Matcha, Whisked and Understood

Matcha starts as a shade-grown green tea. Covering the plants in the weeks before harvest slows growth and raises the amino acid content, which is where matcha's savoury depth comes from. The leaves are then steamed, dried, stripped of stems and veins, and stone-ground into a fine powder.

Because nothing is strained out, water temperature and whisking technique matter more than they do with a steeped tea, and the powder's grade and freshness show up directly in the cup.

Grade language is marketing rather than regulation. Ceremonial and culinary are useful shorthand and no authority defines either, so colour, aroma and price tell you more than the word on the tin.

Matcha is the most perishable thing on a tea shelf. Ground to a few microns it presents an enormous surface to oxygen, and an opened tin fades in weeks where a leaf tea fades in months.

The powder never dissolves, which is the fact behind most complaints.

It is held in suspension, so it settles in the cup, clumps in cold liquid, and needs sifting before it meets water at all.

Thin and thick are two preparations of one powder rather than two products. Thin is what almost everyone means by matcha; thick uses roughly four times the density and leaves a defect nowhere to hide.

Milk changes the job the tea is doing. In a latte the matcha stops being the drink and becomes an ingredient in one, which is where a cheaper powder built for the purpose belongs.