What is Matcha green tea?
Matcha is a variety of green tea, particularly popular in Japan, which is sold in a finely powdered form. There's an important Japanese cultural activity called the Japanese Tea Ceremony, which is actually based primarily around matcha: its preparation, serving, and most importantly drinking!
During the Song dynasty in China, way back in the years 920-1279, the preferred method of preparing tea was to make powdered tea from pre-dried (by steaming) leaves, and then mixing the powder together with hot water in a bowl to prepare the drink. This became something of a serious ritual when it was adopted by Zen Buddhists, who took their beliefs (and their powdered tea!) to Japan in the early 12th Century. Although powdered tea gradually fell into disuse in China as it was replaced by other methods of tea-making, it remained extremely important in Japanese Zen monasteries. Its popularity spread to the most important people at the high end of Japanese society, and as a result, matcha has remained a sophisticated, culturally important variety of tea in Japan.
Matcha is a special kind of powdered tea, made from specially shade-grown leaves that are also used to produce gyokuro. This sets it apart from other varieties of powdered tea, like powdered sencha. Matcha preparation starts well before the actual harvesting of the leaves, with the tea plants being covered over in order to slow down their growth by cutting out direct exposure to sunlight. As a result, the leaves' color deepens, and amino acids are produced, giving the matcha an intense sweetness not found in most kinds of green tea. It has a much deeper flavor than standard grades of tea (the ones harvested later in the year).
To produce matcha, only the very finest and most carefully selected tea buds can be used. These are always handpicked, and can then be used in two different ways. If they're rolled before drying (the usual method of green tea processing), they will be sold as gyokuro tea. However, to make matcha, the leaves are instead laid out flat to dry after harvesting. This causes them to crumble into what is known as tencha, at which point the leaves are de-veined and carefully ground into a fine, green powder: matcha.
This work is an understandably slow process – it's all done by hand, and the de-stemming is tedious. It can then take up to an hour to grind just 30g of matcha! Because of this, matcha is normally quite expensive when compared to other types of tea, although the price can vary somewhat depending on the quality of the matcha. You should also be aware that only tea made from ground tencha can truly be called matcha – other powdered teas are called konacha, which simply means “powdered tea”.
Preparing drinks from matcha powder is, as mentioned earlier, a matter of ceremonial importance in Japanese culture. The matcha is usually pushed through a sieve in order to break up any clumps in the powder, and the sieved powder is then placed into a chaki (a kind of small tea caddy) for the tea ceremony. A small amount of matcha is whisked together with a little water to make a smooth, fairly thick liquid. Alternatively, more water can be used to make a thin tea (usucha).
Useful Links:
http://www.teazonline.com/servlet/the-63/matcha-green-tea-powder/Detail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matcha
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