Tencha (碾茶): The Tea That Becomes Matcha

When explaining matcha to a beginner, I find myself accidentally using the word tencha. That is how central it is: you cannot really talk about matcha without it.

Tencha 碾茶 (てんちゃ) is the shade-grown, processed leaf that becomes matcha when stone-ground into powder. Every quality decision in matcha, colour, aroma, theanine content, grade, is made at the tencha stage, before the mill turns. Here we'll explain what tencha is, how it is made, and why it matters.

Tencha is the processed shade-grown leaf that is stone-ground into matcha. It is not normally sold or consumed as a brewed tea, though it can be brewed, and in professional competition settings it is evaluated that way. Its purpose is the mill.

Several things set tencha apart from every other Japanese green tea, and they are worth naming clearly.

No rolling. 

Most Japanese green teas, including sencha, gyokuro, and fukamushi sencha, are rolled or kneaded after steaming. Tencha is not. The reason is practical: tencha is destined for stone-grinding, not brewing, and rolling is simply unnecessary for that purpose. More importantly, rolling would prevent the next step. Because the leaves dry flat and whole, their stems and veins can be mechanically separated from the soft leaf blade. Roll the leaves into needles and that clean separation becomes impossible: the different parts become compressed and tangled. Keeping the leaf flat is what makes deveining and destemming feasible at scale.

Deveining and destemming. 

After drying, stems and veins are removed from the leaf. This is one of the most significant processing steps in tencha production and a key point of difference from gyokuro, which is processed with its stems intact. Stems and veins contain more moisture and different compounds than the soft leaf blade. Removing them from tencha produces a more uniform material: the blade tissue is the richest in theanine, chlorophyll, and the volatile aromatics that define the ooika 覆い香 (shaded tea aroma). High-grade tencha removes nearly all stem and vein material.¹ What remains, the refined leaf blade, is called shiagehа 仕立て葉: the finished leaf ready for the stone mill.

Shading.

Tea plants destined for tencha are covered for typically 20 to 30 days before harvest, using materials with high light reduction. This is among the most intensive shading practices in Japanese tea.¹¹ The shading comes at a cost: reduced light weakens the plant and reduces yield. Managing plant vigour under prolonged shade is one of the central challenges of tencha cultivation.¹¹

The whole leaf is consumed. 

When tencha is ground into matcha and whisked into water, you are not steeping the leaf and discarding it. You drink the entire leaf in powdered form. This means you consume the entire leaf rather than extracting only what dissolves into water when steeping. This is the primary reason the theanine and caffeine content of matcha is significantly higher than that of gyokuro in practice: with gyokuro, you steep the leaf and extract only what dissolves; with matcha you consume everything. The high theanine content of shade-grown tencha is therefore not just a flavour consideration but a nutritional one, amplified by the whole-leaf consumption method.

The character 碾 (ten) means to grind or mill using a rotary implement. 茶 (cha) means tea. Tencha is, in other words, tea for the grinder.

The naming logic reveals the relationship between tencha and matcha. Matcha 抹茶 (まっちゃ) contains the character 抹, which means to rub, powder, or grind something fine. Matcha is the ground powder. Tencha is what becomes it. The two words were always understood together: you could not have matcha without tencha, and tencha had no endpoint that was not the mill.

One important disambiguation: 甜茶, also pronounced tencha in Japanese, is a Chinese herbal tea made from the leaves of Rubus suavissimus, a plant in the rose family. It is naturally sweet, grows without shading, and has no connection to Japanese green tea or the tea ceremony. The characters are completely different. If you encounter the word "tencha" in a Chinese herbal medicine context, it refers to that plant, not to matcha's raw material.

Very few people brew tencha as a cup of tea, which is partly why it is so rarely described on its own terms. Brewing tencha is, however, a standard practice in professional quality evaluation. At the National Tea Competition (全国茶品評会), tencha is assessed by steeping, and the evaluation criteria include the appearance, aroma, liquor colour, flavour, and, uniquely among the eight categories, the colour of the brewed leaves.⁹ The brewed cup tells you what the matcha made from this leaf will become.

For anyone curious enough to try: the liquor is pale, close to straw-coloured rather than the vibrant green of whisked matcha, because the unrolled leaves release compounds slowly. Cell walls are intact; extraction depends on dissolved material passing through the surface of the leaf rather than from every broken face. This is a structural characteristic of the unrolled leaf, not a deficiency. What does extract is notably clean. Shading has already driven down bitterness by limiting the conversion of theanine into catechins, and the removal of stems and veins means the tougher, more astringent tissue is absent. A properly brewed cup of high-grade tencha is soft and mellow, sweet in a savoury way, with a distinctly marine-green aroma. It is not gyokuro and it is not matcha. It is something adjacent to both.

The fact that tencha brew is used in professional evaluation is a reminder of what tencha is: not a finished drinking tea, but a material whose potential can already be read in the cup.

Tencha production begins not at the factory but in the field, weeks before harvest.

Shading

Tea plants designated for tencha are covered for typically 20 to 30 days before the leaves are picked, using materials with high light reduction.¹¹ The shading method matters and varies. There are three main approaches, ranging from most traditional to most practical.

The most labour-intensive and expensive method is honzu (本簀): a shelf or tana (棚) framework of wooden or metal bars is built above the plants, and a screen of woven reeds (yoshizu 葭簀) is laid across it as the first layer, with rice straw mats added on top as harvest approaches. The reed screen diffuses light rather than simply blocking it, and the elevated structure allows air to circulate freely around the plants. Honzu is associated with the most complex ooika aroma in finished matcha. It is still practised at traditional farms in Uji and Yame, but it requires significant infrastructure, specialist knowledge to construct, and labour to maintain, and only a small proportion of producers use it today.

A widely used method is kanreisha tana-shading (棚型寒冷紗): the same shelf framework as honzu, but with synthetic black woven cloth (kanreisha 寒冷紗) suspended on it rather than natural reed and straw. The cloth is available in varying opacities, which gives producers more precise control over shading levels than natural materials allow. The elevated frame keeps the cloth off the leaves and maintains air circulation around the plants. This method offers a practical middle ground: it achieves the high shading levels required for tencha while being significantly less expensive and easier to install and replace than honzu.

The simplest method is jikagake (直掛け), or direct covering: synthetic shade cloth is laid directly onto the surface of the plants without any supporting framework. No shelf needs to be built. The cloth rests on the tea canopy itself, which means the plants must be trimmed to a flat, even surface to avoid crushing the new buds. This makes jikagake suited to gardens designed for machine harvesting, where the plants are already trimmed to a uniform hedge shape. It is faster and cheaper to deploy than tana methods and is widely used for larger-scale tencha production.

What shading does to the plant will be addressed in the science section below. What matters at the harvesting stage is that these changes are locked in at picking. The longer and more intensely the plants are shaded, the more the theanine accumulates and the deeper the colour becomes.

Harvesting

First-flush tencha, ichibancha 一番茶, is harvested from late April through early June depending on region and climate. Kagoshima comes in earliest. Kyoto follows as the season advances north.

The vast majority of tencha in Japan is harvested by machine. Machine harvesting now dominates Japanese tea production broadly. Hand-picking is most closely associated with tana-gake (frame shading) gardens, particularly those using the honzu method: because the frame allows the plants to grow in their natural, unpruned form (shizen-shitate 自然仕立て), they become unsuitable for machine harvesting and must be picked by hand.⁴ Hand-picking is also used on steep terrain where machines cannot access. The same applies to tencha: hand-picked tencha exists and commands a premium, but it represents a small fraction of total tencha production. Scissors-picking (はさみ摘み), a semi-mechanical method using hand-held cutting tools, is used in some contexts where ride-on machines are impractical, particularly on steeper hillside gardens.

Machine-harvested tencha gardens are typically shaped into flat-topped hedges (une-shitate 畝仕立て), which allows the harvesting machine to pass along and cut the new growth at a consistent level. Jikagake direct-shading is the natural pairing for this garden style, since the cloth can be laid flat on the even canopy surface.

Hand-picking, when it is done, allows pickers to be selective: only the tenderest new buds are taken, damaged or coarse leaves are left behind, and the harvest timing can be judged bud by bud. The result is more uniform, tender material than machine or scissors harvesting typically allows. A skilled hand-picker harvests roughly 10 to 15 kilograms of fresh leaf per day; a two-person handheld mechanical harvester can cover 700 to 1,000 kilograms per day.⁴ The economics make clear why machine harvesting dominates.

Traditionally, tencha gardens are harvested once a year. After the first flush, the plants are pruned back hard (台刈り, daigari) to around 40 centimetres to prepare for the following year's growth.⁶ When scissors or machines are used rather than finger-picking, a second or even third flush is possible within the season. Later-flush tencha is used for culinary and food-industry matcha. Matcha suitable for tea ceremony use is made from first-flush tencha regardless of harvesting method, because the first flush contains the highest theanine concentrations of the year.

After picking, fresh leaves deteriorate quickly. They are transported immediately to the factory, spread in ventilated containers, and processed the same day.

Steaming

The freshly picked leaves are steamed at high temperature to halt oxidation. Tencha is steamed for a shorter time than sencha: on average around 20 seconds, compared to the longer steams used for deep-steamed sencha.¹ This brief, intense steam preserves the bright vivid green colour and the characteristic ooika aroma.

A note from お茶百科: a longer steaming time produces a deeper colour in the ground matcha. This is one of the variables tea makers can adjust to influence the final product.¹

Stirring and Cooling

Immediately after steaming, the hot leaves are blown upward by air into a tall cylindrical net apparatus called an andon (あんどん), where they are dispersed and cooled rapidly. Leaving the steamed leaves hot would damage colour and flavour. The andon can be five to seven metres tall; the taller it is, the more effectively it separates and cools the leaves.¹

Drying in the Tencha-ro

This is the step unique to tencha. Rather than entering a rolling machine, the cooled, steamed leaves go into a tencha-ro (碾茶炉): a long drying furnace, typically about 10 metres in length, with multiple tiers of caterpillar-belt conveyors inside. The leaves travel through the furnace at 170 to 200°C for approximately 30 minutes, passing through several tiers and drying gradually from the outside in.¹ The lower tiers achieve rapid initial drying; the upper tiers carry the leaves more slowly as moisture is removed from the interior. This gradual drying produces what is described as a "harmonised aroma" by お茶百科: a light heat fragrance that complements rather than overwhelms the ooika.

The resulting material is called tencha aracha 碾茶荒茶: crude tencha. The leaf is dry on the outside but the stems and veins, which are denser and hold more moisture, are less thoroughly dried than the blade tissue.

Stem and Vein Separation (Tsuru-kiri)

After the main drying, the aracha undergoes tsuru-kiri (つる切り): a separation step in which the leaf blade is detached from the woody stems and vein material (collectively called "bones," ほね, in the trade). This separation is possible precisely because the leaves were never rolled: the flat, intact leaf structure allows mechanical cutters and air sorters to separate the softer blade tissue from the harder stems and veins.

Re-drying and Finishing

The separated stem and vein material still contains significant moisture and is re-dried.¹ The refined leaf blade then undergoes the shiagecha finishing process: cutting into smaller pieces, air sorting, re-drying, and colour sorting, to produce a uniform material ready for the stone mill.² The finished tencha has the appearance of flattened, dark-green pieces resembling dried green seaweed, clean and dry.

It is worth noting that tencha is typically stored before milling. The traditional practice is to store finished tencha for several months, sometimes close to half a year, before grinding. Storage allows the flavours to mellow and round. There is even a dedicated tea ceremony, Kuchikiri no Chaji (口切りの茶事), to mark the occasion of opening the first jar of the season's new tencha for grinding into matcha. Many producers continue this tradition today.

Stone-Milling and the Question of What Matcha Is

When tencha is ground in a stone mill (石臼, ishi-usu), it becomes matcha. The two circular granite stones turn slowly against each other, reducing the tencha to particles measuring approximately five to ten microns. This process generates almost no heat, which is important: heat would degrade the aromatic compounds and colour. One stone mill produces approximately 40 grams of matcha per hour.¹

This distinction between stone-ground and machine-ground product matters for an important reason. Japanese industry standards define matcha as tencha ground into fine powder using a tea mill (traditionally a stone mill).⁵ Stone-milling remains the traditional benchmark, especially for high-grade matcha.

In practice, the global demand for matcha has made machine-milling more common, including for products exported and sold internationally as matcha. Industrial ceramic or bead mills process tencha much faster than stone mills and produce powder that many consumers cannot distinguish. Within the Japanese trade, stone-milling remains the traditional benchmark, especially for high-grade matcha.

Additionally, there is a separate product called hunmatsucha/funmatsucha 粉末茶, made by grinding tea leaves that have not been shade-grown. This is sometimes sold internationally under the name matcha, but it does not meet Japanese definitions. It tends to be more bitter and less vibrant in colour, because the theanine accumulation that shading produces is absent.⁵

The article's position: when this article refers to matcha, it means stone-ground tencha that was shade-grown. Products that deviate from either criterion are often using the term more loosely than traditional definitions allow.

The tea that arrived in Japan from China in the 8th and 9th centuries was already powdered, but it was not matcha as we know it. The figure most credited with establishing tea culture in Japan is the Zen monk Myoan Eisai (明菴栄西, 1141–1215). Returning from study in Song-dynasty China in 1191, Eisai brought back tea seeds and the method of whisking powdered tea in hot water. His book Kissa Yojoki (喫茶養生記) spread tea culture among the samurai class and beyond. Eisai gave tea seeds to his disciple Myoe, who planted them in Togano'o near Kyoto, establishing one of Japan's earliest tea gardens. This is the direct lineage from which Uji tea culture grew.⁶ The powdered tea of Tang and Song dynasty China was made from leaves that were steamed and pressed into bricks, then broken off, roasted, and ground. The colour was brown. The umami depth of modern matcha was absent.

The decisive shift happened in the Muromachi period (14th to 16th centuries), in the Uji area south of Kyoto. Japanese tea farmers, working in the natural conditions created by the Uji and Kizu river valleys (the mists off these rivers had always made Uji leaves distinctively tender), developed a deliberate system of shading their plants before harvest. This technique is called ōishita saibai 覆下栽培, or covered cultivation. According to the history preserved in Uji and documented in regional tea histories, it involved covering the tea plants with yoshizu reed screens and rice straw, building a roof of shade above the garden.¹⁰ The precise origin is not fully documented in a single surviving primary record, but the technique is consistently traced to Uji in this period.

What this shading produced was transformative. The leaves that emerged were vivid green where the Chinese tea had been brown: the shading caused a dramatic increase in chlorophyll. The theanine that would normally have been converted by sunlight remained in the leaf, producing a concentrated umami and sweetness. When these leaves were stone-ground and whisked into hot water, the result looked and tasted unlike anything that had come before. The word matcha, referring specifically to this powdered shade-grown tea, appears in Muromachi-period texts including the Kundaikan Sōchōki (君台観左右帳記) of 1476.

For roughly four centuries from this point, Uji was effectively the only significant tencha region in Japan. The covered cultivation method was for a long time restricted by the shogunate to licensed tea master families, which concentrated expertise and production in a small area.

Mechanisation began to open tencha cultivation to other regions in the late 20th century. Nishio city in Aichi Prefecture developed into a substantial tencha producer, particularly for culinary and food-industry matcha. Kagoshima, Japan's largest tea-producing prefecture, began its tencha transition in earnest in the early 2000s. In 2020, Kagoshima surpassed Kyoto in tencha production volume.³ In 2024, Kagoshima surpassed Shizuoka as Japan's largest tea-producing prefecture overall, for the first time since 1991.³

Yame in Fukuoka Prefecture, long celebrated for gyokuro, has quietly developed quality tencha production as well, entering the National Tea Competition's tencha category with results that reflect its deep tradition of shade cultivation.

This is not a story of Kyoto's decline. First-flush premium tencha from Uji continues to set the benchmark and command the highest prices. What has changed is scale: the world now drinks far more matcha than Uji alone can grow.

Japan's tencha production reached approximately 5,336 tonnes in 2024, nearly 2.7 times the level of a decade earlier. Despite this growth, tencha remains a small fraction of Japan's total tea production, which is why supply remains structurally tight against global demand.³

Kyoto (Uji and Yamashiro)

Kyoto is the historical heartland of tencha and the benchmark against which other regions are measured. The Yamashiro region, including the town of Wazuka which is the largest tencha-producing town in Kyoto Prefecture, produces tencha characterized by deep vivid colour, complex ooika aroma, and concentrated umami. Kyoto produces approximately 25 percent of Japan's tencha.³

The Uji regional collective trademark is worth understanding precisely. Tea may carry the "Uji tea" designation if the leaves originate from Kyoto, Nara, Shiga, or Mie Prefectures, provided the processing takes place in Kyoto using Uji methods. This means "Uji matcha" is a processing and blending designation as much as a geographical one. It does not require that the tencha itself was grown within Uji city limits.

First-flush auction prices in Uji function as a leading indicator of the broader market. In 2025, following April frost damage during the critical budding window, tencha production in Kyoto fell significantly.⁹ Auction prices surged accordingly.

Kagoshima

Kagoshima is now Japan's highest-volume tencha producer. The prefecture's warm climate, flat terrain, and earlier harvest timing make large-scale mechanised tencha cultivation efficient. Key cultivars for Kagoshima tencha include Okumidori and Asanoka, which perform well under shade. Kagoshima is also a leader in organic certification, which matters for export markets with strict residue regulations.

A structural note: much of Kagoshima's tencha is purchased by Kyoto-based blenders, processed and finished in Kyoto, and sold as part of Uji Tea branded blends. Under the Uji Tea regional trademark, leaves grown in four prefectures (including Kagoshima is not among them, as the trademark covers Kyoto, Nara, Shiga, and Mie) may be used if processing occurs in Kyoto. Kagoshima tencha entering Kyoto blends is typically sold under blender brand names rather than a geographic origin claim. This is transparent within the trade and reflects the reality that Uji matcha at commercial scale is a processed and blended product, not a single-origin one.

Aichi (Nishio)

Nishio city in Aichi Prefecture is Japan's second-largest concentration of tencha production. Nishio produces matcha across the full quality range, from tea-ceremony grade to culinary use, with its top teas entering the national competition. The region's production emphasis on volume and consistency has made it a reliable source for food-industry matcha as well.

Shizuoka

Shizuoka, Japan's historically dominant tea prefecture, produces tencha as part of a diverse output that primarily centres on fukamushi sencha (深蒸し煎茶, deep-steamed sencha), the style Shizuoka developed and in which it remains the national benchmark. Fukamushi sencha accounts for the large majority of Shizuoka's tea output. Tencha is a smaller part of its portfolio, contributing to both tea-ceremony grade and culinary markets, and the prefecture's tea research infrastructure supports cultivar development relevant to tencha.

Fukuoka (Yame)

Yame in Fukuoka Prefecture is best known for gyokuro, where it has held the National Tea Competition's Production Area Award in the gyokuro category for over 20 consecutive years.⁸ But Yame also produces tencha, and its entries in the tencha category of the national competition reflect the same culture of careful shade cultivation that defines its gyokuro.

Yame's traditional shading approach, using honzu-style reed screens and straw rather than synthetic cloth, produces a distinctive aroma profile. Many Yame farms continue this labour-intensive method because it is part of how Yame defines its quality positioning. The resulting matcha is characterised as mellow, buttery, and smooth: lower bitterness than Uji, with a quiet sweetness that suits both usucha 薄茶 (thin tea, prepared by whisking with a larger amount of water) and modern latte applications. Yame's tencha production volume is small relative to Kyoto or Kagoshima, but its quality record at the National Tea Competition makes it a region worth knowing.

Theanine (L-theanine) is an amino acid found almost exclusively in tea plants and certain mushrooms. It is primarily responsible for the umami quality in shaded teas: the smooth, savoury, rounded sensation that distinguishes gyokuro or high-grade matcha from an unshaded sencha.

Tea plants produce theanine in their roots and transport it upward through the plant into the leaves. In normal sunlight conditions, the energy from photosynthesis drives a conversion: sunlight promotes catechin production while reducing amino acid levels such as theanine, and the catechins that accumulate are the compounds responsible for bitterness and astringency in tea. Block the sunlight for three to four weeks, and that conversion largely stops. Theanine accumulates in the leaf tissue. When those leaves are ground into matcha and whisked into water, the full accumulated theanine enters the cup, because you are consuming the entire leaf.

This is different from what happens when you brew gyokuro. Gyokuro undergoes the same shading and accumulates comparable theanine. But when you steep gyokuro leaves and discard them, only the fraction of theanine that dissolves into the water enters your cup. With matcha, nothing is discarded. The whole-leaf consumption model is why matcha typically delivers more theanine per serving than any steeped tea, even one shaded to the same standard.

Chlorophyll tells a parallel story. Under low light, plants increase chlorophyll production to capture what little available light there is. Shade-grown tencha is a deeper, more saturated green than sencha because it has produced significantly more chlorophyll. When the leaf is ground, that chlorophyll contributes to matcha's vivid colour. Matcha made from inadequately shaded or later-flush tencha tends toward yellow-green or olive tones. The vivid colour that signals premium matcha is, at its origin, the plant's response to being deprived of light.

The ooika 覆い香 aroma, a distinctive marine-green, seaweed-like quality found in high-grade shaded teas, is associated with the production of dimethyl sulfide and related volatile compounds under shaded conditions. This aroma is one of the qualities that tana-shading (with its better air circulation) is thought to develop more fully than direct-shading, though this distinction is difficult to quantify precisely across growing conditions.

From approximately 2020 onward, global demand for matcha grew faster than Japanese tencha production could expand. The primary drivers: the adoption of the matcha latte in specialty coffee culture internationally, and the concurrent growth in matcha-based foods and wellness products in markets outside Japan.

The figures tell the story plainly. Japan exported green tea worth a record 36.4 billion yen in 2024, a 25 percent increase in value year-on-year and the fifth consecutive export record.³ Tencha production hit 5,336 tonnes in 2024, nearly 2.7 times the level of a decade earlier. Yet tencha remains a small fraction of Japan's total tea production, which means the production base remains thin relative to the demand being placed on it.³

Structural constraints compound this. Converting a sencha garden to tencha requires building shade infrastructure and adjusting farm economics. More significantly, converting a sencha aracha factory to a tencha processing facility requires a completely different set of equipment, including the tencha-ro furnace and the stem-separation systems. The investment is substantial and often unrealistic for the aging, small-scale farm families that make up much of Japan's tea sector. Japan lost approximately 53,000 tea farmers between 2000 and 2020, and the average Japanese tea farmer is now over 60.³ New tencha area is being developed, particularly in Kagoshima, but the pace is constrained by both capital and available labour.

The 2025 harvest compounded these pressures. An April frost struck Kyoto and Shizuoka during the critical budding window, causing significant reductions in tencha production and driving auction prices to record highs.⁹

The consequence runs through to the consumer: what ends up in a tin of matcha is determined before the stone mill turns. Grade, colour, aroma, theanine content, and price are all downstream of tencha quality. Understanding tencha is understanding what you are actually paying for.

Most people encounter tencha only indirectly, through matcha. But brewed tencha is a genuine experience, and its evaluation by brewing is standard practice in the tencha category of the National Tea Competition.⁹ It offers a window into what the resulting matcha will become.

A few practical points: the unrolled leaves are large, flat, and will release their compounds slowly. Use a generous amount: around 5 to 8 grams per 100ml (3.4 fl oz) as a starting point. A reasonable starting point is 8 grams per 200ml (6.8 fl oz) at around 80°C (176°F) for about 2 minutes, adjusting to taste. High-grade tencha may perform well at slightly lower temperatures, where theanine sweetness is more pronounced.

The cup will be much lighter in colour than sencha or gyokuro: pale green to straw-yellow. This is structural, not a flaw. What the cup delivers is a clean, low-bitterness infusion with a pronounced umami sweetness, a gentle marine aroma, and a softness that reflects the accumulated theanine and the absence of stem and vein material.

Multiple infusions are possible but the first contains most of the flavour.

Is tencha the same as matcha?

No, but matcha cannot exist without it. Tencha is the processed whole leaf. Matcha is what tencha becomes after stone-grinding. They share the same cultivation and initial processing steps, but the grinding step is what transforms one into the other. Japanese industry standards define matcha as tencha ground into fine powder using a tea mill (traditionally a stone mill).⁵

Can I drink tencha as a brewed tea?

Yes, though it takes adjustment. Brewed tencha is lighter in colour than most Japanese teas and requires more leaf and longer infusion. It offers a clean, mellow, sweet cup with low bitterness. Professional evaluators routinely brew tencha to assess the matcha it will become. Very few shops stock it for retail.

What is the difference between first-flush and second-flush tencha?

First flush is not a formal criterion in the definition of tencha, but it is the quality standard for matcha suitable for tea ceremony use. First-flush (ichibancha 一番茶) tencha contains the highest theanine concentrations of the year, accumulated after winter dormancy. Traditionally, hand-picked tencha gardens produce only one flush per year, with plants pruned back hard afterward. Machine-harvested gardens can yield a second or even third flush, and this later-flush tencha is used for culinary and food-industry matcha.⁶

Why is matcha higher in theanine than gyokuro, if both are shade-grown?

Both accumulate theanine through the same shading process. The difference is in how they are consumed. With gyokuro, you steep the leaf and drink only what dissolves into the water. With matcha, you grind the entire leaf and drink everything in it. You are not brewing a shade-grown leaf; you are consuming it whole. This makes matcha uniquely efficient at delivering all the compounds the shading produced.

Why does some matcha look yellow-green rather than vivid green?

Colour is determined primarily by shading quality and, after milling, by age and storage. Inadequately shaded tencha, or later-flush tencha, accumulates less chlorophyll and produces a less vivid matcha. Matcha that has been exposed to light, heat, or air after milling loses its bright green as chlorophyll degrades. Vivid, saturated green is a reliable signal for well-shaded first-flush tencha, properly stone-ground and freshly stored. That said, cultivar matters: some cultivars such as Samidori and Asahi produce naturally lighter-coloured matcha even when shade-grown to a high standard and with strong amino acid content. Large differences in colour between products are meaningful; fine distinctions within a similar grade are less so.

What is the difference between matcha and hunmatsucha (粉末茶)?

Matcha, under Japanese standards, is made specifically from shade-grown tencha ground by a stone mill. Hunmatsucha is powdered tea made from grinding non-shade-grown tea leaves.⁵ It is more bitter, less vibrant in colour, and significantly cheaper. It is widely used in the food and beverage industry internationally and is sometimes labeled as matcha in markets without strict definitions.

¹ お茶百科. 「抹茶の製造工程 荒茶工程」. 公益社団法人日本茶業中央会. https://www.ocha.tv/how_tea_is_made/process/schedule_maccha/

² お茶百科. 「抹茶の製造工程 仕上げ加工工程」. 公益社団法人日本茶業中央会. https://www.ocha.tv/how_tea_is_made/process/finnish_maccha/

³ 農林水産省. 「茶をめぐる情勢（令和7年12月）」. 農林水産省農産局果樹・茶グループ. https://www.maff.go.jp/j/seisan/tokusan/cha/attach/pdf/ocha-139.pdf

⁴ お茶百科. 「摘採方法」. 公益社団法人日本茶業中央会. https://www.ocha.tv/how_tea_is_made/tea_picking/nihoncha_picking/

⁵ お茶百科. 「抹茶・てん茶」. 公益社団法人日本茶業中央会. https://www.ocha.tv/varieties/nihoncha_varieties/maccha/

⁶ 農林水産省. 「今月の農林水産大臣賞 vol.12 こだわりのてん茶」. https://www.maff.go.jp/j/pr/aff/1704/m_award.html

⁷ 農林水産省. 「令和6年産茶の摘採面積、生葉収穫量及び荒茶生産量（主産県）」. 農林水産省大臣官房統計部. https://www.maff.go.jp/j/tokei/kekka_gaiyou/sakumotu/sakkyou_kome/kougei/r6/cha/index.html

⁸ 福岡県茶業振興推進協議会. 「品評会受賞歴」. 八女茶. https://fukuoka-yamecha.jp/whats/winning/

⁹ 京都府農林水産部. 「第78回全国茶品評会 京都府の出品茶が農林水産大臣賞と産地賞を獲得」. 京都府. https://www.pref.kyoto.jp/nosan/news/press/2024/8/24zenpin.html

¹⁰ 長谷永製茶場. 「宇治抹茶・宇治碾茶づくりについて」. 茶舗ゆとは. https://chaho-yutoha.com/en/pages/uji-tencha

¹¹ 農研機構. 「実需者需要に応える簡易な樹体診断法と効率的被覆作業による高品位安定生産技術の確立」. 国立研究開発法人農業・食品産業技術総合研究機構. https://www.naro.go.jp/publicity_report/publication/files/hihukucha-antei_man201803.pdf