For subscribers
Shortages, smoothies and fraud: The matcha market cracks under pressure
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Once consumed in small, formal tea ceremonies, matcha is now mixed into fruity lattes and preyed on by counterfeiters.
PHOTO: COLIN CLARK/NYTIMES
Pete Wells
Follow topic:
UNITED STATES – Over four centuries, Japan built a tradition of drinking matcha that was based on four principles: wa, kei, sei and jaku, or harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity.
It took just a few years for a worldwide matcha craze to upend those values and replace them with disharmony, disrespect, impurity and fraud.
