Matcha is having a moment — and it's putting pressure on Japan's tea industry

It's the latest beverage du jour — and for people needing their morning pick-me-up, matcha tea increasingly beats espresso as their caffeine fix of choice.

"I worked on the bar a few weeks ago and I think past a certain point, you don't just skim milk, you don't pull shots. Everything you do is matcha," said Nadiia Semenichenko, regional manager at 10 Dean, a café and bar in Toronto.

Demand for the finely powdered tea — usually sourced from Japan and unmistakable for its vivid green colour and earthy taste — has gone supernova since the fall, mostly thanks to the legions of influencers swearing by it on social media and viral videos that are racking up millions of views, say experts who spoke to CBC News.

But that fervour has shaken up matcha's delicate supply chain, ultimately leading to a global shortage that is putting pressure on Japan's tea industry to ramp up production of the scarce commodity.

Semenichenko's cafe has sought out new suppliers to keep up with the demand, noting that one of them has put a cap on how much matcha the café could buy each month.  

"By the end of this year, we'll feel substantial price increases in matcha, for sure," she said, referring to the café's costs.

And those who follow the Japanese tea industry say it's only a matter of time before customers who love the foamy, verdant drink get hit by a serious price hike.

Matcha is made from ground tencha, a type of green tea leaf that is shade-grown — giving it a more intense flavour and a deeper colour — before being steamed, dried, destemmed and passed through a milling machine to produce a powder.

The highest-grade version of matcha, used for Japanese tea ceremonies, is harvested in spring. It's passed through a stone mill, making it a time and resource-consuming process that produces only a small quantity of the final product.

Semenichenko says using ceremonial matcha as a baking ingredient or in lattes is like "if you buy really expensive whiskey and put it in whisky and Coke."

But when demand for matcha ticked sharply upward last fall, people were suddenly rushing to buy the high-grade version of the product. "Even tea ceremony schools in Japan suddenly couldn't find the matcha they would usually buy," said Anna Poian, a co-founder of the Global Japanese Tea Association.

Some of the most popular matcha brands in Japan — including Ippodo Tea, Yamasan and Marukyu Koyamaen — published apology notes to their customers and announced they would have to put limits on how much and what kind of matcha products they would sell to their buyers. 

At that time, matcha producers "were not really facing a real shortage, but they didn't expect so much demand," explained Poian.

But the onslaught of matcha-related viral videos combined with record-high tourism to Japan — induced by a weak yen — had people clamouring for the tea, ultimately leading to a run on existing supply and a production shortage.