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IT WAS A freezing winter’s day in London as patrons jostled in a poky outpost of Blank Street, a coffee-shop chain. You might have expected them to pick up a warming cappuccino. Instead, many placed orders for iced matcha lattes, which arrived in shades of green, cream (white-chocolate flavour) or purple (blueberry).
Such is the craze for matcha that fans are willing to risk frostbite to get their hands on one. Blank Street claims that it sells some form of the green-tea-based drink “every four seconds” from its 80-odd shops in Britain and America (though it refuses to say how much that adds up to). In Japan, the world’s leading producer of matcha, the export value of tea in 2023 rose by 33% from the previous...