‘More matcha than coffee’ - how the green alternative is taking over

Pour and Twist in central Wellington is selling so much matcha the owners' wrists ache from the vigourous stirring.

The cute bamboo whisks used to hand-make every single potent green tea latte are broken. For every coffee that is sold, café owner Elaine Woon reckons they are clocking up to 10 matcha on some days.

Elaine and her husband Zuyi have been serving matcha since they opened the specialty coffee and matcha bar in 2017. Prices range from $8 to $12 for their high-grade blend, and despite the price, they get regulars returning every morning for a matcha fix.

"I'm like super sore," Elaine laughs, saying they get through about 1kg of matcha powder from supplier, Thea, each week.

Meanwhile, in the South Island, 20-year-old Samantha Lloyd got the wheels turning on her very own forest green coffee and matcha cart just before Christmas. The old single-axel caravan which she turned into @Gigi's, is pumping out up to 300 matcha a day for between $7.50 and $8.

Lloyd has been working as a barista since she finished school, saving money for some sort of hospitality venture in her hometown Christchurch.

She said watching the rise in popularity of matcha on social media overseas gave her a good indication there was hype building around the drink. She boosted interest in her start-up by documenting the van transformation into @Gigi's - sanding, four coats of fresh paint, window work and some rust treatment. It's now permanently parked up at The Vale, a heritage site in Merivale.

"With my TikToks kind of popping off I knew that there was going to be some traffic, but I definitely didn't expect this much," she says.

"The fact that there's queues even on a Tuesday, like, there'll be a line of 15 people and I'm like, oh, 'I'm here by myself, I'm so sorry for the wait', but thank you so much for waiting.

"It's just crazy."

Lloyd was running out of milk during her first month of roaring trade, and has bought every bag of powder her matcha supplier Tokyo Foods has in stock. She's going through at least 2kg a week of the stuff, selling about 150 drinks a day.

"I sell more matcha than I do coffee at the moment."

Enna Ye and her cousin May Chen co-own NZ matcha supplier Thea. Ye explains that the drink has always been enjoyed during special occasions in various Asian cultures.

But its popularity is peaking in New Zealand, and she puts a lot of that down to what we've learned are the benefits of matcha (alongside the pretty pictures) on social media.

"Talking to a lot of the cafes that we supply… it's kind of come out all of a sudden," she says.

Matcha, she explains, is made of ground green tea leaves, but to get the best quality it's more laborious than that, which comes at a cost. About 800g of matcha retails for $60, compared to 1kg of coffee, which is about $40.

Ye visited the farm in Kyoto, Japan, where their product is sourced, to learn about the process that goes into Thea's goods.

"Matcha is shaded about a month before it's actually plucked… that encourages the sort of greenness that you get and then they'll start plucking the leaves and getting it ready to be ground."

She says the first harvest is plucked in May, and this is typically the youngest leaves at the top of the plant which are reserved for the best quality matcha.

"These leaves taste very smooth, sometimes with a hint of sweetness, umami… When you drink it, you shouldn't get that sort of grassy notes that a lot of people get put off by."

The second harvest of leaves is typically the bigger leaves, a little less green and used for confectionary. Finally, the third harvest is the cheapest grade and best used for baking.

The leaves are then roasted and ground with a stone mill or by machine.

"I like to compare it to if you're drinking coffee or you're drinking wine… different regions, different flavour notes, etc."

She says like green tea, matcha is full of antioxidants, but "a more supercharged version".

And unlike coffee, the caffeine hits different.

The leaves are packed with L-theaine, an amino acid, which, when paired with caffeine mitigates the side effects.

"I guess matcha has become a lot more popular because of that - so you feel a bit more alert and awake, but you don't feel the sweatiness or the anxiety that you get from coffee."

To make the drink, matcha powder is whisked with water, explains barista King Tee, from Blackdrop Eatery in Newmarket. His recipe is specific - 5g of matcha to 50g of water. The warmer the water, the more bitter the flavour. In it's original form, warm milk is added to make a hot drink, like a latte.

"A good matcha doesn't really need much, it just has its own natural sweetness, its own nuttiness," Tee says.

In New Zealand the iced variations are more popular, the coolness takes the edge off that "grassy" bitterness. All the cafes say strawberry matcha is the top pick from their menu - it can be made with strawberry milk, a syrup or even fresh strawberries.

"We want to offer a variety of matcha drinks that's more interesting and easy to drink - peach and other flavours make matcha more enjoyable for first timers," Tee says.

Tee's strawberry matcha is made using a housemade strawberry jam with milk - the pink and green creation was the first twist he added to the creative drinks menu.

"It just introduced us to people who don't really know about matcha because … matcha on its own, is … I would say … it's earthy, it's grassy, umami, so not, not everybody like likes it.

That was one-and-a-half years ago. "We went from selling maybe a couple a week to hundreds a week."