Matcha originated in China, rose in the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Song Dynasty. As early as the Tang Dynasty, people invented steamed green loose tea (ground tea) and revised the method of evaluating the color, aroma and taste of tea, which became an indispensable daily drink for people. In the Song Dynasty, it developed into a tea feast. At that time, Cai Xiang, the most famous tea expert and great writer, commented on the method of fighting tea like this in "Tea Story": break the group tea into small pieces, then grind it into fine powder, sieve out the tea powder, take twenty cents and put it into the scalded tea cup, and pour in boiling water, so that the soup tastes good, fragrant and delicious, and the best is the best. In Yue Yan's explanation, Ru Dunhe in Qing Dynasty said that there must be something about ancient tea. His tea (matcha) is a pinch of tea, so one or two delicious fruit snacks must be chosen, which are called snacks and tea. Tea ceremony in Tang and Song Dynasties in China was the way to drink matcha. It can be seen that the tea ceremony in China has a history of 1000 years, hundreds of years earlier than the present Oolong Tea Road. But unfortunately, from the Ming Dynasty, matcha was no longer popular, replaced by tea, and tea residue was discarded. China Matcha Road was lost, forming a historical dating. At present, Japanese tea ceremony and Japanese matcha, which are quite famous in the world, were brought back to Japan by Tang Dynasty envoy Rong after studying in China, and matcha has been preserved, inherited and developed in Japan. Japan's matcha and Japanese tea ceremony have now become the quintessence of Japan, and have been cited as national guests' gifts, which are regarded as the best in Japan.
Matcha is different from ordinary green tea powder and is not ordinary broken tea. The difference between matcha and ordinary green tea powder mainly includes the following two aspects:
1. The brief production process of matcha is: high-quality fresh green tea → steaming → grinding → superfine grinding → low-temperature drying → matcha. Matcha production adopts traditional grinding technology and modern superfine grinding technology, and the whole processing process is always carried out at low temperature, which can well retain the active components in tea.
2. Raw material requirements: Matcha requires high quality of raw materials, requiring the use of tea with high amino acids, protein and chlorophyll content, and low caffeine content in raw materials. Before picking, there are requirements for the picking time and leaf size of new tea. The production time of matcha is short, only about 50 days. Matcha made from high-quality new tea produced in April and May has the best quality. Tea varieties used for processing matcha are also very particular. This kind of tea tree is cultivated by asexual propagation technology, which ensures the purity of tea tree varieties. In addition, in order to ensure the quality of fresh leaves, in the process of planting, the staff also need to shade the tea trees for heatstroke prevention. Tea produced in this way is called covered tea. Matcha is made of covered tea.