How to Read a Matcha Label: The Six Things That Actually Matter

Buying matcha without being able to taste it first means relying on what the packaging tells you. The problem is that labelling in the matcha market is unregulated, which means producers can use terms like premium, ceremonial, and authentic without those words having a fixed meaning. What you can look for, however, are specific pieces of information that a producer of genuine ceremonial matcha will have no reason to hide.

1. Origin

The label should specify the prefecture and ideally the town or growing area. Yame, Wazuka, Shizuoka, Kagoshima: these are real places with documented characteristics. A label that says Japan and nothing more precise is either a blend from multiple regions or a product the producer does not want to be too specific about. Either way, less information is a worse sign.

2. Grade

A-Grade or Ceremonial Grade, specified clearly. Not premium, not luxury, not superior quality. These phrases mean nothing. A-Grade is a designation that producers of genuine ceremonial matcha use consistently.

3. Cultivar

The variety of the tea plant. Okumidori, Samidori, Asatsuyu, Yabukita. A specified cultivar tells you the producer knows exactly what they grew and is confident enough in that choice to say so publicly. Blended matcha, where multiple cultivars are combined to achieve a consistent but often undistinguished result, will not specify a cultivar.

4. Harvest

First harvest, ichibancha, or spring harvest indicates that the leaves used were from the most prized picking of the year. The absence of harvest information usually means the leaves were from a later picking.

5. Harvest Year

Matcha is a perishable agricultural product. The harvest year tells you how old it is. A tin with no year was likely packaged to be sold without anyone calculating how long it has been sitting in a warehouse.

6. Ingredient List

There should be one ingredient: matcha. Sometimes written as Camellia sinensis leaves or tencha. If there are additional ingredients, it is not pure matcha.

All six of these are present on every tin we sell. The Ceremonial Matcha A-Grade from Yame, the Okumidori, and the Samidori from Wazuka each carry full origin, grade, cultivar, and harvest information because that information is the product.