Matcha Green Tea Powder

Kyoto, the 1580s. A room four and a half mats wide, a sweet, a bowl of green powder whisked to a froth for one guest. Sen no Rikyū, born in Sakai in 1522, was tea master to Oda Nobunaga and then to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and he made the way of tea plain: simplicity, quiet, no ornament. Hideyoshi built himself a golden tea room. In 1591 he ordered Rikyū to take his own life, and Rikyū did, aged seventy. Why is still argued.

The powder is older than Japan's use of it. Song-dynasty China whisked tea in a bowl; Cai Xiang wrote down the grinding and sifting around 1050, the emperor Huizong in 1107. Zen monks carried it home, Eisai among them, around 1191, and drank it to stay awake through long meditation. In 1391 the first Ming emperor stopped the making of compressed tea because of the burden on the people, and powdered tea faded in China. Japan kept it.

The green comes from Uji. In the 16th century growers there roofed their bushes with screens woven from the reeds of Ogura Pond. Shaded leaf is sweeter, less astringent and vivid green. Shading was restricted, so matcha stayed with the upper classes while ordinary people drank bancha. It is still made that way: covered for two or three weeks, steamed, dried without rolling, milled on a stone mill.

Matcha, Organic is the plain bowl, the one to whisk. The rest are the home half, the weekday latte: Strawberry Matcha, Organic and Peach Matcha, Organic over ice, Coconut Matcha, Organic for an island morning, and Milky Way Matcha, Organic, French vanilla and chocolate, for a night sky.