The Rise of Matcha

September 26, 2025·42 min·3 clips

Leila Kazim explores why matcha has exploded from a Japanese ritual to a global social media trend.

A whisk slows the story down. Leila Kazim starts with the bowl, then follows matcha through flavour, ceremony and the awkward pressure of sudden demand. The taste gets its moment first: savoury, bitter, sweet. Then the episode sets that pleasure beside matcha's public life, where TikTok videos, cafe menus and a famous recipe have made the green drink feel everywhere. Popularity brings visitors as well as sales. One guest describes people turning up at farmers' doors asking to buy directly. That can be lovely, but it also brings stress and language barriers. The boom is not simple plenty. Some farmers are used to making other Japanese teas, especially sencha, so the world's hunger for one powdered tea can feel stressful, even disappointing. Scale is the hard part. A Japanese tea garden takes patience, and expanding one is a long commitment. A year-and-a-half or two-year trend is a shaky reason to plant differently. The programme gives that tension room, then steps back into matcha's older Japanese life, where powdered tea became part of ceremony, aesthetics and philosophical practice. Asako Steward widens the frame without making it feel like homework. Her account begins with tea reaching Japan from China in the ninth century, before powdered tea appears later in the twelfth. Craft keeps pulling the episode back: how matcha is preserved, presented and understood when a ceremonial ingredient becomes a lifestyle signal. The close is practical. Other Japanese tea powders, including roasted hojicha and toasted-rice genmaicha, offer ways beyond the matcha fixation. The mood is curious, not breathless. Matcha's global success is real, but its future still depends on growers, timescales and taste.

As heard by us

Matcha gets treated as flavour, ritual, trend and farming pressure in a grounded Food Programme outing.

The Rise of Matcha opens with Leila Kazim whisking a bowl of bright green tea and finding the flavour both appealing and slightly strange: umami first, then bitterness, then sweetness.

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Why matcha feels suddenly everywhere, and what that boom means for the people growing it.

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