The road to drop #1: how the first Matcha Latcha harvest is made
An open journal of the road to our first drop: choosing a supplier in Uji, testing samples, registering the trademark, domain drama, and the decision to wait for the first spring harvest 2027. Updated as we go.
You're reserving a harvest from real people, not an anonymous brand. So you have the right to see what we're doing. This article is an open journal of the road to drop #1: the decisions, the obstacles, even the boring weeks. We keep adding to it – newest entries on top.
13 September 2026: drop #1 will come from the first spring harvest 2027
We had a faster route on the table: buy tencha from an older harvest and ship sooner. We decided not to take it. The whole brand stands on freshness, so we're not building our first drop on a compromise.
What that means: reservations are running right now, in early 2027 we'll send reserved members a payment request, in May 2027 the first spring harvest (ichiban-cha) happens in Uji, fresh milling follows immediately, and a few weeks later the tin is at your door. Yes, it's a longer wait. But you'll be drinking matcha that's weeks from harvest – and that's the entire point.
One more confession: we'll order exactly as much as you reserve. No warehouse, no pallets. Your reservations directly determine how much matcha flies in from Uji.
11 September 2026: 7 domains live, one quarantine drama
matchalatcha.sk, .cz, .at, .de, .pl, .ro and .eu are online, each in its local language. Sounds smooth – it wasn't: several domains slipped into quarantine because we missed the renewal, and the Hungarian domain got deleted entirely. We're waiting to re-register it. Free lesson: set your domains to auto-renew.
10 September 2026: the new website is live
After two months of evenings, a brand new website is out. Built from scratch, not from a template, and for the first time with real photos from the August shoot instead of mockups. On top of that, the Matcha Latcha trademark is registered in the EU (EUIPO no. 019241557). The idea is officially a brand.
13 August 2026: first photo shoot with real tins
Our supplier sent us the first tins with our label, so we shot our first photos on the balcony at sunset. We spilled more matcha than we'd like to admit. 332 photos, 11 videos, one green living room. The photos you see on the website are from that evening.
6 July 2026: building it our own way
We threw out the old template website and started over. Our own code, our own content, no shortcuts. That same day, we combed through the entire Slovak and Czech matcha market: who sells, at what price, what they claim about freshness. The finding that started it all: almost nobody states a harvest or milling date. That's exactly what we'll do differently.
Spring 2026: where it all began
We spent a big part of 2026 testing. We ordered matcha samples from different growers and suppliers, whisked, compared colour, aroma and taste, and eliminated them one by one. We wanted to be certain we were building on the best matcha we could get.
In the end, one from Uji won outright: gentle sweetness, umami, zero bitterness. We shook hands with the supplier on a long-term partnership. We're keeping the name to ourselves for now (business reasons), but everything that matters – region, harvest and milling date – will be printed in black and white on every tin.