Tencha: From Shade-Grown Leaf to Matcha
Before matcha comes tencha: a shaded leaf dried without rolling that can also be enjoyed as an infusion.
By Roseline Zhou, Founder
Contents
You've drunk matcha and wonder what the leaf looks like before it becomes that green powder? It has a name: tencha. Grown in shade, the leaf is steamed, dried without rolling, then stripped of stems and veins before milling.
Tencha can also be steeped. The leaf is then removed from the cup, while matcha powder remains dispersed in the water. We like following that path from leaf to bowl: it explains the difference better than a name on a package. To compare several Japanese teas, look at how their leaves are processed and drunk.
From shaded leaf to matcha powder
The tea plants are covered before harvest. After picking, the leaves are steamed and dried without rolling. Their stems and veins are then removed; milling the sorted material produces matcha.
On a product page, we'd look for those steps before focusing on a grade alone. They tell you what material the powder came from. On their own, they can't tell you what a particular harvest tastes like.
Tencha-ro: what does this oven do during drying?
A tencha-ro is used to dry leaves destined to become tencha. One tencha-ro model combines nets, heating and controlled ventilation. It gives an idea of the work involved without describing every oven used for this tea.
What matters for the cup is still the step itself: drying the leaf without rolling it as you would for sencha. We prefer explaining that process before talking about machinery. The example cited doesn't let us attribute a particular piece of equipment to any producer or to Kura-ge.
What can a tencha infusion taste like?
Steeping the leaf lets you taste it before milling. Look for vegetal notes and roundness, then notice how much bitterness comes through. The amount of leaf and steeping time change the result, so tencha doesn't have one fixed taste.
If you have matcha too, taste both with water. Dispersed powder gives a different texture from a leaf removed after steeping. We'd make that comparison to understand how the material changes, without expecting the infusion to predict exactly how the whisked bowl will taste.
Tencha or matcha: what do you actually drink?
Tencha is the leaf before milling; matcha is the powder that results. A tencha infusion is strained. With matcha, the powder stays in the water and is drunk with it.
Choose the leaf if you want to watch an infusion, or the powder if you want the movement and texture of whisked matcha. We wouldn't rank one cup above the other: they show two ways to drink the same material.
How does it compare with sencha, gyokuro and kabusecha?
Sencha green tea is steamed, rolled and dried before steeping. Gyokuro and kabusecha are also shaded, but their leaves are then rolled. Tencha is shaded and dried without that rolling step.
To choose among these teas, we'd look first at the processing and the preparation you want. The name alone doesn't predict the taste of the batch in front of you.