How to judge matcha’s quality
Type grade x harvesting grade
3 type grades
Matcha’s grades are as follows
- Ceremonial grade
- Premium grade
- Cooking/culinary grade
Ceremonial grade
Matcha is mainly used for tea ceremony etc.
The cost is very high.
This grade has profound taste and very rich-flavor and scent.
Premium grade
Match of this grade is basically used to drink.
We recommend that it should be taken as latte or melted by hot tea.
Generally, matcha of this grade is standard and the easiest-to-use.
Cooking/culinary grade
Matcha of this grade is merely used to add color mixed into dishes and snacks. It is often used for ice cream.
The price is cheap and it often uses Nibancha (the second picking) and Sanbancha (the third picking) of low nutrition. Matcha of this grade is not suitable for drinking.
It is basically used for business.
Matcha’s harvesting grade
Generally, tea is picked twice or three times a year.
Matcha mainly has Ichibancha (the first picking), Nibancha (the second picking) and Sanbancha (the third picking).
As for matcha, we shave leaves from the top of them one by one
Ichibancha
We call matcha picked first “Ichibancha”.
Ichibancha has the best quality and a beautiful green color.
Ichibancha has about three times richer tastes than Nibancha and the price of Ichibancha is several times higher than that of Nibancha.
Nibancha
It is matcha picked second.
Nibancha is picked after Ichibancha (about 45 days later).
It has weaker flavor unlike Ichibancha.
Sanbancha
The ingredients are already taken by Ichibancha and Nibancha, so Sanbancha has non-green color.
It lacks ingredients and flavor.
We bought matcha sold on amazon.com.
We imported and drank more than 10 types of matcha, which are ranked within top 30.
It is highly likely that most of matcha sold mainly in the U.S. is Sanbancha.
The reason is that most of them were ocher-colored.
The flavor after drinking was bad and taste was also poor.
It is good for cooking, but actually sold as Japanese matcha to be used for latte.
We sell Core Matcha which uses only Ceremonial Grade Ichibancha.
Please try it.
