Why two tins of bright green powder can taste completely different, and what to look for in yours.
Matcha looks simple: a fine green powder you whisk into water or milk. Behind that powder, though, are months of growing decisions and several processing steps, and each one shapes the colour, sweetness, bitterness and texture in your cup. Once you know what happens between the tea field and the tin, it's much easier to see why one matcha suits a morning latte and another deserves to be whisked on its own.
It Starts in the Shade
The biggest difference between matcha and ordinary green tea happens before a single leaf is picked. Matcha plants are shaded.
Around three to four weeks before harvest, farmers cover the tea bushes to block most of the sunlight. Traditionally this was done with reed screens and rice straw laid over bamboo frames. Today many growers use synthetic black netting, either stretched over overhead frames (tana) or draped directly on the bushes (jikagise). Overhead frames keep the covering off the leaves and are generally associated with higher-grade tea, but both methods work towards the same goal.
With less sunlight, the plant changes how it behaves:
More chlorophyll. The leaves produce extra chlorophyll to make the most of the little light they get. That's where matcha's vivid, almost electric green comes from.
More L-theanine, fewer catechins. In full sun, the plant converts L-theanine, the amino acid behind tea's savoury umami and calm, focused feel, into catechins, which bring astringency and bitterness. Shading slows that conversion. The result is a sweeter, rounder, more savoury tea.
Softer, thinner leaves. Shaded leaves grow broader and more tender, which makes for a smoother powder.
What About Unshaded "Matcha"?
You'll find plenty of green tea powders made from sun-grown leaves, often from later harvests or leaves originally intended for sencha. They're cheaper to produce and can be perfectly useful in baking, but they tend to be duller in colour and more bitter. In Japan, industry guidelines define matcha as powder made from shaded, specially processed leaf, so a sun-grown powder is really just powdered green tea. If a label doesn't mention shading, it's worth asking.
Timing Matters: The Harvest
Most premium matcha comes from the first harvest (ichibancha), picked from late April into May. After resting through winter, the plant puts its stored nutrients into those first spring shoots, which are the most tender and the richest in L-theanine.
Second and later harvests, in summer and autumn, produce leaves with more catechins and less sweetness. They have their place, especially in cooking, but first-harvest leaf is what gives a matcha real depth and a creamy mouthfeel.
From Leaf to Tencha
Freshly picked leaves go through several steps before they become the powder you know.
- Steaming. Within hours of picking, the leaves are steamed briefly. This stops oxidation and locks in the green colour and fresh flavour. (This is the key difference from Chinese green teas, which are usually pan-fired.)
- Cooling and drying. Sencha leaves are rolled and shaped, but matcha leaves are not. They're blown through cooling chambers to separate them, then dried flat, traditionally in a tall brick drying oven.
- De-stemming and de-veining. The dried leaf is cut and sorted, and the stems and veins are removed. What remains is soft, flaky leaf called tencha. Removing those tougher parts is a big reason good matcha tastes smooth rather than grassy.
Tencha is the raw material. It's usually stored cold and milled in small batches close to when it will be sold, because once tea is powdered it starts losing freshness quickly.
The Grind: Stone-Milled vs Jet-Milled
How tencha becomes powder has a real effect on texture, aroma and price.
Stone Milling
The traditional method uses heavy granite millstones carved with fine grooves, turning slowly. A single stone mill produces only about 30 to 40 grams of matcha per hour, roughly a tin or two. It's slow and expensive, but it has clear advantages:
- Low, gentle heat, which helps preserve delicate aromas and flavour compounds
- Very fine, even particles, typically only a few microns across, for a silky texture that suspends well when whisked
- A rounder, more layered flavour, which is why stone milling is the standard for matcha meant to be drunk straight
Jet Milling
Jet (or air) milling uses high-pressure air streams to make tencha particles collide and break each other down. It's far faster and more scalable than stone milling, and it can produce very fine powder.
Some tea makers find that the strong airflow involved can strip away some of the more fragile aromatics, so jet-milled matcha is more often used for lattes, cooking and blends, where milk and other ingredients carry the drink. Quality varies widely, and a well-sourced, jet-milled first-harvest tencha can still beat a poorly grown stone-milled one. The mill is only one part of the picture.
Ball Milling
A third method, ball milling, tumbles tencha with ceramic balls in a rotating drum. It's mostly used for culinary-grade powder, where volume matters more than nuance.
"Ceremonial Grade": A Useful Word, Loosely Used
You'll see "ceremonial" on a lot of matcha labels. It isn't a regulated term, in Japan or anywhere else, so it can mean very different things from brand to brand. It's more useful to ask the questions that actually decide quality:
- Was it shaded, and for how long?
- Which harvest is it from?
- Where was it grown? (Uji in Kyoto, Nishio in Aichi, Yame in Fukuoka and Kagoshima are all well-known regions)
- How was it milled?
- How fresh is it?
How This Shapes Our Range
Every Made in Matcha tea is chosen for how you'll actually drink it.
Kasumi
Named for the morning fog that settles over the tea fields, Kasumi is a first-harvest matcha made for lattes and café-style drinks. Early-season, shade-grown leaf gives it natural sweetness, a creamy body and a vivid green colour, with low bitterness, so it stays balanced under milk.
Higoro
Higoro means "everyday," and it's built for exactly that: a matcha for the daily ritual, one you can reach for every morning without overthinking it.
The Short Version
Shade gives matcha its colour, sweetness and umami. First-harvest leaf gives it depth. Careful steaming and de-stemming give it smoothness. The mill decides how silky it feels and how much aroma survives. Once you know that, the tin in your pantry has a lot more to tell you.