktop in Bristol there are exactly two objects: a bowl and a bamboo whisk. Everything else is practice. Sift 2 g, add 60 to 70 ml of water at 70 to 80 °C, whisk in a zigzag. Reach for boiling water instead and you have performed a ceremony, just not the intended one.
Our Matcha Zen Ceremonial is first harvest from Jingshan (China), shade grown and processed at Zhejiang Camel Transworld in Yuhang (Hangzhou). 100 g at £19.00, around 50 bowls.
References
- Weiss DJ, Anderton CR., Determination of catechins in matcha green tea by micellar electrokinetic chromatography. Journal of Chromatography A, 2003. PMID 14518774. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14518774/
- Xu R, Yang K, Li S, Dai M, Chen G., Effect of green tea consumption on blood lipids: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Nutrition Journal, 2020. PMID 32434539. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32434539/