We receive inquiries from around the world every week — from café owners, importers, product developers, and entrepreneurs who are exploring matcha sourcing for the first time. And right now, as Japan enters its matcha harvest season, that volume is at its highest. Buyers and distributors globally are making decisions about who they'll work with, and Japanese producers are doing the same.
This article is for anyone at that stage. Before you send your first message, here's what we think is worth understanding.
Why Japanese Producers Care About More Than Price
The tea farmers and producers we work with have dedicated years — often generations — to their craft. When they take on a new partner, what they're looking for first isn't volume or margin. It's understanding.
They want to know that the person on the other side of the relationship genuinely values what they've made. That starts with knowing what actually determines the quality of matcha.
What Makes Matcha, Matcha: The Factors That Matter
Most people know that origin matters — Uji, Nishio, Yame each carry distinct profiles. But origin is only one dimension. Here's what serious producers pay close attention to:
Cultivar (品種) Different tea plant varieties — Okumidori, Samidori, Gokou, and others — yield meaningfully different flavor profiles. Some are sweeter, some more umami-forward, some more suited to drinking straight, others to culinary applications.
Shading and Cultivation Method Tencha, the shade-grown leaf that becomes matcha after grinding, requires careful management of light, timing, and canopy. How long the plants are shaded, and how that shading is done, directly affects the chlorophyll content, amino acid profile, and the depth of flavor in the final product.
Harvest Timing First harvest (ichibancha) produces the most prized leaves, but not every application calls for first harvest. Understanding the season and timing behind your matcha helps you make the right choice for your product.
Time from Harvest to Processing Some producers move leaves into processing within hours of harvest. Others have found that allowing tencha to rest and age before grinding — in some cases, up to a full year — produces a matcha with a rounder, more complex character. This kind of aged or vintage matcha is rare, and not widely understood, but it exists.
Organic Certification For brands where organic sourcing is a core value, we can connect you with certified producers. This is a growing segment, and we have relationships with farmers who meet international organic standards.
The Question We Always Ask First
When someone reaches out to us, before we talk varieties or pricing or volumes, we ask: What do you care about, and how do you want to use this matcha?
That might sound simple, but the answer shapes everything. A specialty café building a single-origin ceremonial matcha program needs something very different from a wellness brand formulating a daily supplement. A chocolatier working matcha into ganache needs different flavor characteristics than a tea room serving traditional usucha.
There is no single "best" matcha. There is the right matcha for what you're trying to create.
What We Can Offer
Through our network of producers and trading partners in Japan, we're able to source across a genuinely wide spectrum:
Conventional and certified organic matcha
Single-cultivar and blended options
First harvest and later harvest grades
Tencha aged for up to one year before grinding (vintage matcha)
Matcha calibrated for drinking, culinary use, or both
Small-lot and larger volume options depending on your needs
Ready to Talk?
If you're serious about building a matcha brand, the most important thing you can do right now is get clear on your own values — what you want this matcha to mean to your customers, and why it matters to you.
Bring that to us. We'll take it from there.
Get in touch with the Rikyu team
