Matcha=green tea?
All Matcha is green tea, but all green tea is not matcha. Both are the same species, Camellia sinensis, but matcha is grown and prepared in a very specific way. Matcha starts as Gyokuro which is green tea that is grown under partial shade for the last 2-3 weeks before harvest. It is then dried until it becomes slightly brittle. At this point, it is referred to as Tencha. The Tencha is then ground into a very fine powder that should be bright green in color. Historically this is done using stone mills, though some producers use industrial machinery for the grinding process.
Matcha is prepared by mixing this powder with hot water, and consuming the entire liquid. Because the matcha drinker is consuming the vegetal material, they get a different nutrient profile than from brewed tea. With matcha, the tea drinker gets both the water-soluable and non-water-soluable constituents of the tea, while drinkers of brewed tea only get the water-soluable fraction. Matcha is just powdered tea. Matcha comes from the same plant that all true teas come from: camellia sinensis. Green tea is harvested and simply steamed and dried, while Matcha is fascinating!
Only the smallest, youngest/greenest parts of the plant—the two leaves at the tip of each new shoot—are picked. They are then steamed to preserve the color and nutrients, then thoroughly dried.
Once dry, they are sorted for grade (with the youngest, greenest, most tender leaves earning the highest marks). Then the laborious and immensely time-consuming task of destemming and deveining happens. The leaves that make it through this rigorous process are called tencha, and, of course, the quality of tencha varies widely. Tencha is then kept refrigerated until it’s ready to be ground, using large granite wheels that rotate very slowly and gently to avoid scorching, into a very fine powder known as matcha. It takes more than an hour to grind 30 grams, which is one of the reasons hand-milled matcha costs so much (labor costs are quite high). It is this grinding process from which matcha—抹 茶, literally, “ground tea”—derives its name.
The big differences are in how the tea leaves are grown, harvested and processed. Tea leaves for better grades of matcha like a ceremonial grade are hand-picked off the tea plant, most green teas are not hand-picked (Gyokuru is, and some high end Sencha can be).
The leaves for matcha are de-stemmed and de-veined which 100 yrs ago was done by hand! Again, most green teas do not separate the stems and veins. and even some lower quality matcha, doesn’t separate them.
And then finally the matcha is stone ground into a fine powder between two large granite stones. It takes one hour of grinding to produce one tin of our Pure biotechnology Organic Ceremonial Matcha. You can get green tea in powder form but it will not have gone through the shading and handpicking as matcha has, nor the destemming etc., plus it is likely pulverized to a powder rather than slowly stone ground. If you are drinking green tea for health benefits, choose matcha over regular green tea. General consensus and a few studies show matcha is much higher in nutrients like EGCG catehin, and L-theanine as a result of its unique growing/processing process and because of the fact we are ingesting the entire tea leaf.
