Matcha is everywhere right now. And honestly, we love that, because matcha genuinely deserves the attention. Drinking matcha is a practice with over a thousand years behind it, one that Taoist and Zen Buddhist traditions understood with great depth and respect. And Tremella, the “Snow Mushroom”, the beauty tonic of Tang dynasty empresses, is its perfect companion. When you understand where both come from, what the tradition used them for, and why they belong together, the reason for the pairing becomes clear.
What’s Matcha?
In short, Matcha is shade-grown green tea powder. What’s unique about matcha, is that In the final weeks before harvest, the tea plants are covered to reduce light exposure, a process that changes the plant's chemistry, increasing chlorophyll and concentrating the compounds that give matcha its distinctive character. The entire leaf is then stone-ground into a fine powder.
So, when you drink matcha, you are consuming the whole leaf. Everything that is in the leaf is in your cup. This is what makes matcha different from the usual tea leaves you brew.
The Experience
Anyone who has switched from coffee to matcha knows the difference. There is still alertness and energy, but without the edge, the anxiousness, the crash. It really provides a quality of focus that feels steadier, more sustainable. It is what happens when caffeine is combined with L-Theanine, an amino acid found almost exclusively in tea plants and in particularly high concentrations in shade-grown matcha.
In its pure form, L-Thianine has been researched for its beneficial effects on stress, alertness and immunity.
The Zen Buddhist monks who made matcha central to their meditation practice were not working with this compound by name. They were working with the experience it produced, the alert stillness, the sustained presence, the ability to sit in extended meditation without either falling asleep or becoming agitated.
The Taoist and Zen Context
In the Taoist tradition, tea is not just a beverage. It is a plant ally, something worked with intentionally, in relationship, over time. The Japanese tea ceremony, Chado, ‘the way of tea’, is built entirely around this understanding. The preparation of matcha in the tea ceremony is a complete contemplative practice: the quality of attention brought to sifting, whisking, and receiving the bowl is the practice, not merely the prelude to it.
I remember doing a Matcha Tea ceremony in primary school, and as I sure don’t remember everything from primary school, it was an experience that clearly stuck with me. It was positioned as a special activity that we were to honour and respect. It was a cultural experience. The flavour hit my taste buds and really struck me as something I hadn’t experienced before. The whole set-up of the ceremony was special, and for a kid, I do recall being able to feel and somewhat grasp the importance of the activity. Then, I took the lolly they offered to mask the taste and debriefed my friends about the experience in the school yard. Fast forward to now, I’m drawn to the beautiful vibrant green and my taste buds love the acquired taste, not to mention how amazing the perfect combination of caffeine and L-Theanine makes me feel throughout my workdays. But there are still colleagues here at SuperFeast HQ who haven’t hit the threshold of accepting the acquired flavour…I suspect they will turn a corner and succumb to loving it soon, honestly.
The Taoist tradition understands matcha as a Shen tonic, something that supports the clarity and settledness of consciousness that sits at the top of the Three Treasures framework. Jing is the vessel & engine, Qi is the crew & supplies, Shen is the navigation & destination. A calm and present mind is not a luxury in this tradition. It is the condition from which genuine cultivation of health, wisdom, and a life well-lived becomes possible.
Matcha, consumed as a daily practice rather than a merely caffeine mechanism, supports exactly this. The ritual of preparation is not ceremonial excess. It is the practice of arriving in the present moment before you have even taken the first sip.
The Matcha Timeline
The Early Roots (Tang Dynasty, China)
7th – 10th Century
The absolute earliest (recorded) precursor began here. Chinese tea farmers steamed tea leaves and pressed them into dense solid bricks for easy transport. To drink it, they would break off a piece, pulverize it into a rough powder, and boil it with water and salt.
The Whisking Method Born (Song Dynasty, China)
10th – 13th Century
This is where the direct ancestor of modern matcha emerged. Instead of boiling a brick, Chinese tea masters began steaming, drying, and stone-grinding loose green tea leaves into a fine powder called mo cha (powdered tea). They introduced bamboo whisks and wide ceramic bowls to whip the powder with hot water until frothy, this was then known as dian cha.
The Move to Japan
1191 CE
A Japanese Zen Buddhist monk named Myōan Eisai returned to Japan after studying in China. He brought back Zen philosophy, tea seeds, and the Song Dynasty's method of whisking powdered tea (amoung other things). Zen monks adopted the drink because the combination of caffeine and L-theanine kept them alert yet calm during long meditation sessions.
Modern Matcha is Perfected (Japan)
15th – 16th Century
While the practice of drinking powdered tea faded out in China due to political and cultural shifts, Japan ran with it. In the 1500s, Japanese tea farmers invented shade-cultivation. By covering the tea plants weeks before harvest, they forced the leaves to produce massive amounts of chlorophyll and amino acids, creating the vibrant green colour and smooth, sweet umami flavour unique to modern matcha.
Enter Tremella, The Yin to Matcha's Yang
If matcha is fundamentally a Yang practice, activating, rising, clarifying, then Tremella is its perfect Yin counterpart.
Tremella fuciformis, known in the Taoist tradition as the Snow Mushroom or Silver Ear, has been used as a Yin and fluid tonic for over a thousand years. Where matcha moves and clears, Tremella nourishes and replenishes. Where matcha activates Shen and sharpens focus, Tremella nourishes the Lung and Stomach Yin, the deep moisture reserves that keep the skin supple, the eyes bright, and the body well-hydrated from within.
The two are not just complementary philosophically. They are complementary practically. Matcha, consumed daily, is a mildly drying practice, the warmth and activation it produces can over time draw on the body's Yin resources, particularly in those who already run on the drier, more depleted side. Tremella addresses this directly, replenishing the fluids and Yin that daily matcha practice draws on.
In this sense, adding Tremella to your matcha is not a wellness trend stacking two popular ingredients together. It is a genuinely coherent Taoist formulation principle, the same logic that classical herbalists applied when combining activating herbs with nourishing ones to create preparations that were effective without being depleting.
What Tremella Brings to the Cup
Beyond its Yin-nourishing function, Tremella brings its own remarkable qualities.
Its polysaccharides are the compounds now known to be responsible for its extraordinary reputation as a skin hydration tonic. Yang Guifei, celebrated as one of the four great beauties of ancient China, was said to owe her luminous complexion to a daily Tremella preparation. Thirteen centuries of consistent association between this mushroom and skin radiance is not coincidence. It is the accumulated observation of a tradition that paid very close attention to what specific plants did to specific aspects of human health over long periods of time.
Tremella's flavour is mild and gently sweet, which makes it one of the most naturally harmonious additions to a matcha preparation. It does not compete with matcha's complex, slightly bitter, vegetal character. It softens and rounds it, adding a subtle creaminess that makes the drink feel more nourishing and complete.
Why Origin Matters - Di Dao Sourcing
The matcha we have sourced comes from the traditional tea-growing regions of China, the place where tea cultivation originated and has been refined over longer than anywhere else on earth. The Di Dao principle, that a plant grown in its authentic native region under the conditions its cultivation tradition has refined over centuries carries something that cannot be replicated elsewhere, applies to tea as completely as it applies to any tonic herb or medicinal mushroom.
The altitude, the soil, the microclimate, the specific cultivar, the generational knowledge of how to grow and process the plant, all of this ends up in the cup. Chinese green tea grown in its Di Dao region has a character, a complexity, a depth, a quality of effect, that reflects where it came from.
The same principle applies to the Tremella. Source material grown in its authentic environment, harvested at the right developmental stage, processed to preserve its polysaccharide profile, this is what produces the genuine Yin-nourishing, skin-supporting effect the tradition describes. A Tremella extract that cannot tell you where it came from or how it was processed is not the same preparation that Yang Guifei was working with.
How to Work With It
The preparation of matcha with Tremella is a small practice, a few minutes, a whisk, water at the right temperature, a bowl you like the feel of. Whisk the powder first to a smooth paste with a small amount of hot water, then add your warm liquid of choice, whisking again until fully combined, you can also add a sweetener of choice (we love pure maple syrup). The result is a matcha that is slightly creamier and softer than straight matcha.
Morning is the natural time. The Shen is most receptive, the mind is not yet cluttered (hopefully), and the combination of matcha's activating clarity and Tremella's quiet nourishment meets the day's beginning in a way that feels genuinely complete and intentional rather than just caffeinated. An afternoon pick-me-up is also appropriate for some, depending on your caffeine tolerance; some of us find any time after mid-day and we’re a bit wired that night.
The grade of the matcha matters. The origin of both ingredients matters. And the attention you bring to the preparation matters, because the traditions that developed these practices understood something that the wellness industry keeps rediscovering: the way you do something, the intention you put towards it and the shift in your state it brings, really changes what it does for you.
