Tencha

Tea (Camellia sinensis)Green

Tencha is a shade-grown Japanese green tea leaf that is steamed and dried but never rolled, then ground into the fine powder known as matcha. As an intermediate product, tencha is rarely brewed on its own; its role in the world of drinks is as the raw material from which powdered green tea beverages are made.

How tencha is prepared

Tencha is ground into matcha, which is whisked with hot water rather than steeped. It underlies ceremonial thick tea (koicha) and thin tea (usucha), everyday matcha, iced and blended matcha drinks, and matcha lattes; blends such as matcha-iri genmaicha add powdered tea to leaf infusions.

Cold Brewing

Beverages using this technique · 4
Royal Blue Tea
King of Green KIYOHARU Super Elite
Still0% ABV
prepared as Cold-Brewed Tencha

Royal Blue Tea uses Cold-Brewed Tencha in King of Green KIYOHARU Super Elite, built from Tencha. The linked provenance notes cultivar: Asahi. (Uji).[4][5][6]

Royal Blue Tea
King of Green KOICHIRO Imperial
Still green0% ABV
prepared as Cold-Brewed Tencha

Royal Blue Tea uses Cold-Brewed Tencha in King of Green KOICHIRO Imperial, built from Tencha.[6][7]

Royal Blue Tea
King of Green RIICHI Premium
Still green0% ABV
prepared as Cold-Brewed Tencha

Royal Blue Tea uses Cold-Brewed Tencha in King of Green RIICHI Premium, built from Tencha. The linked provenance notes cultivar: Samidori. (Uji).[6][8]

Royal Blue Tea
Kyoto Uji Ten-Cha The Uji
Still white0% ABV
prepared as Cold-Brewed Tencha

Royal Blue Tea uses Cold-Brewed Tencha in Kyoto Uji Ten-Cha The Uji, built from Tencha. The linked provenance notes cultivar: Samidori. (Uji).[6][9]

In depth

Chinese roots of powdered tea

The lineage that leads to tencha begins in China, where powdered tea took shape under the Tang and Song dynasties. Compressed tea cakes were roasted, milled into powder, and, by the Song period, whisked with hot water in a bowl to raise a froth. This drink, recorded in works such as Cai Xiang's Record of Tea and Emperor Huizong's Treatise on Tea, was encountered by visiting Japanese Zen monks in Chinese temples. When the Ming founder banned compressed tea in the late fourteenth century, the whisked powdered style faded in China but survived in Japan, where it would evolve into matcha and, with it, the specialized leaf called tencha.[1]

Transmission to Japan and the birth of the whisked bowl

Powdered tea reached Japan around the twelfth century. The monk Eisai, who traveled to China in the late 1180s, is credited with bringing back the Song-style method of pouring hot water over powdered tea and whipping it with a bamboo whisk. He set down his observations in the Kissa Yōjōki, presenting tea partly as a medicine, and the tea he described was still a dark, brownish lump rather than the bright green powder known today. Ground and whisked in a bowl, this early powdered tea took root in Japanese Zen monasteries and gradually spread beyond them, laying the groundwork for later refinements in leaf cultivation.[1]

Shade cultivation and the emergence of tencha

During the Muromachi period, in the sixteenth century, Japanese growers developed the practice of shading tea bushes for a few weeks before harvest. The leaves handled in this way and then steamed and dried without rolling became known as tencha, the specific raw material milled into matcha. Shade growing raised the leaf's theanine and chlorophyll, producing the vivid green color and strong umami that distinguish modern matcha from earlier powdered teas. The same understanding of shading and steaming later fed the creation of other Japanese green teas such as sencha and gyokuro.[1]

Tencha, matcha, and the tea ceremony

Once ground, tencha becomes the matcha at the center of the Japanese tea ceremony, known as chanoyu or chadō. In this practice the powder is whisked with hot water in a bowl until frothy, and the finest tencha is reserved for thick tea (koicha), a paste-like preparation shared among guests, while lighter thin tea (usucha) is whipped to a foam and served individually. Shaped over centuries by Zen aesthetics and figures such as Sen no Rikyū, this ritual made whisked powdered tea a meditative and social art rather than merely a drink, and it remains the most culturally significant use of tencha-derived matcha.[2]

Tencha's place among Japanese green teas

Within the family of Japanese green teas, tencha occupies a particular niche: it is the only common type made expressly to be powdered rather than infused. Whereas sencha, bancha, and roasted hōjicha are steeped as loose leaf, and gyokuro and kabusecha are shaded infusion teas, tencha is shade-grown, steamed, and dried but left unrolled so it can be stone-milled cleanly into matcha. That distinction is reflected in official Japanese labeling standards, which name the leaf after its first processing steps as tencha and require grinding to a fine powder before it may be called matcha.[3]

Modern and global drinks

In contemporary beverage culture, tencha's influence is felt almost entirely through the matcha ground from it. Beyond the ceremonial bowl, powdered green tea now appears in matcha lattes, iced and blended drinks, and confections, and it is blended into leaf teas as matcha-iri genmaicha to deepen color and flavor. Rising global demand has pushed production beyond Japan; while Japan is still regarded as the source of the finest tencha and matcha, countries including China and South Korea have expanded cultivation and milling, much of it aimed at the food and beverage industry at more competitive prices.[1]

Part of Green Tea