Matcha (; ) is a finely ground powder of green tea specially processed from shade-grown tea leaves. Shade growing gives matcha its characteristic bright green color and strong umami flavor. Matcha is typically consumed suspended in hot water.
Matcha originated through cultural exchanges between China and Japan in the premodern period, developing from earlier powdered tea practices in China that were transmitted to Japan by Zen Buddhist monks. During the Song dynasty, tea leaves were ground into a fine powder and whisked with hot water. This method was introduced to Japan by the monk Eisai around 1191, where it continued to develop even as such practices declined in China.
During the Muromachi period in the sixteenth century, Japanese tea farmers developed shading techniques to produce , the tea leaves used for grinding into matcha. This innovation contributed to the development of modern matcha, characterized by its vivid green color and rich umami flavor, the latter derived from theanine, distinguishing it from earlier forms of powdered tea. It also contributed to the development in Japan of new tea styles such as sencha and gyokuro. Traditionally, matcha was produced almost exclusively in Japan, although it is now also produced in other countries such as China and South Korea. In the twenty-first century, to meet the rising global demand for matcha, China invited Japanese specialists for technical guidance, introduced the necessary equipment, and has promoted mass production in Guizhou Province since 2018. While Japan still produces the finest matcha, the quality of Chinese matcha has been improving rapidly enough to be used in the food processing industry at more competitive prices.
The traditional Japanese tea ceremony, typically known as or , centers on the preparation, serving and drinking of matcha as hot tea, and embodies a meditative and spiritual practice.
Matcha is also used to flavor and dye foods such as mochi and soba noodles, green tea ice cream, matcha lattes, and a variety of Japanese wagashi confectionery. For this purpose, matcha made green by color additives instead of expensive shade-grown matcha is often used.
Definition Strict definitions of matcha are given by the International Organization for Standardization, ISO 20715:2023 "Tea — Classification of tea types", and the Japanese food labeling standard defined by .
Both definitions require that matcha must be:
made from Camellia sinensis var. sinensis (Chinese, small-leaf tea) grown in the shade steamed and dried without being rolled ground to a fine powder
The Japanese food labeling standard requires the tea leaves to be shaded for 2–3 weeks before harvesting using covering materials such as yoshizu, komo, or cheesecloth. Tea leaves after processing the first three steps are called in this standard. ISO 20715:2023 allows matcha to be made from tender leaves, buds, or shoots, but Japanese food labeling standard allows it to be made only from leaves.
Inexpensive green tea, , made by crushing non-shade grown tea leaves, is sometimes sold under the name of "matcha" although it does not satisfy the above definitions. The cheaper alternative is used to flavor and dye foods.
History China Powdered and compressed teas
Powdered tea originated in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907) where tea leaves were pounded and then milled into fine powder before being shaped into "cakes". The Classic of Tea, written by Chinese tea master Lu Yu roughly between 760 to 762 CE, had documented the practise of steeping powdered tea in hot water. This involved first roasting compressed tea over a fire and then grinding it in a wooden grinder called a niǎn (, Japanese: yagen), boiling water in a pot, adding salt once it comes to a boil, then adding the tea powder to the boiling water and boiling it until it began to foam.Han Wei, "Tang Dynasty Tea Utensils and Tea Culture: Recent Discoveries at Famen Temple", in Chanoyu Quarterly no. 74 (1993) The tea was also sometimes mixed with green onions, ginger, jujubes, mandarin orange peels, Tetradium ruticarpum, and mint.
It wasn't until the Song dynasty (960–1279) when whisks, bowls, and other tools first appeared in China that was used to froth up a drink called "mo cha", which translates to "powdered tea", and was made from steamed and dried tea leaves. According to Katharine P. Burnett, a tea scholar at the University of California, Davis, it was also during this era when Zen Buddhist monks from Japan began to visit China to attain books and sutras from Chinese scholars, and Japanese Buddhist monks will often encounter mo cha and its style of preparation in the Chinese temples. The beverage was prepared by whipping the tea powder with hot water in a bowl.Tsutsui Hiroichi, "Tea-drinking Customs in Japan", paper in Seminar Papers: The 4th International Tea Culture Festival. Korean Tea Culture Association, 1996. Although the term "matcha" () was not yet used, the practice of preparing powdered tea with a tea whisk is believed to have originated in China no later than the 11th century.
The most famous references to powdered tea are Cai Xiang's Record of Tea (1049–1053) and Emperor Huizong's Treatise on Tea (1107), both written during the Song dynasty (960–1279). These documents describe the preparation of high-grade compressed tea, such as Lóngfèng Tuánchá (, ). The tea was ground into powder using a metal niǎn, then sifted. The powder was poured into a tea bowl, hot water was added, and the mixture was whisked.
According to the Record of Tea, the finer the sieve, the more the tea would float; the coarser the sieve, the more it would sink. This suggests that the powder particles were larger than those of modern matcha. Tea ceremonies at Kennin-ji in Kyoto and Engaku-ji in Kamakura are thought to preserve traditions from the Song dynasty.
The lump tea presented to the emperor was mixed with borneol, a strongly aromatic substance, and coated with oily flavorings to give it a glossy surface—so much so that the tea's original aroma was lost. Cai Xiang criticized such processing.
In addition, the ideal color of tea was considered to be white, rather than green or brown. However, since tea powder could not usually be made white, various processing methods had to be employed to whiten it. For example, tea buds were plucked just after sprouting, repeatedly squeezed, and water was added repeatedly during grinding. A type of white tea called "water buds" () was also made, in which the leafy part of the sprout was removed, leaving only the veins as raw material.
Declining usage of compressed tea The complex manufacturing process of lump tea during the Song dynasty required significant labor and expense, and even the slightest error could result in failure. As a result, it was costly and inaccessible to the common people. During the Tang dynasty, "bitter when sipped and sweet when swallowed" (The Classic of Tea) was regarded as the ideal taste of tea. However, in the Song dynasty, this ideal was deliberately replaced with four desirable qualities: "aroma, sweetness, richness, and smoothness" (Treatise on Tea). This shift represented an attempt to eliminate the natural bitterness of tea. As a result, lump tea became an expensive and complicated product, and some scholars suggest this contributed to its rapid decline after the Ming dynasty.
In the Ming dynasty, the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang issued a ban on the production of compressed tea in 1391. This decree led to the abandonment of compressed tea in China. Instead, a new method—similar to modern tea preparation—in which loose tea is steeped in hot water and extracted, became the mainstream practice.
In Shen Defu's Wanli ye huo bian ("Unofficial Gleanings of the Wanli Era", ), it is recorded:
At the beginning of the Ming dynasty, teas from all over China were offered to the emperor, among which Jianning tea and Yángxiàn tea were the most highly valued. At that time, the Song dynasty production method was still in use, and all the tea offered was ground and kneaded with a medicine grinder into shapes known as lóngtuán (, ), both large and small. However, in September of the 24th year of Hongwu, the emperor discontinued the production of lóngtuán due to the heavy burden it placed on the people. Instead, he ordered that only tea buds be plucked and offered to the court.
With the prohibition of compressed tea, the powdered tea associated with it also fell into disuse in China.
In Japan, however, a tradition of powdered tea preparation was preserved. Through innovations such as shade cultivation of tea leaves (覆下栽培) and stone-milling, Japan eventually developed what is now known as matcha, which over time was deeply shaped by Japanese aesthetics and cultural principles.
Some historians have pointed out that, as the Ming dynasty emphasized agriculture and held a strong military ethos—and since the Hongwu Emperor himself had risen from the lowest social strata—he may have viewed the elaborate and refined nature of compressed tea with disdain. Japan
The earliest documented reference to tea in Japan appears in the 9th century, in an entry in the concerning the Buddhist monk , who is believed to have brought tea back from China. According to the entry, Eichū personally prepared and served to Emperor Saga during an imperial excursion to Karasaki (in present-day Shiga Prefecture) in 815. This sencha is believed to have been Chinese compressed tea, rather than the modern form of sencha in which tea leaves are steeped in hot water for infusion.
In 816, by imperial order, tea plantations were established in the Kinki region. However, public interest in tea soon declined.
Powdered tea first arrived in Japan around the 12th century. It can be traced back to Tang dynasty China, where Chinese Zen (Chan) monks were the first to grind bricks of tea into fine powder with a pestle and mortar. Japanese monk Myoan Eisai traveled to China around the late 1180s, and encountered a drink at the temples there that the Chinese called as "mo cha", which involved pouring hot water over powdered tea and whisking it with a bamboo whisk. Eisai was credited to have brought back this Song dynasty style of tea preparation to Japan. In China, this practice of mo cha however faded over the next centuries during the Ming dynasty, but it continued in Japan, and become a key part of Japanese Zen Buddhist culture.
According to the Report of the 2020 Culture of Life Research Project (Tea Ceremony) published by the Government of Japan, they wrote;
Eisai authored the and presented it to Minamoto no Sanetomo, the third shōgun of the Kamakura shogunate, in 1214. At the time, tea was regarded as a form of medicine. The Kissa Yōjōki describes the methods of tea preparation Eisai observed during his time in the Song dynasty. According to the text, tea leaves were plucked in the morning, steamed immediately, and then placed on a roasting rack to be left overnight. This method is believed to have been introduced to Japan at that time. However, a major difference is that modern matcha production omits the long roasting process, apart from drying for approximately 30 minutes. At the time, the tea was a brownish-black lump, rather than the bright green powder of modern matcha. It is thought that this lump tea was ground into powder and consumed in a manner similar to modern matcha.