A Bowl of Matcha: Taste, History, and the Ritual of Presence
- Yuna Lee
- Aug 17
- 5 min read
The matchas we will taste come from Kyoto, Shiga, in Japan, and Jeju Island in Korea. Each place carries a different chapter of tea history.
Together, they ask one question:
How does a tradition survive?
Sometimes it is carefully protected and refined.
Sometimes it remains in the memory of a landscape.
And sometimes, after almost disappearing, it must be planted again.
First, the Bigger Journey
Tea began in China and traveled gradually across East Asia.
In China, people cultivated tea for centuries and developed the practice of grinding tea into powder and whisking it with water.
Tea culture traveled to Korea, where it became part of Buddhist practice, royal life, ceremonies, and hospitality. Powdered tea was especially present during the Goryeo period.
Korean and Japanese monks carried tea knowledge, seeds, objects, and customs across the sea.
In Japan, powdered tea was gradually transformed into matcha and became central to the Japanese Way of Tea.
Centuries later, Jeju Island became part of a modern effort to restore Korea’s relationship with tea.
This was not a simple journey from one country to the next. China, Korea, and Japan influenced one another through Buddhism, travel, trade, scholarship, and cultural exchange.
Tea crossed the sea many times.
Kyoto: A Tradition Protected and Refined
Matcha traveled from China to Japan through Buddhist monks. By the thirteenth century, tea was being cultivated in Uji, near Kyoto.
The region had many natural advantages: fertile soil, mist, sheltering hills, and a climate well suited to tea. It was also close to Kyoto’s temples, artists, political leaders, and cultural life.
Uji tea became highly valued. Farmers gradually developed special methods of shading the plants before harvest. Protecting the young leaves from direct sunlight produced tea with a deeper green color, softer texture, greater sweetness, and more umami.
Tea masters later transformed the preparation of matcha into more than a way of making a drink. One bowl brought together ceramics, flowers, calligraphy, food, architecture, season, silence, and hospitality.
The tea was not simply prepared.
A moment was prepared.
The Kyoto matchas we may taste - Daigyoku, Houju, and Tenju- come from this centuries-old culture of refinement.
Daigyoku is creamy and welcoming, with floral and vanilla-like qualities. Houju is fuller, sweeter, and more concentrated. Tenju is exceptionally delicate and slowly reveals its flavor.
Even though these teas come from the same general region, they are not the same. The producer, tea plants, harvest, blending, and intended preparation all shape what we experience.
Kyoto teaches us that protecting a tradition does not mean freezing it. It means paying attention to small differences and passing that sensitivity forward.
Shiga: A Landscape That Remembers
Shiga is next to Kyoto, but its tea story is different.
According to regional history, tea seeds were planted there more than 1,200 years ago after a Buddhist monk carried them home from China. Tea later spread through Shiga’s mountain communities and became a product offered to travelers along one of Japan’s important old roads.
Shiga may therefore hold one of Japan’s earliest memories of cultivated tea.
However, its history is not specifically an uninterrupted history of matcha. The region became known for several different styles of green tea.
That distinction makes Tendō - the Shiga matcha we will taste - especially interesting. It is a modern matcha produced in a very old tea landscape.
Tendō combines four tea cultivars, or plant varieties. Together, they can create aromas suggesting vanilla, citrus, peach, flowers, cream, honey, and almonds. The tea begins brightly, but its sweetness continues to develop after it has been swallowed.
It shows us that a tradition does not always survive in one unchanged form.
Sometimes the original seed grows into something new.
Jeju: A Tradition Planted Again
Tea has existed in Korea for centuries. It was connected to Buddhism, royal ceremonies, ancestral rituals, scholarship, and hospitality. Powdered tea was also known, particularly during the Goryeo period.
But Korean tea culture was repeatedly disrupted by political change, war, colonization, taxation, and changes in everyday life. Powdered tea did not continue in precisely the same form as Japanese matcha culture.
By the twentieth century, Korea’s everyday relationship with tea had weakened.
In 1979, Korean businessman Suh Sung-whan began planting tea on Jeju Island. He wanted to help restore a tea culture that he believed was disappearing.
The land was volcanic, rocky, and exposed to strong ocean winds. Many people did not believe it could become productive farmland.
Slowly, the dark fields turned green.
Jeju offered its own gifts: porous volcanic soil, clean water, frequent rain, ocean wind, mountain mist, and a mild climate. Osulloc eventually developed organic tea gardens there and introduced its first powdered green tea in 1997.
This means Jeju matcha does not have the same continuous history as Kyoto matcha.
Its meaning comes from another kind of history: restoration.
The Jeju matcha we will taste is not simply a Korean copy of Japanese matcha. It belongs to a modern Korean effort to recover an old relationship with tea while creating something suited to contemporary life.
As a Korean tea practitioner, this part of the story feels personal to me.
Jeju’s matcha carries both interruption and return. It shows how a tradition can be inherited imperfectly, lost partially, and still planted again with intention.
What We Carry in the Bowl
The bowls may all appear green, but they do not contain the same story.
Kyoto shows us a tradition protected through centuries of refinement.
Shiga holds the memory of an early seed and allows that history to take a new form.
Jeju tells the story of a culture interrupted and deliberately planted again.
We may notice these differences in the flavors: softness, flowers, young vegetables, cream, nuts, sweetness, bitterness, or the length of the finish.
But there is no need to memorize every date, recognize every flavor, or decide which matcha is best.
We only need to become curious.
A seed travels across the sea.
Knowledge passes from one person to another.
A farmer protects young leaves from the sun.
Someone looks at volcanic rock and imagines a green field.
Centuries later, these different histories arrive at the same table.
We lift the bowls, and the journey continues through us.
References & Further Reading
The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Teabowl, China, Song Dynasty. Historical context for powdered-tea culture and Chinese tea bowls later valued in Japan.
Cleveland Museum of Art — Korea in Focus: Celadon Wares and Tea Culture. Tea’s arrival from China and its place in Goryeo-period Buddhist, royal, and ceremonial life.
Kyoto Prefectural Tea Industry Chamber — History and Culture of Uji Tea. The development of tea cultivation, matcha, and regional tea traditions in Uji.
Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries — Kyoto Regional Cuisine and Uji Tea. Information about tencha, shading methods, matcha production, and the Yamashiro tea region.
OSULLOC — Our Story. The company’s account of beginning tea cultivation on Jeju Island in 1979 and its role in Korea’s modern tea revival.
Brother Anthony of Taizé and Hong Kyeong-hae, The Korean Way of Tea: An Introductory Guide. Seoul Selection, 2007.
Historical note: The map and timeline present a simplified overview. Tea knowledge moved through East Asia over many centuries, not along one single, direct route,
and China, Korea, and Japan each developed distinct practices shaped by their own landscapes, histories, and cultures.
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