Japanese matcha, long reserved for tea ceremonies codified around four principles – wa, kei, sei and jaku (harmony, respect, purity, tranquility) – is today the victim of its own success. Having become a star ingredient on TikTok and in trendy cafes, it finds itself mixed in banana lattes and protein smoothies, attacked by counterfeiters and distorted by lawless industrial practices.
“It’s like the Wild West”summarizes for the New York Times tea merchant Sebastian Beckwith, whose company In Pursuit of Tea has been importing matcha to the United States for more than twenty years. On Amazon or Facebook Marketplace, opportunistic merchants resell boxes at extravagant prices, while others sell poor quality powders in packaging imitating the big Japanese houses.
Among these victims, the venerable Marukyu Koyamaen house, founded in 1704 in Uji, which has been fighting against fakes for eight years. Its president, Motoya Koyama, a direct descendant of the founder, confides: “Some counterfeits contain very low quality green tea powder. If customers think these products come from us, it would be a terrible harm.”
The paradox is cruel: while we are talking about a global shortage, matcha has never been so visible in the streets of New York, Paris or London. Everyone goes for their matcha and their way of preparing it. Many baristas, however, use industrial concentrates, mixed with improbable aromas – banana cake, tiramisù – which make purists shudder.
Originally, matcha is a rare product: only 6% of tea crops in Japan are devoted to it. The leaves are sheltered from the sun several weeks before harvesting, then slowly ground between two stone millstones. But over the past five years, its global popularity has exploded and Japan finds itself exporting more than half of its production. In the United States, sales even jumped 86% in three years.
Everyone goes green
This frenzy has opened the door to all kinds of excesses: fanciful labeling, abusive marketing uses… Due to a lack of regulation, powdered tea produced in Australia or Kenya can now be sold under the name matcha. A giant like Starbucks sources its supplies from China and Korea as well as Japan.
Rona Tison, ambassador of the Japanese brand Ito En, warns: “There are a lot of different colored matchas, and that’s a real problem for manufacturers. There are no regulatory standards.” On the stalls, the original bright green rubs shoulders with brown, black or even white tones. A visual distortion reflecting the disorder that surrounds this market.
A disorder which does not seem to slow down the big brands. Starbucks launched three matcha protein drinks this fall, and the Blank Street Coffee chain even removed the word “Coffee” from its logo: half of its sales are now matcha. In Manhattan, every street corner seems to boast vanilla lattes or spinach-enriched Mega Matcha smoothies; in Paris some bakeries have even gone green.
Back to basics
Faced with this surge, a few actors are trying to rehabilitate authentic matcha and the ritual that accompanied it. In Brooklyn, Japanese merchant Kettl is opening a store dedicated to the art of tea this month. Behind sliding doors, guided tastings will be offered. “It is an artisanal product, like wine, says its founder Zach Mangan. Producers are under enormous pressure: their goal is not to be fashionable, but to preserve a tradition.”
A tension accentuated by the rarity of the product. The first spring harvest, whose leaves offer the best quality, cannot keep up with demand. “There is a real shortage of this first picking”explains Hannah Habes, founder of Matchaful, whose New York cafes use exclusively matcha from a single Japanese farmer. According to her, sourcing directly from producers remains the only way to ensure a quality product.
Fans of fine tea all agree: pouring premium matcha into a latte is a huge waste. “It’s like using a great Burgundy to make sangria”quips Zach Mangan. For Motoya Koyama, diluting this tea with fruit or sugar is not only a taste heresy, it is an attack on the Japanese culture of chado, “the way of tea”, which is based on moderation and respect for the product.
Ann Abe, head of the Urasenke cultural center in Los Angeles, recalls: “In the tea ceremony, nothing should be wasted. Seeing matcha transformed into an exotic ingredient leaves me with mixed feelings. It’s good that people are interested in it, but most don’t understand what’s behind a bowl of tea.”
Her compatriot Rona Tison, whose great-grandmother taught chado, shares this feeling of astonishment at the matcha madness. “I could never have predicted it, she said. Who would have imagined that the old tea of our ceremonies would become a global phenomenon?
