There was a time when coffee was the answer to everything. These days, it seems as if half the world is walking around with a bright green cup. Matcha. Not just tea, but finely ground green tea leaves that you drink whole instead of merely steeping them.
It starts innocently.
“Would you like coffee?”
“No thanks, I’m into matcha now.”
A week later, there is a bamboo whisk in the kitchen. Then a special bowl. Next, it turns out the water has to be exactly 80 degrees, because at 81 someone looks at you with pity, as if you have just poured ketchup over sushi.
Before long, you hear sentences such as:
“This one has notes of grass, spinach and inner peace.”
Meanwhile, the neighbour is thinking:
“I think you’re just drinking a liquid lawn.”
A traditional British tea drinker might put it differently:
“Right… so you’ve taken perfectly respectable tea, ground it into a powder, whisked it until it looks like pond water, and now you’re charging six pounds for it?”
“Yes, but it’s artisan pond water.”
We spent centuries teaching the world how to drink tea. Then someone found a way to make it look like lawn clippings, and naturally we queued up for it anyway. First raise an eyebrow, then join the queue. Very British.
Still, there is something beautiful in all that matcha mania. Pausing for a moment. Whisking slowly. Not knocking back a cup of coffee, but giving one cup a few minutes of attention. Perhaps that is the real secret. Not the green colour, but the green light you give yourself for a moment.
And in a few years?
We will probably all be walking around with something purple again.
Because trends come and go.
But a good cup of tea remains a good cup of tea.