How matcha is made

The tea fields are covered with cheesecloth for at least 20 days before picking to soften the sunlight and allow the new buds to grow. The timing of this covering is an important process that greatly affects the quality of the matcha.

When the tender new buds begin to firm up, artisans carefully squeeze and pick each stalk with their fingers. This traditional "koki-tsumi" method is a symbol of Japan's hand-picking techniques, which produce fragrant, high-quality tea leaves.

If freshly picked leaves are left as they are, fermentation will begin immediately and heat will build up inside. Therefore, to prevent deterioration of the quality of the leaves and to maintain their freshness, humid air is pumped in. This helps to maintain moisture in the leaves and suppress heat generation due to respiration.

The leaves are steamed in a continuous, rotating, agitating mesh steamer to stop the action of the oxidizing enzymes contained in the leaves, maintain their bright green color, and bring out their aroma.
The steaming time is shorter than regular sencha, about 20 seconds on average.

*If you want a darker matcha color, adjust the steaming time slightly longer.

If the steamed tea leaves are left at high temperatures, their color and flavor will be lost. Therefore, immediately after steaming, the tea leaves are blown up into a cooling machine (commonly known as an "andon") using wind power. The tea leaves are cooled while being spread out so that they do not overlap, preserving their color and aroma.
Generally, lanterns are about 5 to 7 meters tall, and the longer they are, the greater the cooling effect.

The tea leaves are dried for about 30 minutes with hot air at about 170-200℃. The bottom of the dryer, which is about 10 meters long, is a brick furnace.

The tea leaves are quickly dried at the bottom of the 3-5 layer caterpillar structure, then blown up to the top and transported back down to the bottom where they are slowly dried. This process gives the tea leaves a nice, cooked aroma,
The result is a high-quality finish with a well-balanced aroma and flavor.

After drying, the leaves of the tea leaves are almost completely dry, but the stems are difficult to dry and still retain a lot of moisture. Therefore, a vine cutter is used to separate the stems, carefully separating the leaves from the stems (the part that includes the veins and is also called the "bone").

The stems and veins contain a lot of moisture, so they are dried again and then the leaves and bones are separated by wind.

One lot is uniformly combined at the combining site and shipped in the ocean (approximately 10-20 kg).

※Gouba
An old name for a place where tea leaves are blended.

※Ocean
A large paper bag used to transport unrefined tea during the tea trade. It is made of double-layered paper with plastic sandwiched between the layers.

Tencha is said to have better shelf life when it is in the finished tea state, where the stems and veins, which contain a lot of moisture, have been removed.For this reason, it is usually stored as finished tea, and just before being shipped as matcha, it is ground in a stone mill in a temperature-controlled room (around 20 degrees, humidity below 40%) to make matcha.