Who does the tasting
One person, trained in gastronomy, who is part of the editorial team. There is no tasting panel and no jury. When two batches of the same product give different results, the tasting is repeated and that is recorded in the review.
What it is done with
A ceramic chawan, a hundred-prong chasen, a 0.1 g scale, a probe thermometer and low-mineral bottled water. No spectrophotometer, no laboratory sieve, no other measuring instrument. Colour is judged by eye, with the powder spread on white paper by a window; everything else by nose and mouth.
How the sample is prepared
2 g of sifted matcha, 70 ml of water at 70 °C, whisked in Ws for about 20 seconds. The same ratio and the same temperature for every sample, so the comparison means something. Where the maker recommends another preparation, that is tried too and discussed in the text.
The six attributes
| Attribute | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Colour of the tea | ×1,0 | Intensity and shade of green in the whisked bowl |
| Aroma | ×1,0 | Intensity and quality of the primary and secondary aromas |
| Foam | ×1,2 | Density, fineness of bubble and how long it holds before collapsing |
| Umami | ×1,5 | Intensity and quality of the umami on first impact |
| Sweetness | ×1,0 | Clean sweetness as it develops in the mouth |
| Astringency | ×1,0 | Absence of astringency (a higher score means less astringency) |
A note on this table: until September 2026 this table listed «persistence» instead of «foam». No review scored persistence and every review scored foam, so the table has been corrected to describe what is actually done, and all the scores have been recalculated.
The formula
Each attribute is scored from 1 to 10. The final score is the weighted mean of the attributes assessed, multiplied by 10:
score = ( Σ attribute × weight ) ÷ ( Σ weights ) × 10
A real example, Matcha Zen, the only review with all six attributes: (9×1 + 8×1 + 9×1,2 + 8×1,5 + 8×1 + 9×1) ÷ 6,7 × 10 = 85.
When a review does not assess one of the six attributes, the mean is taken only over those that were, with their weights. That is better than inventing a score nobody has tasted. Each review says which attributes were scored.
If two matchas tie once rounded, they are ordered by the exact value before rounding.
What each band means
90 or above: exceptional quality. 80 to 89: high quality. 70 to 79: sound, with some shortcomings. Below 70 a product does not enter the main ranking, though it can still have its own review if a lot of people buy it.
What we do not do
We do not measure L*a*b* colour, particle size or L-theanine content. Where those figures appear in a specification, they come from the maker and are cited as such. There is no blind panel tasting: there is one person tasting to the same protocol every time. We would rather say so than affect an instrumental rigour we do not have.
Where the samples come from
They are bought like any customer would. If one is sent by a brand, the review says so. Conflicts of interest are explained in Transparency.