Matcha!
As you may know, this luscious green powder as fine as the smoke of a cigarette (without the cough!) comes in many different varieties and myriad grades: From the cheap and chalky granules made with boiling water and stirred with a spoon to produce a latte served in popular coffee shops; all the way to the finest, most mesmerizing (and oftentimes elusive) stardust used for tea ceremonies held in purpose-built tea “huts” of the most minimalist of structures buried deep in ancient Japan.
Is it Ceremonial?
We recently (at time of original publishing in 2015) completed a Kickstarter campaign to launch our new range of Matcha and discovered that a few Matcha sippers in the West demanded to know if the Matcha was “ceremonial” grade.
Rightly so! We should have been clearer!
But the truth is, I’m not a fan of using the term “ceremonial”. It is very overused in the West these days. Everyone’s putting it on their packaging, whether it’s ceremonial grade or not. Whether it’s actually any good or not.
Our Supplier in Yame
Our supplier, based in Yame, Kyushu, has six different iterations of their ceremonial grade Matcha. We carry two of them as well as a culinary grade both online and in the café.
Picturesque Yame has the perfect climate and soil constitution to produce some of the finest Matcha in Japan. Our farmer is one of the last few remaining who uses an ancient technique called “honzu” involving handmade straw mats to cover the plants in spring.
These straw mats not only shade but also filter the rainwater, something the modern method has lost. Shading allows the nutrients to swell in the leaves, hence why Matcha is the superfood it claims to be. Our tea leaves are plucked by hand by delightful giggling ladies, then processed and milled using a granite mill. Just one gram of Matcha takes two hours to mill! This produces a powder finer than the smoke of a cigarette. Imagine that!
The Best Matcha
Here’s a bit of a secret:
Whether it’s labeled as “ceremonial” or not, most of the best Matcha never actually leaves Japan. It’s created by artisan farmers–tight-knit family businesses that have been producing Matcha for generations. But these small enterprises either don’t know how or simply don’t want to export their amazing tea. It’s too complicated and the language barrier—as well as the cultural barrier—is daunting.
So you’ve got to go deep into the country, meet these farmers, build relationships, and then maybe, just maybe, they’ll open up to the idea of selling their tea to you.
That’s why we based ourselves in the heart of Japan, in order to be able to take our time finding the right people and then establishing trust with them. It can take a long time (it took us two years!), but boy, when you taste this stuff you know it is worth it!
Grade of Matcha
So, back to “ceremonial”…
It’s all about the context – what you’re using it for.
Sometimes, using a ceremonial grade of Matcha just isn’t the right thing to do. Like when you’re putting it on chocolate chips in granola (YUM!). It isn’t just a cost issue, the flavor needs to bounce through louder. So an ultra premium (or “ceremonial”) grade is oftentimes too smooth and subtle for such usage.
It’s why we use a different grade of Matcha for lattés than we do for straight shots in the café. They’re both ceremonial grade (promise!) but the one used for lattés has that little bit of extra bite to it, enabling the flavors to shine through the steamed milk. It’s considered a slightly “lower” grade of Matcha but suits our purpose fine.
The Matcha used in our granola, popsicles, smoothies, and other yummies is considered a lower grade known as “culinary” or “ingredient” grade and it’s perfect! It is designed for mixing with other ingredients but is perhaps too bitter and chalky to consume on its own. When this Matcha blends with other ingredients, a balanced harmony of flavors emerges so you can actually taste the Matcha. Using too high of a grade in a recipe could result in a “non-Matcha” taste and the tendency to keep adding more and more Matcha… I’ve tried it and learned the hard way so you don’t have to.
So to mill this down to the fine point: The highest grades of Matcha (Ultra Premium Grade in our case) is for consuming a shot or a bowl of Matcha with nothing added to it. Then as you go down the grading scale (such as our Premium grade), you can drink it straight but it is best when combined with milk from a cow, bean, nut, or grain. Then the lowest grades are for mixing. Don’t go for the cheapest Matcha if you want to drink it in a shot or bowl!
Enjoy!
This article has been reformatted and updated from the original November 2015 publication.
Photo of pouring matcha is from the Chiki Tea “Best Matcha On The Planet!” Kickstarter campaign (source)
Photo of tea being picked is provided by and copyright held by author
Thanks for the educational Matcha 101. Now it all makes sense to me. I’ve tried a variety of higher grades (supposedly) and there was always a big difference between suppliers which always made me a bit uncomfortible. Sounds like you’ve cracked the code. I’m drinking the straight shot after whisking the beauty into a froth. Yum. Do you know if school children in Japan are getting green tea or matcha each day?
Hi Michelle, I saw your recent post mentioning school kids. In Japan, they don’t necessarily get given green tea (or tea of any sort) at school in the state system. They get milk! But certainly at home they’re more than likely to be exposed to at least a basic “daily” sencha and/or houjicha.
I wish I had saved the article where I read about this. It didn’t state it was a private school. Perhaps it was one particular region in Japan? I’ll keep my eyes open for another story about this as I had read a few articles over the years talking about this. They all mentioned elementry aged kids.
This was a Japanese woman (one of our staff) who told me this, so it might just be down here in Kyushu (?) but she seemed to suggest it was nationwide, in the state schools at least.
Let’s both keep our ears open about this and keep each other in the loop.
Will do! I know some English teachers here too so I’ll ask them…