We sometimes get asked the difference between ground green tea leaves and genuine matcha green tea. ‘Surely if I grind up some green tea I get the same stuff?’ Oh no no no.
The bestest tea growers in Japan take great care of the tea bushes through the winter and just before the plucking season in May, they cover the bushes to shade out most of the sunlight (image far left). This puts the bushes into stress (ahhh) and they produce huge amounts of chlorophyll which is jam packed with amino acids - the good stuff!
The finest leaves are then plucked by hand and steam dried – the leaves are separated from the stems and the remaining super quality dried leaves are called tencha. This tencha is then ground to a very fine powder to make matcha green tea.
