Published: September 16, 2026
By Cher Chen, Maxwell Zhao · Reviewed by: Catherine Jiang Category: Matcha Knowledge · Read time: 5~7min
If you're sourcing matcha for your wholesale Business, like café, tea shop, bakery, or product line, understanding what matcha actually is — and what separates high-quality matcha from the rest — is the first step toward making confident purchasing decisions. This guide breaks down the essentials: what matcha is, how it's made, why quality varies so widely, and what to look for as a buyer.
Agenda
· Production Process of Matcha
· FAQs
Definition of Matcha
Matcha (抹茶)is a finely ground powder specially made from shade-grown and processed green tea leaves. Unlike regular green tea, where leaves are steeped and then discarded, matcha is the whole leaf in powdered form — which means when you drink matcha, you're consuming the entire tea leaf, not just an infusion of it.
This is the key difference that shapes everything else about matcha: its flavor, its nutrient concentration, its price point, and why it's used differently across food and beverage applications compared to loose-leaf tea.
Origins of Matcha
The origins of powdered tea can be traced back to China, while Japan later refined the cultivation and processing methods that define modern matcha. Matcha(抹茶) has become a globally popular ingredient, but its history goes back more than a thousand years.
In China, during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), tea was commonly steamed, pressed into cakes, and ground into powder before being prepared with hot water. Chinese called it MoCha(末茶) [1].This powdered-tea tradition later evolved and became closely associated with Japanese tea culture.
In China, during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), the practice of grinding steamed tea leaves into a fine powder and whisking the powder with hot water became more refined in China. Chinese called it DianCha(点茶). Japanese Buddhist monks who traveled to China brought tea seeds, cultivation techniques, and tea-making practices back to Japan.
In Japan, powdered tea gradually developed into what we recognize today as Matcha(抹茶). Over time, Japanese tea growers refined cultivation and processing techniques, including shading tea plants before harvest, producing Tencha(碾茶), and grinding the dried leaves into an exceptionally fine powder.
Matcha eventually became an important part of the Japanese tea ceremony and Japanese tea culture. Today, it has evolved beyond traditional tea preparation and is widely used in beverages, bakery products, confectionery, ice cream, and other food applications around the world.
Production Process of Matcha
What makes matcha different from other green teas starts weeks before harvest, in the field:
Shading
Tea plants destined for matcha are shaded from direct sunlight for 20–30 days before harvest. This slows photosynthesis, boosting chlorophyll levels (for that signature vibrant green color) and increasing amino acid content — particularly L-theanine, which contributes to matcha's naturally sweet, umami-forward flavor [2].
· Our Approach: Shading timing and duration vary by cultivar and region, so we manage it separately across our 8 tea garden bases in Anhui, Hangzhou, Guizhou, and Hubei — each calibrated to that region's growing conditions rather than a one-size-fits-all schedule. This is part of why our matcha delivers a consistently smooth, low-bitterness flavor batch after batch, not just on a good harvest.
Harvesting and Steaming
Leaves are hand- or machine-picked, then immediately steamed to halt oxidation. This preserves color and nutrients and is what distinguishes green tea processing from oolong or black tea.
· Our Approach: Freshly picked leaves are steamed within hours of harvest at our partner gardens, minimizing the delay between picking and processing that can otherwise dull color and flavor before the leaves ever reach the mill.
Drying and Deveining
Steamed leaves are dried into a brittle form called Tencha (碾茶), with stems and veins removed to leave only the tender leaf material.
Aging (熟成)
Before Tencha is ground, we age it in temperature- and humidity-controlled storage for six months to over a year. This step is easy to skip — and many lower-cost producers do, to speed up turnaround — but it's one of the biggest drivers of flavor quality. Aging naturally mellows bitterness, deepens aroma, and brings out the smooth, savory, faintly ocean-like umami character that distinguishes well-aged matcha from sharper, unaged powder.
· Our Approach: We don't rush this step. Every batch is aged a minimum of six months before it's ground — which is a big part of why customers tell us our matcha tastes smoother and less bitter than what they were sourcing before.
Stone-Grinding
Tencha is ground into fine powder — traditionally using granite stone mills, which grind slowly (as little as 30–40 grams per hour) to avoid heat buildup that would damage flavor and nutrients. Lower-grade matcha is often ground using faster mechanical mills, which is one reason quality and price vary so widely across suppliers.
· Our Approach: We grind at our own processing facility in Anhui — using traditional stone mills for small-batch and custom orders, and continuous dry ball mills with YSZ (zirconia) grinding media for higher-volume, food-safe production. Our finest matcha reaches 1,000–1,300 mesh, sometimes called "千目抹茶" (thousand-mesh matcha), for an exceptionally silky texture that dissolves cleanly with no gritty residue — and because it's all done in-house, we can guarantee consistency from the first kilogram to the thousandth.
For Your Business
For B2B buyers, matcha isn't just a trend ingredient — it's a product where quality inconsistency can directly affect customer experience and repeat business. A muddy, bitter matcha latte or an inconsistent batch-to-batch color can undermine an otherwise well-run beverage program.
Understanding origin and processing gives you the vocabulary to ask better questions when evaluating suppliers — and to spot the difference between matcha priced for margin and matcha priced for quality.
From tea garden to your cup — sourced, aged, and ground under one roof. VG Matcha control every step of this process ourselves, from our own tea garden network through aging and final milling at our Anhui facility — so you're not relying on a middleman's word for quality, you're working directly with the producer.
FAQs
What is matcha made from? Matcha is made from shade-grown green tea leaves that are steamed, dried into Tencha, aged, and finely ground into powder — unlike steeped tea, the whole leaf is consumed.
Where does matcha come from? Powdered tea originated in China during the Tang and Song Dynasties and was later refined into the matcha known today after Japanese monks brought tea culture back from China.
Why does matcha taste bitter? Bitterness comes down to the balance between polyphenols (bitter) and L-theanine (sweet, umami). Shading, cultivar, harvest season, and aging duration all affect this balance — well-aged matcha is typically smoother and less bitter.
What is Tencha? Tencha (碾茶) is the dried, deveined tea leaf used as the raw material for matcha, before it's aged and ground into fine powder.
Reference：
1. Lu Yu, Cha Jing (茶经, "The Classic of Tea"), c. 760–780 CE
2. National Institutes of Health (PMC), "Stress-Reducing Function of Matcha Green Tea in Animal Experiments and Clinical Trials." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6213777/