JAPANESE CULTURE, EXPLAINED
煎茶
Sencha is a Japanese green tea usually made by steaming, rolling and drying harvested leaves. Its loose leaves are then infused in water. Senchadō is a separate practice of tea gatherings centred on infused tea.
Harvested leaves still undergo enzyme-driven oxidation. Steam inactivates the relevant enzymes and softens the leaves for rolling. Longer steaming produces variants such as fukamushi sencha, affecting leaf structure and the liquor. Steaming time varies by the tea being made.
Kyoto’s technical account distinguishes successive rolling stages and drying. They manage moisture through the leaf and progressively shape it; final rolling produces slender leaf forms. Drying yields aracha, which still requires finishing before sale.
Rolling has several stages before the leaves are dried and finished for sale.
MAFF’s Uji account identifies Nagatani Sōen’s 1738 development of steaming young leaves and hand-rolling them while drying over a heated table. From late Edo into the Meiji period, Uji tea expanded as an export industry, with a developing production and supply system. Production today is mechanised. The Uji method is one development in the wider history of green tea.
Cutaway illustration of loose leaves infusing, then being strained and poured; leaf quantity and liquor colour vary.
Loose leaves go into a pot, water is added and soluble components enter the water. The liquor passes through a strainer while the leaves mostly remain behind. Kyoto’s tea chamber offers 70–80°C and 45 seconds to one minute as one brewing guide. Leaf quantity, water and steaming style change the suitable arrangement; those figures are an example rather than an exclusive rule.
Sencha is rolled and commonly brewed as loose leaf. Matcha comes from tencha, dried without rolling and processed into fine powder that enters the drink. Powdering sencha produces powdered sencha, not tencha-derived matcha.
No. It inactivates the relevant enzymes.
The infused liquor, while the strainer retains the leaves.
No. Matcha comes from a different tencha processing route.