Matcha Shortage, or a Market Correction? (Part Two)

This is the second part of a three-part series on the matcha shortage of 2025. Here we follow powdered tea’s journey, from China’s Song dynasty whisked teas to the Japanese codified Way of Tea. Read Part One

This habit of reshaping is not unique to us.

Tea has always evolved with the cultures that embraced it. That is, in fact, the essence of modern tea culture, the continual reimagining of how tea is prepared, shared, and understood. Long before Japan carried powdered tea into ritual, China had its own golden age of whisked tea, an era when froth and foam were judged as carefully as flavor.

The Japanese word matcha simply means “ground tea.” But the story of ground tea began in China, where it was called mo cha. In the Tang dynasty, tea was boiled: cakes of compressed leaves were ground and simmered into hearty broths with salt or ginger.

In the Song dynasty, something new emerged: dian cha, whisked powdered tea. It was an age of refinement. Powdered teas were sifted and whisked into bowls until the surface bloomed with pale foam. Competitions judged the whiteness and persistence of froth. Emperor Huizong himself praised bai cha, white tea, for its delicacy and luminous froth, and black Jian bowls were prized for making its pale foam glow.

It was during this era that tea crossed the sea. Zen Buddhist monks from Japan, who had traveled to China for study and practice, carried home not only knowledge and meditation techniques, but also this new way of preparing tea. They encountered dian cha in temples, where powdered tea was whisked to sustain long hours of focused meditation. When these monks returned to Japan, they brought with them this practice of preparing powdered tea. What had been a Chinese refinement became, over time, a Japanese devotion, reshaped through Zen practice into something distinct. This path that would later flower into chado, the codified Japanese Way of Tea.

A few years ago in New York, I experienced a remarkable offering of the Song dynasty method of tea preparation. At Jin Yun Fu, Master Olivia placed a chawan of powdered white tea before us and gracefully, artfully created a work of liquid presence in the form of tea. Seven rounds of whisking, water poured and powder lifted, transformed the surface into something soft and snowy. “Eat tea,” she said. The flavor was ethereal, utterly unlike Japanese matcha. The foam was thick, pale, deep. For a moment, the city outside fell away and I felt the echo of the Song court, when quiet elegance itself was perfection.

That experience reminded me that powdered tea is not one thing. Japan inherited the practice of dian cha, but transformed it. When China shifted under the Ming dynasty toward loose leaves due to the Emperor’s 1391 decree that tribute teas must be presented as leaf, not powder, Japan carried powdered tea forward, refining it into a ritual of its own, into chado, the Way of Tea.

Matcha may descend from mo cha, but it carries a different terroir, a different lineage, a different soul. The survival of matcha as a ritual practice shows us how fragile traditions can be. That fragility matters now, as scarcity and global demand press against the very lineage that kept this tea alive.

Which is why I feel cautious as I watch the growing promotion of “Chinese matcha” in today’s market to try to take the place of Japanese matcha. Powdered green tea produced in China has its own place and value, but it is not the same as Japanese matcha. It does not carry the uninterrupted thread of shaded cultivation, the same terroir, the same continuity of practice across centuries. They are different products, and respecting both means acknowledging their differences. History reminds us that tea has always been reshaped by culture, yet its survival depends on devotion.

In the next, and final part, we return to the present, to scarcity, shifting markets, and the lessons they carry for us today.