How is Matcha Produced? – Matcha Moon

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Home How is Matcha Produced?

How is Matcha Produced?

Shade Growing

In early spring, several weeks prior toharvest, the tea plants are progressively blanketed in black vinyl sheets toblock out sunlight. The tea leaves respond by amplifying their production ofchlorophyll and amino acids, particularly the mood-enhancing L-theanine.

Shade-grownMatcha, after being nurtured under the black vinyl sheets, produces a richflavor and innumerable health benefits, making it a popular choice among tealovers. This unique shade growing process is what gives traditional Japanese matchaits unparalleled health properties and deep, intense, umami flavorprofile.

Once the shade-grown tea leaves are readyfor harvest, only the youngest, greenest and sweetest leaves are selectedand plucked by hand. These leaves are then steamed and laid out flat to dry.

Once dried, the leaves are sorted by grade, with only the very best of the bestearning a ceremonial-quality grade (the remaining leaves are assigned lowergrades, of medium, culinary, etc. to be used for mixing, blending andbaking). Only the finest leaves get the coveted status of ceremonial-gradematcha.

Finally, the leaves are de-veined, de-stemmed and refrigerated to preservetheir freshness and nutrients. Tea leaves processed to this stage are called"tencha."

Stone Grinding

The final step of the journey fromtraditional green tea leaf to matcha is the laborious process of stone-grindingby hand into a fine powder. It can take an hour or more just to produce severalgrams of powdered tea.

This stone-grinding process is what makes our matcha OrganicJapanese Matcha (in fact, the characters used to write matcha, 抹茶, literally mean "fine-ground tea").

This labor-intensive grinding processenables uji matcha green tea powder to be consumed as the entire tea leaf andthus derive 10x+ the health benefits in each cup of tea versus traditionalsteeped green tea.

And it is the exhaustive overall process--from shade growingto hand plucking to steaming and drying to selecting and sorting togrinding--that gives matcha green tea plant its incomparable health benefitsand flavor profile, thus earning it the title the crowned jewel of all teas.