by Becky Wooden
The world officially turned matcha green. Fuelled by trend savvy, health conscious Gen Z and of course, the power of TikTok. And we watched. Attentively whisking away more and more matcha lattes from our coffee shop on Broadway Market.
In 2023 matcha drinks saw a startling 202% increase in sales in the UK, according to a report from Orion Market Research. Experientially we have to agree. You lot really love matcha.
We’ve had premium Lalani & Co matcha on our cafe menu since 2017 and have observed as the green drink has made the shift from niche to normal. There’s always been a handful of strong matcha drinkers in our customer base and it’s forever been a firm favourite for our barista team, seeking a softer caffeine stimulation after lunch to ride through to the end of the shift.
Amidst questions about the long-term impact of this increased consumption for producers in Japan and criticism of high grade specialty tea being wasted in giant syrupy drinks, we want to talk about why we’ve always loved matcha, as well as offer you clear traceability into where ours comes from.
This also feels like the perfect time to give you a peek into an innovative new product (you guessed it, matcha green) from the Midnight Oil Drinks team.
Matcha enthusiasts, critics or the curious, read on …
So, what is matcha?
(c) Lalani & Co
In Japanese, ‘ma’ translates to powder and ‘cha’ to tea. So quite literally, what we’re talking about is ‘powder tea’. Like all teas, matcha comes from the plant Camellia Sinensis. But as I’m sure you’ve noticed, matcha does not resemble your typical loose leaf tea.
Matcha is a green tea that is grown under the cover of shade for three weeks before harvest. This shade coverage causes the plant to over-produce chlorophyll, resulting in the intense green colour synonymous with the drink. This process also increases the L-theanine amino acid in the leaf, the reason behind the soft mood relaxing effect.
This tea is milled to form a powder, using either metal or stone, with stone being the more traditional and slower method resulting in a better taste and higher price point.
Where our matcha comes from, meet Lalani & Co
(c) Lalani & Co
Lalani & Co is a family run company of traditional tea merchants, specialising in finding extraordinary small-batch teas, matcha included.
Why small batch? Just like coffee, batches of tea will naturally vary across seasons (the finest matcha is produced in the spring), soil, elevation and varying practices of the producers themselves. Every batch has its own flavour notes and quality, even within a single garden or season. While most teas in the world are sold in markets and inevitably blended, Lalani value traceability through their small batch model.
As Lalani & Co say:
“Making matcha is a skill, an art and a pleasure. There’s a lot of modern influence on matcha at the moment; methods of mixing with juice and using electric frothers. At Lalani & Co we know that a properly made, wooden-whisked, pure matcha is the finest and only option for a matcha drinker.”
Although the sweeping matcha latte culture in London is far from authentic to the roots of the Japanese tea ceremony, we still take pride in whisking every matcha by hand to order for our cafe customers, taking just as much care with our well-sourced matcha as we do with our own coffees. While syrupy add-ons from blueberries to banana bread have become the flavour of the season, we’ve kept our matcha menu simple to include only one crucial decision - served hot or over ice?
We use Lalani & Co’s Grade VI matcha, grown in organic gardens in Japan where leaves are picked in the Ichibancha, or first, tea season, from tea plants shaded for up to 25 days. With a vivid colour and flavour to match, we’ve found this matcha perfect to serve in lattes as well as cooking and baking at home.
Innovation, taking matcha from day to night
While Climpsons is best known as a coffee roastery and cafe business, we also have an innovative sister side of our operation, Midnight Oil Drinks.
Back in 2018 Midnight Oil began as a project to develop an espresso martini that showcased specialty coffee, front and centre. As coffee connoisseurs, we would often find even the most delicious espresso would be shaken with commodity produced coffee liqueur. The result? A coffee cocktail that was often just a little disappointing.
So we started making our own, starting from our own expertly roasted specialty coffee. Through this process we developed an innovative technique of hot-brew flash-chilled coffee which proved exceptionally flavourful and equally versatile as the base of a ready-to-serve cocktail.
Seven years later, Midnight Oil offers a bottled or kegged ready to go Espresso Martini, as well as a Coffee Liqueur and is stocked in quality-conscious bars, hotels, restaurants and bottle shops across the country.
Our latest project? To bring together all of our valuable skills in product development alongside our respect for craft and well-sourced ingredients to launch an industry first - a ready to shake Matcha Martini.
Have you tried it yet? If not, what are you waiting for?
