Matcha Anyone?

My wife and I have been working on launching a health oriented website. We don’t like drugs. Pharmaceuticals, by-and-large, attack and suppress symptoms rather than addressing underlying causes. Got a headache? Take a pill. High cholesterol? Take more drugs — for life! Side-effects from taking that drug? Just add this other pill.

We both believe there’s a better way and that involves nutritional support and healthy lifestyle of wholesome foods and exercise. You’ve heard it; you know it; but perhaps you don’t know how to truly do it or get exactly what you need out of your diet and nutrition. That’s my wife’s mission and I’m along for the ride because I’m her technologist, marketer, designer, and husband.

So let’s talk about one her key ingredients: Super foods. Or specifically, green tea. I have long hunted around for great teas from China such as Jasmine, Oolong, Chunmee, and so forth, albeit for taste more so than for health reasons. What can I say? I like a solid cup of green tea almost as much as superiorly sourced and roasted cup of coffee. My shopping for such is usually the local Oriental Farmer’s Market or big online names like Tevana, so that probably tells you just how much I know about teas in general (i.e. more than most Americans, but certainly not a whole lot generally speaking).

As much as I have been exposed to green teas, matcha was one I had never encountered until I was hunting down a Japanese Genmaicha green tea. I bought some matcha on a whim that day, but it was really nothing to write home about. I tried prepping it the traditional way and it just didn’t come close to tasting like something I could consume on a regular basis. I tried a couple more brands and then gave it up. That was two years ago.

Then I started researching for healthy ways to boost energy and matcha popped up all over the place as a great sustaining energy booster. I dragged the macha I had back out and tried them again. They were all disgusting. I’d rather drink green tea than this powdered stuff with a metallic, terrible aftertaste I’d been getting. About the only way I could ingest this stuff was to put it in the blender for my power shakes.

After ignoring matcha as a product offering for a bit, I finally broke down and did some proper research about matcha and learned about how it’s grown, picked, processed, and what makes good matcha standout from the pack. It turns out that matcha sold to the masses is machine harvested, from mass produced from many origins, and generally inferior in quality to the stuff matcha snobs drink. One way to think of it is the mass produced honeys in our grocery store that are sourced from all over, filtered, cooked, blended, bottled and shipped vs. the locally sourced, small farm operations that more or less pour the stuff straight from the hive into the bottles. Realizing this parallel, I then went searching for somebody that could put the good stuff in my hands.

The conclusion I reached? If we’re going to sell tea and stake our reputation on it, I reasoned, we are going to have to find a high quality source and it isn’t the American distributors I was heretofore evaluating. I’ve been drinking pure crap for matcha and I certainly wasn’t going to attempt to sell it if I didn’t like it. I needed something really, really good.

“Alibaba, what do you have for matcha tea?”

The Japanese may have perfected the matcha process, but the Chinese clearly trump on the quantity grown and pricing. Matcha may be recognized as the Japanese’s drink, but I wondered: “why couldn’t China’s matcha be every bit as good as Japan’s?” Today, the game changes for me for today’s sample validated my hypothesis. Never in my wildest dream did I think I could find my way direct to the farm and the owners who have been growing and harvesting tea all their lives in just a few keystroke’s time. But this is the power of the Internet nowadays.

In the first twenty minutes of talking to this farmer, even though his English was fairly broken, it was immediately apparent the owners have been running a tea farm all their lives and knew what they were doing. They not only knew their products, but a great deal about their competitors. Pride oozed forth. These were a supremely capable lot and I sensed within minutes I had landed at the doorsteps of a truly sincere group who cared immensely about what they were about.

I am working with the Son (Alex) of the man above. He and I are closer in age and living in the technological world that I suspect his Farther doesn’t have much to do with. I told him about my experience with matcha thus-far and he proceeded to give me an education in tea. Not just matcha, but green tea, black tea, growing, processing, and packaging. For whatever reason, he decided instantly that we were not just friends, but great friends destined to meet up on his farm one day — and I know we’re going to bring some totally awesome teas to our store.

I got my samples today. The first one on the left is their “everyday” grade while the middle one was their mid-level grade. Their ceremonial grade is all sold out, so we’ll have to wait until the Spring crop to sample that one. The third one you see pictured above was the best one I had on hand. The brew in the cups above correspond also to the spoons shown at the beginning of this article as do the close-ups below.

This is what gets me excited about what we’re doing! The thrill of discovering somebody’s lowest grade matcha flat out blows away the best (non-ceremonial) grade I could find from an American tea company. And the kicker: it’s from China, not Japan. The Chinese were the first to produce a powdered tea and the Japanese perfected the art, but I have to say the Chinese have brought the art full-circle. They may not be the recognized masters of the matcha tea, but just like California wines in the 80's, I suspect we’re going to see some fierce rivalries in the matcha tea world before long.

The taste of the new samples was nutty, seaweedy, deep, luscious, and just plain wonderful to sip and savor in my mouth. The third one, by contrast had little aroma, tasted slightly metallic, gritty, and more like French green clay than tea (and yes, I’m currently detoxing with the stuff so I know exactly what it tastes like).

Just look at the colors. The third one (the crap I had on hand) is so washed out compared to the first two, it’s not even funny. And while the everyday-grade sample on the left was a darker green than the mid-grade sample, these two were remarkably close in taste and quality. About all I could really discern between the two is that first was more on the side of nutty while the middle additionally expressed a hint of seaweed. “Seaweed” may sound gross, but it’s the best word I have for it other than perhaps “umami” and I found both samples very pleasant and enjoyable.

Matcha has finally arrived in my diet and I look forward to presenting these awesome versions to you very soon in our online store!