Tourists flocking to Japan and an interest in Japanese culture has put the spotlight on matcha.GRADY MITCHELL/Supplied
Two young women perch on bar stools inside Vancouver’s Cultivate tea shop, listening intently. They’re here for a matcha tasting, where they will learn about the flavour notes, varieties and preparation techniques of the popular Japanese powdered tea. The tasting is intimate, quiet and slow-paced – a far cry from the matcha frenzy that has taken over not just Vancouver but cities around the world.
These days, the grassy-flavoured tea – which is prepared by being whisked in hot water – is everywhere. It’s made into lattes. It’s poured over ice. It’s whipped into cheesecakes and cookies and ice creams. It’s put on sweatshirts. It has also, undoubtedly, taken over your Instagram and TikTok feeds, flooding social media with its bright green colour. “It was the perfect product waiting to be discovered for modern-day social media,” muses Jude Wang, owner of Cultivate.
The international public’s sudden taste for matcha has increased demand by so much that the global market is expected to reach nearly US $5-billion by 2028 – a jump of about 60 per cent from 2023. It’s led to a worldwide shortage, which is causing prices to go up by astronomical amounts: a minimum of 100 per cent this year. The Global Japanese Tea Association reports, for example, that the price for tencha – the tea that is ground to make matcha – is selling for 1.7 times what it did in 2024.
Global demand for matcha has led to skyrocketing prices.GRADY MITCHELL/Supplied
Prepare to pay more for your morning coffee, mocha or matcha latte
Toronto-based matcha wholesaler Rikko Osaki is Japanese, and grew up in Shizuoka: a city about an hour east of Tokyo known for its premium green tea production. (“It was tea farms everywhere,” she recalls. “Even in school, instead of a water fountain, we had a tea fountain.”) According to her, a few key factors have resulted in today’s matcha madness.
For starters, the farmers were already dealing with a lower-than-normal yield because of global warming. “This year, we had about a 30 to 40 per cent reduction in the volume,” she says over video from Japan, where she is meeting with producers. “So we had less supply to begin with.”
On top of that, increased tourism to Japan and general interest in Japanese culture has put the spotlight on matcha, which is touted for its high amount of antioxidants.
Then there’s TikTok.
“Social media was the start of this fire,” says Osaki, whose company, Hokusan, has been working directly with producers to supply Japanese green tea to cafes, bakeries and restaurants across Canada for the past five years. “People came to Japan and were filming all the matcha. And then, boom: Now it’s not just in North America, it’s also in Europe, Asia, as well as the Middle East.”
Despite the strain the matcha demand is putting on the system (and our wallets, with matcha lattes costing anywhere from $6 to $9), Osaki notes one silver lining: Japan’s aging tea farmers are finally turning a decent profit.
“This year, for the first time in the last 20 to 30 years, tea farmers are actually making money that they deserve,” she says. The average age of a Japanese tea farmer is around 67. The hope now is that this boon will encourage younger generations to consider working on a tea farm and help keep the industry going.
Matcha is such good business right now, in fact, that outside sources are trying to get in on the action. “Other countries have started to produce matcha very aggressively,” Osaki says. “We’re getting e-mails every day from Chinese matcha companies, Vietnamese matcha companies. I just got an e-mail from somebody from India saying they are interested in starting matcha production.”
While matcha doesn’t have the same kind of regulations as something like Prosecco, the tea does require specific growing and harvesting conditions, which the Japanese have mastered. With other countries now starting to produce their own versions, most matcha consumers are likely unaware they might be drinking the equivalent of a dupe.
The Japanese have mastered the specific harvesting conditions necessary for the tea to grow, and with other countries starting to produce their own versions, most matcha consumers might be drinking the fake stuff.GRADY MITCHELL/Supplied
Wang has had his shop for 11 years, working directly with those dedicated Japanese producers to sell terroir-driven teas both to wholesale clients and at-home drinkers. In his mind, the main question a person should ask if they want to understand the quality of the matcha they’re buying is simply: Where is it from? First, is it from Japan at all? And if so, what region? (For those wondering, some of the country’s most well regarded matcha-growing areas are Uji, Yame, Nishio, Kagoshima and Shizuoka.)
The industry, according to Osaki, is predicting that the matcha bubble will burst, likely late next year at the earliest. And while she doesn’t think prices will return to where they used to be, she suspects that a certain amount of levelling-out will happen.
For those who are seeking alternatives in the meantime, Wang has a few ideas.
Hojicha: a nutty-tasting, roasted Japanese tea that is ground into a powder just like matcha.GRADY MITCHELL/Supplied
The first is hojicha: a nutty-tasting, roasted Japanese tea that is ground into a powder just like matcha, making it great for lattes; it has a beautiful dark grey colour. Wang’s other suggestion is sencha, a loose-leaf green tea from Japan with a woody, vegetal flavour profile.
And while he loves both of those types of tea, Wang ultimately feels they should be valued on their own merits – not as matcha substitutes.
“There’s no replacement for matcha,” he says. “If you have a wine that’s out of stock, you go, ‘Okay, there are always other wines from other regions.’ But for matcha, when it’s out, it’s out. There’s nothing that you can replace it with.”
