From Field to Bowl
The making of Wasui matcha
— In ten quiet steps —
Step 01 | A Whole Year in the First Leaf
Born in sunlight. Chosen for it.
The first leaves of spring — fed by a whole winter's rest. Wasui takes only this harvest. Never the second.
Through autumn and winter, the tea plant sleeps. It draws nutrients down into root and stem and holds them through the cold. When spring warms the field, all of that stored energy rushes upward into the first new shoots — bathed in full sunlight, alive with growth. This is ichibancha, the first flush, and it carries more than three times the umami of any later harvest. Wasui works with first flush only. The second harvest, the third — faster to grow, easier to sell — never carry the Wasui name.
Step 02 ｜
Block the Light
Block the light.
On purpose.
Twenty days before harvest, the field is covered. Less sun, more soul.
Roughly 20 to 30 days before harvest, the rows are draped in shade cloth. Cut off from the sun, the leaf stops converting umami into bitterness. Chlorophyll deepens. Sweetness gathers. The vivid green of matcha begins here — in the choice to refuse the light.
Step 03 ｜
The Moment the Cover Comes Off
The light returns.
The clock starts.
From the second the leaf sees the sun again, quality begins to fall.
Just before harvest, the shade is lifted. The instant light touches the leaf, oxidation accelerates — quality starts to decline within hours. The timing is read by the farmer's eye: the weather, the leaf, the air. There is no manual for this moment.
Step 04 | Harvest
Cover off. Harvest on.
No pauses between the field and the factory.
The leaf is picked the moment the field is unveiled and moved directly to the factory, kept cool and aerated to keep respiratory heat from rising in the stack. Fast enough to protect the leaf. Slow enough to respect it.
Step 05 | Leaf Intake
Spread the leaf.
Slow the heat.
One hundred kilograms an hour. Laid wide so the leaf can breathe.
Arrival at the factory begins a race against time. Each cultivar runs on its own schedule, and about 100 kg of fresh leaf is laid out per hour. Pile it up, and the leaves heat themselves from inside. Spread it out — and the leaf is safe.
Step 06 | Weighing and Steaming
Freeze the green.
Brief, intense heat. Long enough to lock the color in forever.
Before steaming, the leaves pass through a calibrated weighing line — fragments small enough to scorch are removed. The qualifying leaves then enter a continuous rotating-drum steamer — long enough to stop the enzymes, freeze the color, and seal in the covered fragrance of shade-grown tea.
Step 07 | Wind Separation
What if air could separate every leaf by itself?
Five meters up. Five meters down. Each leaf finds itself alone.
Steamed leaves are wet, and they cling to each other. So we use wind. In a vented chamber 5 to 7 meters tall, the leaves are lifted, fall, lifted again, fall again. Through several cycles, each leaf is separated from its neighbors and surface moisture is stripped away. By the time they reach the furnace, they are spread, dry on the surface, ready to dry evenly.
Step 08 | Tencha Furnace Drying
Not rolled.
Laid flat.
Through three zones of heat. This is what makes matcha, matcha.
The step that defines the form. Unlike sencha or gyokuro, tencha leaves are never rolled — they are dried flat. The leaves travel through a multi-stage furnace built around a brick combustion chamber, passing through three layered zones of heat: a high-heat zone that sets the leaf, a mid-range zone, and a gentle finishing zone. What comes out is aracha — the raw form of tencha, flat and brittle, the shape just before matcha.
Step 09 | Stem Separation
The leaf is dry.
The stem is not.
Nothing is discarded. The stem becomes hojicha.
After the furnace, the leaf is dry — but the stem still holds water. A screw-fed separator combined with air-flow sorting lifts the lighter leaf and lets the heavier stem fall. The separated stems are not waste. Roasted, they become Hojicha — roasted stem tea. Nothing is thrown away. A quiet ethic Japanese tea has kept for centuries.
Step 10 | Cutting and Sizing
One more pass.
One last alignment.
Even size now. Even grind later.
The cleaned leaf is shaped one final time. Uneven sizes mean uneven grinding at the stone mill, weeks from now. Oversized leaves go back. Undersized fragments are held aside. What remains is pure leaf — vibrant, flat, even. This is finished tencha — the form just before matcha.
Months of resting. The mill turns slowly. Matcha cannot be rushed.
Tencha is not yet matcha. The finished leaf rests in cold storage for several months — a process that rounds the flavor — before being slowly ground on stone mills. The mill turns slowly. Matcha cannot be rushed. This is where it takes its final form: a vivid green powder, ground at a pace no industrial process can compress.
Wasui's Promise
We don't ship products.
We ship Japan.
Every step you have just read takes place in Japan, by Japanese hands, on equipment built and maintained for tencha. Wasui does not source intermediate powder. We do not rebrand overseas matcha. We work directly with the farmers and the factory floor, and every batch carries a Product Passport documenting origin, cultivar, shading period, and grade.
