How to recognise good matcha — 7 signals before you buy and after you open

Few markets are as uneven as matcha: the same word is used for baking powder, for a sugar blend and for ceremonial-grade tea. The good news is that the differences are visible to the naked eye — you only need to know what to look at.

Before buying: three things on the label

• Ingredients. There should be one: green tea leaf. Sugar, milk powder, flavouring, maltodextrin or "green tea extract" mean a blend — and explain the low price.
• Date. A harvest date is best, a packing date is enough, a bare best-before is too little. Matcha does not spoil like yoghurt, but it loses quality every month.
• Packaging. Opaque and airtight. A clear jar on a shop shelf is a product that faded before it reached you — light destroys matcha faster than time does.

It is also worth checking whether the seller states the country of origin at all. An honest label does not hide it. We state ours plainly, on every product page.

1. Colour — the fastest signal

Chlorophyll in a shaded leaf gives an intense, saturated green. The less shading and the later the harvest, the more the colour slides towards olive and yellow.

Colour	What it means
Vivid jade green	first harvest, good shading — ceremonial grade
Muted, slightly olive green	later harvest or culinary matcha
Khaki, yellow-green, brownish	flat, overheated in grinding, or from an old harvest

Judge it in daylight, not under a bulb — artificial light can pull green out of powder that has none.

2. Aroma

Open it and smell straight after breaking the seal. Good matcha smells of freshly cut grass, faintly sweet, sometimes with a marine note from the amino acids. Hay, dust, cardboard or anything scorched is a warning: the leaf was old, badly stored or overheated during grinding.

No smell at all is information too — fresh powder is never odourless.

3. Texture

Ceremonial matcha is ground to particles of about 5–10 micrometres, that is finer than flour. Rub a pinch between your fingers: it should feel silky like talc and cling slightly to the skin. Noticeable grit, or hard lumps that will not break under a finger, means a coarser grind.

Beware the false alarm: soft lumps are ordinary caking from moisture and static — which is exactly why matcha is sifted. Hard grit is a different matter.

4. Taste — the most honest test

Brew it with no sugar and no milk. Good matcha has clear umami, a smooth body and a sweetish, lingering finish. Slight bitterness at the start is fine and passes quickly.

What should not be there: sharp, astringent bitterness that stays on the tongue, and an "empty" taste — a grassy note with no depth behind it. If the drink only becomes drinkable once sweetened, it is not matcha for drinking neat.

Before writing a batch off, make sure the water did not kill it: boiling water pulls bitterness out of any matcha. The right range is 70–80 °C — how to brew matcha →

5. Foam

Whisked with a chasen, good matcha gives a dense, velvety foam of fine bubbles that holds for a few minutes. Large bubbles that vanish in seconds, or no foam despite correct technique, point to a coarser grind or flat powder.

6. Sediment in the bowl

Drink it and look into the bowl. A trace of sediment is normal. A distinct layer at the bottom means particles too large to stay in suspension — a coarser grind, typical of culinary grade.

7. Price — a signal, not proof

A high price guarantees nothing, but a very low one almost always means something: a later harvest, industrial grinding or a blend. How to read price so that offers become comparable, we set out here: how much matcha costs →

Three tests you can run in the kitchen

• The paper test. Scatter a pinch on white paper and spread it with a finger. The colour then shows honestly, without the packaging behind it, and every darker speck comes out.
• The cold water test. Stir half a teaspoon into a glass of cold water. Finely ground matcha forms a suspension and colours the water evenly; a coarser grind drops to the bottom quickly and leaves a clear layer on top.
• The no-additives test. One bowl, no sugar, no milk. It is the only test that cannot be gamed — and the only one that really settles the question.

What not to treat as a marker

• Kanji on the packaging. The characters and the Japanese vocabulary are the aesthetic of the category, not a certificate of quality and not a statement of origin — the country of origin belongs in the product description, and that is the only place to look for it.
• The words "premium" and "superfood". Neither is regulated in any way — anyone can print them.
• Shop photography. Saturating green in an editor takes one click. Judge colour after opening, not on a screen.

In short

Three signals you can check before paying: ingredients, date, packaging. Four more in the first minute after opening: colour, aroma, texture, then taste with nothing added. If all seven line up, you have matcha that needs nothing to mask it.

We describe both our lines — the gentler SABI and the vivid IKI — plainly, with origin and grade: see Avelor matcha →