What Kind of Tea Is Matcha? A Guide to Matcha's Raw Materials and Production Process

Now matcha is an internet-famous product, loved by many young men and women, and it is also added to many foods. If you eat matcha every day, do you know what kind of tea matcha is?

1. What kind of tea is matcha?

Matcha originated in China during the Sui and Tang dynasties. The tender leaves of spring tea leaves were steamed to fix the green, then made into cake tea (ball tea) for storage. Before eating, it was baked dry over a fire again, and ground into powder with a natural stone mill.

Today, matcha production techniques are mainly concentrated in Japan. To ensure the tea leaves stay bright and tender, after the tea leaves grow one bud and two leaves in spring, the first shading treatment is carried out. After the tea leaves grow to one bud and four or five leaves, picking and steaming are carried out, that is, the leaves are steamed to fix the green on the day they are picked, then go through multiple processes such as cooling, baking and screening, and finally are ground with a stone mill at a speed of 60 revolutions per minute, at a constant temperature of 19 degrees C, slowly producing the emerald green powder that is matcha.

2. The nutritional value of matcha

In recent decades, people's understanding of tea has greatly deepened, and there is also a profound understanding of the essence of tea's functional substances. Today, as the toxic side effects of antibiotics and growth hormones are increasingly questioned, tea polyphenols, with their unique biological functions and “green” nature, are reaching ever deeper into people's diet and daily life.

Although ordinary tea contains extremely high nutritional components, only 35% of the tea leaves is actually soluble in water, and a large amount of water-insoluble effective components are thrown away by people as tea dregs. Experiments prove that eating tea can absorb more nutrition than drinking tea. The nutritional components in one bowl of matcha exceed those in 30 cups of ordinary green tea, so almost all Japanese tea ceremony masters live to a long life. Changing from drinking tea to eating tea is not only a reform of eating habits, but also a need to adapt to the fast-paced modern life.

Matcha is a very healthy type of tea, but currently there are also many products on the market that use green tea powder to pretend to be matcha. When eating it, be sure to look carefully, and it is not recommended to buy fake matcha products.