What Is Tencha? The Shaded Leaf Behind Every Bowl of Matcha
Posted on November 04 2026,
By: Premium Health Japan
How matcha is made
Quick answer: tencha (碾茶) is the tea leaf that becomes matcha. It is grown under shade for about three to four weeks before the spring harvest, steamed, dried flat without rolling, and stripped of its stems and veins. Only the tender leaf that remains is milled into matcha. Every step costs time and yield, which is why good matcha is never cheap.
What is tencha?
Tencha is a Japanese green tea that almost nobody drinks as it is. It is made for one purpose: to be milled into matcha. The name comes from 碾, “to grind”, and 茶, “tea”: tea meant for grinding. In Japan, tencha is bought and sold as a raw material, and buyers judge it on the same things you taste in a bowl of matcha: its color, its aroma, and the sweet, savory depth of the leaf.
What makes a leaf tencha rather than sencha or gyokuro is how it is grown and, above all, how it is dried. Sencha and gyokuro are rolled into needles so they release their flavor into water. Tencha is never rolled: it is dried flat, as soft flakes, because it will be milled and drunk whole.
Tencha: flat, soft flakes of shaded leaf, ready for milling.
How tencha is grown: shade
A few weeks before the first spring harvest, the tea bushes are covered, traditionally with straw on a frame above the rows and today often with black cloth. Starved of most of their light, the young leaves stay thin, tender and dark green. Their chemistry shifts too: shaded leaf keeps more of the amino acid L-theanine, which tastes sweet and savory, and makes fewer of the catechins that give green tea its astringency1. That is the umami you taste in good matcha.
Shading is expensive. The covers have to be put up and taken down by hand, the bushes grow less under them, and the best tencha comes only from the first flush of spring. A shaded field produces far less, and far less often, than the same field grown for sencha.
Picking first-flush tencha under the shade canopy.
How tencha is made
Steaming. Within hours of picking, the leaves are steamed to stop them oxidizing. This keeps the green color and fresh aroma locked in.
Drying flat. The steamed leaves are blown loose and dried in a tall drying furnace, without rolling, so they come out as flat, crisp flakes.
De-stemming and de-veining. The stems and the tougher veins are cut and sifted away, leaving only the soft leaf. This is the step that makes matcha smooth, and it costs a large share of the leaf’s weight.
Sorting and storing. The finished tencha is graded and stored cold, often until it is milled to order.
Nothing is wasted. The stems separated from tencha are prized for roasting: several of the hojicha powders we supply are made from roasted tencha stems. See hojicha vs matcha.
Fresh leaf going in for steaming, the first step in making tencha.
From tencha to matcha
Matcha is tencha milled into a powder so fine it stays suspended in water. Traditionally this is done on granite stone mills that turn slowly to keep the leaf cool and its aroma intact; a granite mill turns out only about 40 grams an hour. Our matcha is milled in Japan. Every retail matcha we sell is stone-milled except one, our Organic Japanese Matcha Shizuoka, which is milled with a patented pulverizing method that keeps the particle size fine and even. Our guide to how matcha is made follows the whole journey.
Tencha going through a granite stone mill.
Why tencha is priced as it is
Matcha prices start with the price of tencha, and tencha is costly to make at every stage:
Shading takes labor and lowers the yield of the field.
The best leaf comes once a year, from the first spring flush; later harvests make lower grades.
De-stemming removes a large share of the leaf’s weight before milling.
Specialist equipment, from the drying furnaces to the stone mills, is slow and expensive to run.
Demand has outgrown supply. Matcha’s popularity abroad has pushed tencha prices up, and more farmers are converting fields from sencha to tencha, but a field takes years to come into good shaded production. Our report on the 2025 matcha shortage explains what is happening.
For a buyer, that means two things. A very cheap “ceremonial” matcha has to have saved money somewhere: on shading, harvest, de-stemming or milling. And price per gram is the only fair way to compare. Our matcha buying guide shows how to read a label and compare grades.
Tencha: common questions
What is tencha?
Tencha is the shaded, steamed and flat-dried tea leaf, stripped of stems and veins, that is milled into matcha. It is a raw material rather than a tea most people drink.
Is tencha the same as matcha?
Tencha is matcha before milling. The same leaf, once ground into a fine powder, becomes matcha.
Can you drink tencha?
You can steep tencha flakes like a delicate green tea, but it is rarely sold that way. Almost all tencha is milled into matcha.
How is tencha different from gyokuro and sencha?
Gyokuro is shaded like tencha but rolled into needles and brewed. Sencha grows in full sun and is rolled. Tencha is shaded and dried flat, never rolled, because it is made to be milled.
Why is matcha so expensive?
Because tencha is: shading lowers yields, the best leaf comes only from the first spring flush, de-stemming removes much of the weight, and slow drying and milling add cost. Rising demand has pushed prices higher still.
References
Ku KM, Choi JN, Kim J, Kim JK, Yoo LG, Lee SJ, Hong YS, Lee CH. Metabolomics analysis reveals the compositional differences of shade grown tea (Camellia sinensis L.). Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. 2010;58(1):418–426.
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), Japan. お茶をめぐる情勢 (The situation surrounding tea), latest edition — tea production by type, including tencha. maff.go.jp.
