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Matcha is a powdered Japanese Green tea, derived from the tea leaves of the plant Camellia Sinensis.
Great quality matcha must have four key characteristics: Vibrant color intensity, Superior umami, dreamy froth-ability, and a long smooth finish.
These four principles have been handed down over the centuries to provide guidance in the tearoom and can bring serenity to our daily lives.
It is important that you do not confuse grades with quality.
It all depends on how the tea has been grown, harvested, and treated. You can identify good quality Matcha of any grade as it will have a vibrant green color.
Each Matcha is delicious, natural, and full of antioxidants and vitamins. While enjoying your cup of Matcha, take the time to consider how this incredible matcha has made its way to your cup.
As part of a long-standing meditative tradition, matcha is the perfect way to cleanse your mind, body, and soul while indulging in one of nature’s healthiest boosts of antioxidants and natural energy.
MATCHA SUPER PREMIUM (ceremonial grade):
Ceremonial matcha is the top grade of matcha that is made. They come from the highest quality of leaves - the first harvest. This matcha is very rich and complex in flavor, with lots of umami, elements of sweetness, varying degrees of astringency, and different vegetal notes.
MATCHA SUPERIOR:
This Matcha is harvested just a little later in the season. Our Matcha Superior has a more smooth and mellow taste than most Matcha teas you will find on the market, and it is also much less bitter. It is perfect for those new to the art of Matcha drinking or those who drink it quite often and prefer a high-quality Matcha that is not too expensive. This matcha works wonderfully for matcha lattes and other blended matcha drinks. It has a bright green color and a fine texture, so it breaks up easily in water.
HOUSE MATCHA:
Despite the fact that House Matcha is our entry grade, we are confident with the quality and value. Our House Matcha is perfect for those new to the art of Matcha or those who drink it quite often and would like a high-quality everyday Matcha that is also a good value. This grade isn't a lower quality product than the ceremonial grade product. It simply has a different flavor profile, it is more robust and bitter. We guarantee that it retains those fresh characteristics, holistic taste, and bright green color that is so distinctive to Matcha.
Green Tea provides disease-fighting antioxidants (polyphenols and flavonoids) that protect against free radicals and help destroy them.
One study showed that catechins, a particular type of polyphenols in tea, kill certain viruses. Another Harvard study showed that people who drank 5 cups a day of black tea for two weeks had 10 times more virus-fighting interferon in their blood than others who drank a placebo hot drink.
Green Tea is rich in L-theanine, an amino acid thought to help enhance immunity that’s found in both regular and decaf versions.
Considered to be a sole component of the Cuban biotechnology boom, this anti-viral drug called Interferon Alfa-2B is produced in China, by Cuban-Chinese joint venture ChangHeber.
Cuba has already sent an emergency assembly of doctors to fight the coronavirus in Italy, while already working alongside 37 countries worldwide that have confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The component L-theanine (found in Green Tea) is broken down in the liver to create ethylamine, a molecule that initiates the response of an immune system element called the gamma-delta T cell. The T cells in the blood prompt the release of interferon, a key part of the body's chemical defense against many types of bacteria, viral, fungal and parasitic infections.
An experiment using human volunteers, showed that immune system blood cells from tea drinkers responded five times faster than the others.
According to Japanese legend, a young man named Sen no Rikyu sought to learn the elaborate set of customs known as the Way of Tea. He went to tea-master Takeeno Joo, who tested the younger man by asking him to tend the garden. Rikyu cleaned up debris and raked the ground until it was perfect, then scrutinized the immaculate garden. Before presenting his work to the master, he shook a cherry tree, causing a few flowers to spill randomly onto the ground.
To this day, the Japanese revere Rikyu as one who understood to his very core a deep cultural thread known as wabi-sabi. Emerging in the 15th century as a reaction to the prevailing aesthetic of lavishness, ornamentation, and rich materials, wabi-sabi is the art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in earthiness, of revering authenticity above all. In Japan, the concept is now so deeply ingrained that it’s difficult to explain to Westerners; no direct translation exists.
Broadly, wabi-sabi is everything that today’s sleek, mass-produced, technology-saturated culture isn’t. It’s flea markets, not shopping malls; aged wood, not swank floor coverings; one single morning glory, not a dozen red roses. Wabi-sabi understands the tender, raw beauty of a gray December landscape and the aching elegance of an abandoned building or shed. It celebrates cracks and crevices and rot and all the other marks that time and weather and use leave behind. To discover wabi-sabi is to see the singular beauty in something that may first look decrepit and ugly.
Wabi-sabi reminds us that we are all transient beings on this planet—that our bodies, as well as the material world around us, are in the process of returning to dust. Nature’s cycles of growth, decay, and erosion are embodied in frayed edges, rust, liver spots. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace both the glory and the melancholy found in these marks of passing time.