Ingredients · Tea

Matcha

Camellia sinensis var. sinensis · Theaceae (tea family)

Matcha
Shade-grown green tea, steamed and dried without rolling, then ground on a stone mill into a powder fine enough to suspend in water. You drink the leaf rather than an infusion of it, which is why matcha is more intense than any steeped green and why it behaves like an ingredient as much as a tea. The shading is the whole trick: two to three weeks under reed screens before picking keeps theanine from turning into bitter tannins and raises the chlorophyll, which is what makes matcha both savoury and that colour.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partPowder
KindTea
CaffeineContains caffeine — the whole leaf is consumed, not an infusion of it
Where it is fromJapan
TasteVivid green; grassy and savoury-sweet with real umami, a little bitter, creamy when whisked to a froth
How to brew it
  • 175°F / 80°C
  • sift, then whisk 2 g into 60 ml; never steeped

How to use it

Sift it first — matcha clumps, and a lump will not whisk out. About 175°F water, never boiling. Two grams to 60 ml whisked hard in a W motion for thin tea; twice the powder and half the water for thick. As an ingredient it goes into lattes, ice cream, mochi, shortbread and icing. It fades in light and air: keep it cold, sealed and dark, and use it within a couple of months of opening.

With food

White chocolate. Strawberry. Milk and cream. Red bean and mochi. Black sesame. Pistachio. Coconut. Shortbread.

With spices

Vanilla. Cardamom and ginger, in a chai matcha. Lavender. Cinnamon.

With tea

Not usually blended with other teas, though a bergamot matcha is the single most-searched thing in this category.

Its story

Where it comes from

Uji in Kyoto Prefecture developed the shading method and is where modern matcha begins; Nishio, Kagoshima and Shizuoka also produce it. Japan's labelling standard defines matcha as tencha — shade-grown Camellia sinensis var. sinensis, steamed and dried without rolling — milled to a fine powder on a stone mill. Our matcha is sold as Grade A with no origin named, so whether it is Japanese or Chinese is unconfirmed.

What happened

Powdered tea whisked in a bowl began in Song-dynasty China, described in Cai Xiang's Record of Tea around 1050 and Emperor Huizong's Treatise on Tea in 1107. Japanese Zen monks studying in China took the practice home — Eisai is credited with bringing it around 1191 — and then, in 1391, the first Ming emperor ended compressed tea because of the burden it placed on the people, and powdered tea faded out in China while Japan kept it. At the request of tea masters including Sen no Rikyu, Uji growers began covering their fields with screens woven from the reeds of Ogura Pond, and modern matcha was born. Rikyu built the way of tea around wabi — simplicity, quietude, absence of ornament — with its four principles of harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity, and the idea of ichi-go ichi-e, one time, one meeting: treasure this gathering, it will not come again. He served two warlords, Oda Nobunaga and then Toyotomi Hideyoshi, whose golden tea room was everything Rikyu's four-and-a-half-mat room was not. In 1591 Hideyoshi ordered him to commit ritual suicide, and he did. Why is still argued.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

Every ingredient in the shop

Explore

Other ways in

Ingredients Every plant, seed, bark and salt in the shop on one page — what it is, why it is in the blend, and where it comes from. See them all Collections Every shelf in the shop on one page — teas by leaf and flavour, spices by kind and cuisine. Open any shelf to see what is on it. Browse the shelves The Showroom The whole shop on one floor — every tea, spice and blend, filtered by what you are after, with the basket beside you. Open the Showroom Elsewhere Seventeen short trips — a place, a moment, a feeling — each with the teas and spices that get you there. Take a trip