WA MATCHA

One producer, start to finish

In Japan those three steps usually belong to three different companies; few tea houses carry all of them. Ryutsu Service does — which is why we can tell a Canadian café, hotel or restaurant exactly where its matcha was grown, how it was shaded and how it was milled.

The leaf is all Shizuoka-grown — Tenryu, Kikugawa, Kakegawa and Makinohara — from seventeen partner farms. The Tenryu gardens sit high in the mountains, where the gap between day and night temperature builds the colour and the aroma of the leaf.

Ryutsu Service president examining shaded tea leaves beneath solar-panel trellises
Image courtesy of Ryutsu Service Co., Ltd.

Shaded at least thirty days

For at least thirty days before picking, the plants are covered to keep the new shoots out of the sun; increasingly the covering is done on trellises built under solar panels.

Shade raises theanine, the amino acid behind matcha's sweetness, and lowers catechin, behind its bitterness — and the leaves turn deep green. Leaf grown this way is called tencha, and matcha can be made from nothing else.

Picked leaves go straight to the factory, where they are steamed and dried before milling.