Good matcha costs between about €0.60 and over €2 per gram – cheap matcha starts at just 10 cents. This guide shows you how to recognize high-quality matcha and how to find the right tea for you when buying, without turning it into a science.
Key points at a glance
- The four price drivers are origin, cultivation, harvest and processing. Good matcha comes from Japan, is shaded, harvested by hand and slowly ground on granite stone mills.
- High-quality matcha is bright jade green, extremely fine, floral and nutty, and mildly sweet. Cheap matcha looks yellowish to brown, tastes bitter and sour, and feels sandy.
- As a guide: from approx. €1/g for indulgence and koicha quality, €0.60–1/g for daily use, cheaper only for cooking and baking.
- With Japanese matcha, an organic seal isn't a must for quality – the regulations are very strict anyway. With tea from China, however, you should always look for organic.
- Avoid drugstore and supermarket offers as well as anonymous marketplace bargains. Buy where origin and processing are communicated transparently.
There's an almost overwhelming number of different matcha teas on the market. This guide helps you separate the wheat from the chaff: we explain why prices vary so widely, which factors determine quality and which criteria a good matcha has to meet.
Why does matcha vary so much in price?
The price range for matcha is enormous: you'll find tea for 10 cents per gram, but you can just as easily buy matcha for €2 per gram and more. This comes down to a number of factors, with four main ones standing out: origin, cultivation, harvest and processing.
The best matcha teas come from Japan. Only here are the right methods used and is there enough experience to grow truly good teas. Cheap tea, on the other hand, often comes from China, where quantity usually matters more than quality. This shows most clearly in cultivation: a good tea needs a lot of time and a long shading phase to develop its fine aromas, while inferior tea is shaded little or not at all.
Harvest and processing are worlds apart, too. Original Japanese matcha is harvested by hand, carefully sorted and gently, slowly ground on granite stone mills. Only this way does the tea develop its fine texture and retain most of its nutrients. Mass-market tea from China is harvested and processed by machine in large, unselected quantities – so it's not just the most tender leaves that end up in the tea, but most of the plant.
Industrial grinding is also far from gentle: the intense frictional heat of high-performance mills can literally burn the raw tea. You can clearly see, smell and taste it. While good Japanese matcha is extremely fine, fresh, bright green and aromatic, cheap matcha is yellowish to brown, tastes bitter and slightly sour, and has a sandy texture.
What quality grades are there, and what is a fair price?
As with prices, quality can't simply be divided into good and bad – there are countless gradations. Distinguishing by labels hardly helps, because terms are used so loosely that they lose their meaning.
What do premium, super premium, supreme or ceremonial still mean when every €10 drugstore matcha carries these labels? Very little. That's why we skip these terms here and look at the objective quality characteristics. Because regardless of what you know about origin, cultivation, harvest and processing, quality can easily be judged with your senses.
The quality of matcha shows in its color, aroma, flavor and texture. Good matcha is bright to jade green, extremely finely ground, smells and tastes floral, fruity and nutty, and comes across as smooth and sweet with complex, subtle notes. The mouthfeel – similar to an espresso or cappuccino – is creamy and full.
Poor matcha, on the other hand, is yellowish to brownish, smells uninteresting to chemical and tastes bitter and slightly sour. Its coarser texture shows in a dusty, sandy and at the same time watery mouthfeel. You can learn how to judge quality in detail in the article Matcha tea – grades and differences.
|
Feature |
High-quality matcha |
Inferior matcha |
|
Color |
Bright jade to grass green |
Yellowish to brownish |
|
Aroma |
Floral, fruity, nutty |
Uninteresting to chemical |
|
Flavor |
Smooth, sweet, complex with subtle notes |
Bitter and slightly sour |
|
Texture |
Extremely finely ground, creamy and full mouthfeel |
Coarse, sandy, dusty and watery |
Most matchas fall somewhere between these two extremes. Which quality is right depends on what you need the tea for:
Indulgence & koicha
For special moments and thick koicha, you need the best qualities, from approx. €1 per gram.
Daily
For everyday use, with good flavor and in larger quantities, €0.60–1 per gram is the right range.
Kitchen
For cooking, baking and mixed drinks, more affordable, more tart teas are enough – their intense flavor is even an advantage here.
Organic or conventional – what's the difference?
It's often said that you should only drink certified organic matcha, because only then is the tea guaranteed to be free of pesticides and – at least since Fukushima – free of radioactive contamination. But is that true? Is only organic matcha good matcha?
For Japanese teas, that's not quite right. In Japan, the requirements for agricultural production are higher than in almost any other country – both the limits for radioactive contamination and the use of banned, harmful pesticides. So here, the organic seal does not mean that stricter limits apply to radiation or pesticide levels.
With tea from Japan, it's rather the fertilizer used that determines whether a tea can be certified organic. So even with conventionally grown matcha from Japan, you can be sure it meets the highest standards. That doesn't apply to tea from China: the regulations there are much laxer, and some toxic pesticides are permitted – so with Chinese products, you should always look for an organic seal.
Drugstore, supermarket, specialty shop or online – where is the best place to buy matcha?
As demand has grown, so has the supply. Where matcha used to be found only in specialty shops or online, today you'll find it in every drugstore and supermarket – often at low prices between €10 and €20. On large marketplaces like Amazon, too, the green powder is offered at rock-bottom prices. But since good matcha has its price, you should be very careful with such offers.
These offers often lack further information: it's neither clear which region the tea comes from nor how it was grown and processed. You have to rely on empty marketing promises from retailers who often haven't looked into the product themselves and buy blindly from wholesalers.
When choosing a supplier, check whether all the important information is communicated transparently and whether the price is in reasonable proportion to the promised quality. At that point, it becomes obvious that a Super Premium Organic Matcha like the one sold at the drugstore should cost more than €11.90. Price is always just a first guide, never an automatic seal of quality.
Hitonigiri Organic Matcha Sample Pack (5x30g)
Alle fünf Kāru-Matchas in einer Box – ideal, um Qualitäten und Charakter nebeneinander zu...
99,00 € , 660,00 €/kg
So what should I look for when buying matcha?
So there are a few things to look out for – but you don't need to make a science of it. Make sure the tea comes from Japan, isn't too cheap, all the important information is transparently available and you have a good feeling about the supplier. You're better off skipping drugstore and supermarket offers altogether. Then compare several retailers and teas and find the supplier you trust. Enjoy tasting – here are our organic matcha teas.
