You might have heard about Matcha Tea. All the health experts who suggest you switch your lifestyle to the healthy one, make sure you add Matcha Tea to your diet. Matcha is extracted from the leaves which are cultivated, dried, and then crushed into fine powder to use as Tea.
It has many health benefits as compared to regular Tea. Many people don’t give it a try just because they are confused about its taste. They have heard that it doesn’t taste very pleasant and is not enjoyable.
They have trusted the rumours and dropped the plan of adding Matcha to their diet. For all those who want to know how Matcha tastes like, here is a detailed review. The altering taste of Matcha is what makes it very unique, and the taste can be:
Vegetal
You can easily guess this taste note of Matcha tea just by looking at it. Matcha has been made from fresh green leaves cultivated, steamed, dried, and ground into powder. Taste can differ with the techniques used to process and prepare Matcha. Like, the vegetal taste is more strong in the Matcha that has been cultivated and processed in Japan than the one being done in China.
This is because Japan’s steaming and drying process turn it into more vegetal, while in China, it is meant to be pan-fried and dried later on. It is also said to be “green tea” due to its green vegetal taste as it comes from leaves and has high chlorophyll content.
Bitter And Sweet
Before harvesting, Matcha Tea leaves are kept in the dark, which allows the chlorophyll content to increase and build faster. That chlorophyll content not only contributes to its green color but also makes it a bit bitter. Like most plants, the leaves of matcha Tea also have a trace of sweetness.
But sweetness is not the dominant flavor. You can only sense it lingering on once you start drinking Tea, but by the end of it, you experience bitterness more. So you can say that “Matcha feels bitter in the start and at end but sweet in-between.”
The amount of bitterness is not as much as in coffee because caffeine is not the main component of Matcha. So, we can say that the bitter taste note of Matcha lowers the effect of sweetness, but it is still there. People who drink Matcha regularly say that it tastes different from regular Tea, but Do you know what differs Matcha’s taste from any other regular tea?
It’s the taste we categorize as “Umami.” Umami represents the taste of an amino acid, L-glutamate, that has a savory taste and is associated with red meat and different mushrooms. Its other component L-theanine also contributes to its rich, savory taste. Umami is a taste that is not among the regular taste notes like sweet, sour, salty, or bitter, etc.
You can say it’s a mixture of two tastes where you feel one at the start of the beverage and the other at the end with a completely different aftertaste. Kabusecha and Gyukoro are the types of two green tea leaves having a rich, savory taste. The taste you find in fried, roasted red meat and butter steamed mushrooms can be called Umami.
Smooth
You might wonder that smoothness is not the taste note. Let me tell you when there is smoothness in the beverage’s taste, its quality ultimately gets better. For example, you are consuming Tea, and there are clumps and residues of leaves coming into your mouth. Would you enjoy it? No.
This is how Matcha’s taste is. It has smoothness in taste like foamy buttercream ice cream or latte. It doesn’t clump together and give your Tea a bubbly look and taste. You can also swirl the Tea with a Matcha whisk to give it a completely frothy, buttery taste. Good Match tea should always have smoothness.
If your Matcha tea isn’t smooth, it means you’ve failed to blend it properly. The initial bitterness of Matcha should be very subtle and mix immediately with the taste buds and receptors of your tongue. The perfect Matcha should always have a smooth mouthfeel.
Buttery Latte
Normally, Matcha tea is prepared without adding milk or tea sweeteners. But these days, people are enjoying it with flavored milk and powder to make it more palatable. You can turn it into a latte with milk and cream, which gives you a taste like an espresso and mocha.
It is slightly sweetened and has a unique fragrance and refined mocktail taste, making this latte very unique. Latte also tastes bitter at the start, but the aftertaste is always slightly sweet and buttery. Many people also call this Matcha latte a bittersweet peanut butter latte.
It has been noticed that the taste of Matcha isn’t immediately enjoyable, which is understood. Like coffee, you cannot enjoy it in the first sip, but your taste buds get addicted to it later on.
Receptors on our tongue always take time to adapt to the taste. So if you are consuming Matcha for the first time, you might not like it spontaneously. But once it starts getting settled, you will love the smoothness, aroma, and lingering sweetness.
Dark Chocolate And Red Wine
It has also been experienced that Matcha’s first sip resembles the sip of red wine and a bite of dark chocolate. Dark chocolate tastes bitter at the very start, but as you continue eating, you find the taste very mouthful and enjoyable that you keep eating it again and again.
The same is the case with Matcha tea. The unique sweet mixed bitter taste that changes with every sip makes it resemble red wine. You don’t like it first, but you love it in the last.
Aftertaste Of Matcha
There is the taste of a beverage at the start, then at the end. But there is another term called aftertaste, which is the decisive factor of beverage addiction. You might not get to hear it for most of the beverages, but for Matcha, its aftertaste is what makes you drink it again and again.
If you love aftertaste, you always crave that beverage. If not, no matter how good the taste is overall, you will barely drink it again. Here is Matcha’s aftertaste: The initial taste is slightly bitter, buttery, and frothy, preceded by the vegetal aroma, and ends up with the touch of sweetness. You can call it “Tea with a lot of different tastes in one cup.” That is the speciality of Matcha; the taste is complex, distinctive, and dynamic.