Matcha · Myths & Realities | 101 Questions to Sort Fact from Fiction: From the Japanese Tea Field to the Global Market: History, Science, Culture, Tasting & Production, Documented

Matcha is everywhere. Almost no one knows what it really is. Not an ordinary green tea. A leaf grown for weeks in the shade, dried without rolling, then ground between two stone mills turning at about thirty revolutions a minute. Two minutes of milling yield a single gram. At Horii Shichimeien — a house founded in Uji in 1879 — eighty mills turn day and night. Production still can't keep up. Orders are turned away. That is matcha. What you read elsewhere is marketing. This book separates the two. Every question follows the same architecture: the myth as it circulates, the documented reality, the factual explanation, and a takeaway. Built to be read in any order — skimmed or studied in depth. Is “ceremonial” matcha a regulated term? No — and that has direct consequences for what you're actually buying. Is organic matcha automatically better? Certification guarantees the absence of pesticides, not the quality in the cup. Does Starbucks matcha contain real matcha? Yes — but the actual concentration is never disclosed, and the origin can be a blend. Why can't Japan produce enough matcha? The constraints are structural, and the gap between supply and demand keeps widening.