Ceremonial, premium, culinary: one of those three words sits on almost every tin of matcha sold in Europe, and no authority stands behind any of them. There is no certifying body, no shared standard, nothing a producer has to prove to anybody. Whoever fills the tin picks the word that suits it and prints it.
What those words do describe, fairly enough, is the cup a matcha was built for. What decides whether yours comes out silky or comes out like bitter grass with milk on it sits somewhere else entirely: water between 70 and 80 °C (158 to 176 °F) instead of water straight off the boil, a powder chosen for the cup you actually want, and the minute spent dissolving it properly before the milk ever arrives.
We sell matcha, so read us with a hand on your wallet. That is exactly why the awkward part goes at the top instead of the bottom: ours is a blend of matcha and coconut blossom sugar, built for a latte, and it arrives already sweet. If what you want is the bowl, the chasen and usucha drunk neat, you want a pure unsweetened ceremonial from somebody else, and we would rather you found that out here than after the parcel arrives.
Ceremonial, premium, culinary: what those words on the tin actually mean
The three grades describe where the leaf came from and what it was ground for. Ceremonial comes from the youngest leaves of the first harvest, shaded for weeks before picking and ground very fine: it is the matcha made to be drunk neat, in a bowl, and it gives a silky powder, a bright green and a sweetness with umami sitting behind it. Culinary comes from later harvests and older leaves grown with less shade, and it brings a colour that leans towards yellow and a bitter edge that sits beautifully inside a cake. Premium lives in between, fine enough for the cup and sturdy enough to stand up to milk.
Here is the part that never gets printed anywhere: those three words carry no certification behind them. No body awards them, no standard is shared across producers, and anyone can put any of them on a tin without answering to a soul. They tell you what a matcha was intended for, and as a guarantee of quality they are worth very little. The real test is still the one you can run yourself: a bright green rather than a dull one, a powder that looks like face powder rather than sand, and the smell of a fresh leaf.
Organic is a different animal. That one is a genuine certification, with a body issuing it and inspections behind it, but it speaks about how the plant was grown and says nothing about how fine the powder is. Two separate axes, and a matcha can sit high on one and low on the other.
Why the matcha you are served almost always tastes bitter
The first cause is the water, and it is also the easiest one to remove. A kettle boils at 100 °C, the powder goes straight in without a pause, and water that hot pulls the bitter side of the leaf out first and pushes it to the front while the sweetness stays behind. Taiao, who make the matcha we keep, give a window between 70 and 80 °C for theirs, and it is the same window you will find in any serious guide.
The second cause is the powder itself. Culinary matcha is cheap because it comes from harvests after the first, from older leaves grown with little shade: it is built to sit inside a batter, where sugar and flour act as its parachute. In a cup with milk its rough side is left uncovered, which is why it tastes of wet grass. In coffee shops that put matcha on the menu because matcha sells, the opposite shortcut turns up just as often, the bottled syrup: very sweet, green with colouring, with a distant memory of tea somewhere inside.
The third cause is the most ordinary of the three, and it is lumps. Matcha is ground so fine that it compacts on its own inside the bag, and tipped straight into milk those little pellets never dissolve: they settle at the bottom, and every so often one arrives in your mouth, concentrated and thoroughly bitter. The fix costs thirty seconds and consists of dissolving the powder first in a very small amount of water, until it turns into a smooth cream.
What is inside our matcha, and who should buy something else
Ours comes from Taiao, and the matcha it starts from grows on the hills of Uji, in Japan, from young shaded leaves, stone ground in small batches. What sits in the bag is more than that, and it is the thing we want said before you buy: the MATCHA Barista Premium Taiao is a blend of matcha and coconut blossom sugar, so it arrives already sweet. The bag holds 250 g, which at the dose further down works out at between 25 and 50 cups.
The choice comes from the counter. A matcha latte that has to come out the same on a Tuesday morning and a Saturday afternoon needs its sweetness and its vegetal side already in balance with each other, rather than leaving that balance to whoever happens to be working the bar. Coconut blossom sugar brings a round, discreet sweetness that walks alongside the matcha instead of sitting on top of it, and it is the reason this blend forgives so much: it comes out drinkable the first time you make it.
For the same reason there are three cases where you are better off looking elsewhere, and we will happily point. If you want matcha in a bowl, neat, whisked with a chasen the way usucha is made, look for a pure unsweetened ceremonial, because the sweetness in here stays in here. If you like deciding for yourself how much sugar goes into the cup, same answer. And if you need matcha for a cake, a culinary costs a fraction and does that job better.
One note on keeping it, because matcha ages quickly and never comes back once it has gone flat: air, light, heat and damp do it the same damage they do to coffee, and green turning grey is the first sign. Keep it closed, in the dark and away from the hob, with the care we set out at length in the guide to storing coffee.
How to make a matcha latte that works every time
The procedure is always the same and only changes at the end. Taiao give 5 to 10 g of matcha in 25 or 50 ml of water between 70 and 80 °C, followed by 150 to 200 ml of milk. With the Barista Premium that dose also decides how sweet the cup turns out, because the sugar is already in there alongside the matcha: it is the first number to move, starting low and climbing until the cup looks like you.
Hot
- Sift the powder straight into the cup, or at least crush the lumps with the back of a teaspoon, because everything that follows depends on this.
- Add only the small amount of water at 70 to 80 °C, which without a thermometer you get by boiling and letting it stand for two or three minutes.
- Work it into a smooth cream, no grains, with a veil of very fine foam on the surface: with a chasen you whisk in a zigzag, but an electric milk frother or a jar with the lid on, shaken for ten seconds, both do the job.
- Only then pour the milk, warm and lightly frothed, letting it fall slowly onto the cream.
Iced
The iced matcha latte goes wrong almost always in the same way, with the powder tipped straight onto the ice: down there the lumps never dissolve and they stay at the bottom of the glass. The cream comes first, identical to the hot one and made with the same warm water, and only then the ice and the cold milk. You watch the green come down through the white, and a stir closes it into a glass that holds up to an August afternoon.
Do you need a chasen?
The bamboo whisk does one job, breaking the powder into water without leaving grains behind, and it does that job beautifully. Other tools reach the same place: an electric milk frother gets very close, and a sealed jar shaken hard gets close enough. Where the chasen genuinely earns its keep is usucha, matcha drunk neat in a bowl with nothing but water, where the foam is half the drink. In a latte made with a blend like ours, the milk arrives and does that work anyway.
Which milk works best
Whole cow's milk is the simplest road, because the fat rounds off the vegetal note and holds everything together. Among the plant-based drinks the closest is the oat drink in the barista version, with a natural sweetness on the same wavelength as the matcha and a foam that stays put. Soya gives structure and neutrality, almond lightens the cup and leaves the green in the foreground, coconut pushes the sweetness and finds itself at home with the coconut blossom sugar already in the blend. We keep all four in the shop, and the barista version genuinely matters, because the table versions blow big bubbles and fall apart. Which one suits which cup, and why some of them curdle the moment they meet an espresso, is a piece of its own.
If green is not your thing, there is chai
Matcha sometimes stays a thing you admire more than a thing you want, and that is a perfectly good outcome. In that case the cup to try is the CHAI Spiced Taiao, intense black tea with cinnamon and ginger, made with the same gesture and drunk hot in winter or over ice in summer, with milk or with any of the plant-based drinks. It is vegan and gluten free, and it settles the argument in houses where nobody will look at matcha.
Questions and answers
What is the difference between ceremonial and culinary matcha?
Ceremonial comes from the youngest leaves of the first harvest, grown in shade and ground very fine, and it is made to be drunk neat with nothing but water. Culinary comes from later harvests and older leaves, has a duller colour and a grassier taste, and gives its best inside cakes and batters. Neither word is an official certification: they say what that matcha was intended for.
Does matcha have more caffeine than coffee?
Matcha contains caffeine, and since you drink the whole leaf rather than an infusion of it, everything in the powder ends up in the cup. The comparison with coffee depends so heavily on the dose and the preparation of both that a single figure would say very little. What does change is the sensation: in matcha the caffeine arrives together with L-theanine, an amino acid present in the leaf, and people who drink it describe a more even effect than the sharp start of an espresso.
Can you make an iced matcha latte?
Yes, and it is the version that works best from May to September. The only thing to watch is dissolving the powder in a little warm water before it meets the ice, because in the cold it goes straight to the bottom and stays there.
Which milk works best in a matcha latte?
Whole cow's milk gives the roundest cup and the easiest one to get right. Among the plant-based drinks, barista oat is the closest substitute, soya gives foam and neutrality, almond lightens, coconut takes the cup towards the tropical.
Matcha interests us for the same reason coffee does, which is that almost everybody drinks it badly made and then concludes the problem lies with their own taste. We roast coffee for a living and we treat the matcha with the same attention, because a cup made properly explains itself better than any argument.
The MATCHA Barista Premium Taiao is in our shop, and it travels anywhere in the European Union. The first cup made with the water at the right temperature tells you straight away whether you liked matcha all along.