Japanese Green Tea and the Global Matcha Boom: The Shift from Drinking to Eating

The Golden Week holiday of early May now seems a long way off, but one of my best memories was picking tea leaves in a local tea field (ochabatake), making my own hand-rolled tea at home (temomicha), and enjoying shincha (新茶) brewed from the first or youngest leaves of the season (hatsu-zumi=初摘み). Shincha - literally "new tea" - is of unparalleled quality, bright green in colour with a sweeter taste than regular green tea, and characterised by a vibrant aroma and a hint of umami. As someone who drinks green tea every day - sometimes from vending machines but mostly in tea bag form - the taste of properly brewed shincha was something of a revelation; in Britain it would be the difference between a teabag in a paper cup (link) and a proper cuppa brewed in a pot. The pictures below show how to make the perfect cup of shincha: note the importance of letting the boiling water first cool to at least 80℃ before pouring over the leaves in the pot and also the short brewing time, just thirty seconds or so.

❶ Pour boiling water into cups or a special yuzamashi cooling pot ❷ Put a spoonful of tea leaves into the (unwarmed) pot ❸ Once the water temperature has dropped below 80℃ (70℃ for a sweeter cup) pour into the pot (kyūsu) ❹ Wait 30 seconds and enjoy!

While sencha (煎茶) - non-powdered green leaf tea - has traditionally been the mainstay harvest, recent years have seen a big shift to tencha (甜茶) - powdered green tea that is the raw material for matcha - thanks to the global matcha boom. According to the Japanese Association of Tea Production, tencha production almost tripled between 2008 and 2023. While sencha is grown without covering, tencha requires reduced sunlight so, as can be seen in the top left of the picture, tea fields need to be covered in black sheets as harvest time approaches. 

Picking tea leaves at Sugimotoen. A special thank-you to Kumiko for letting me join on the fly!

The demand for matcha has been driven by a shift from drinking matcha - think of the creamy, slightly bitter umami drink made popular by the tea ceremony - to eating products made from it. The trigger for this was not a Japanese company but an American one: Haagen-Dazs' 1996 introduction of green tea ice cream - made, in a stroke of genius, just like shincha, from the first leaves of the season (初摘み茶葉) - was a massive hit. Today, as the visual here and picture below shows, there are matcha cookies, cakes, chocolate, gelato, jelly, pancakes, parfaits, and even chewing gum, not to mention the various new types of drinks such as lattes, cola, cocktails, and smoothies. Packed with antioxidants, the health benefits - especially in comparison with coffee - are pretty undeniable: I honestly can't remember the last time I caught a cold!

Which brings me back to my own tea-making experience at home. After picking the tea leaves, and enjoying a green tea and yōkan jelly break with the other pickers, the owner gave me a quick introduction to the factory and explained the process of tea production. Put simply the leaves are steamed, kneaded, and dried, removing all moisture and leaving the kind of tea leaves we are familiar with. As this video shows, the principle is the same even when making hand-rolled tea (temomicha) at home, so I headed back with my 130g of fresh leaves and gave it a go. After repeatedly steaming (in the microwave) and kneading, I eventually got something resembling tea leaves, but they were still a little moist - the factory dries them in 80℃ heat for 20-25 minutes - and as a result the aroma of the tea was on the weak side. Any thoughts on green tea and the matcha boom? Let me know in the COMMENTS below!