Spring 2026 Tea Release: Awakening

"... a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently." -Margaret Atwood

The further you live from the equator, the more you feel it. Winter's slumber and starkness yields suddenly to spring mud, birdsong, and long yellow evenings. We, and the tea plant, are not immune to the turning of the wheel. Camellias know when daily temperatures increase, when the blue morning light slants just right. The plant draws nutrients up from the soil, outwards toward the shoots, sprouting its coveted first flush. If plants are so attuned to their environment, aren't we, for all of our insulation against nature, also susceptible to this vernal awakening? How do we rationalize what we feel in the opening of the year?

Waknanan is the proto-germanic word that predates our English version of awakening. It means "to be strong" or "lively," and is the far better version of the word than the Old English awæcnian, which means simply to "stay awake." Both are the roots of our word "awakening" and both offer some glimpse into what it feels like when the earth comes alive, when rains mingle with memory, and new tea buds sprout from their shoots.

Whether we're prepared or not, the days lengthen, the faces multiply, and it takes strength to act and to make something of the time. This change happens faster than you think. So many little joys we cherish: fresh cut stems, long days, bike rides, strawberries, bare feet on and off the ground, doing nothing. Nature keeps a patient tempo entirely alien to our screen life. How will I find the energy, the time, the independence, to make way for what is trying to be born? Or, in Old English, how do I stay awake for all this splendor?

In Japan, the Matcha Boom has forced an entire generation to adapt. Strange collateral damages have altered the industry landscape. Mr. Kita, head of the young cooperative responsible for four of the matchas in this release, is an example of choosing slowness, craft and ritual over volume and profit. Last year was supposed to be our first year working with him, but he could not book their tencha time with the ishi usu (coveted granite mills responsible for great matcha). In previous years they had called upon friends and neighbors to borrow their facilities, but now those same people were booked to the gills with their own demand and had no time for favors. Springtime can be expansive. This year, they have the ishi usu and are ready to find freedom through self-reliance.

Stone mills can make approximately a personal tin's worth of matcha in an hour. Why, in a time when everything points to faster, quicker, more, cheaper—would Mr. Kita start a business where everything is slowed down? You will have to taste to know the answer. Suffice to say, these are not matchas to be buried under steamed milk.

There are risks we will be asked to take this year. How will you know to awaken, to find the strength, to run where your life beckons you? In order to become, we often let go of the fixed idea of how things should be, or the person we once were. According to Emerson, "The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised […] to do something without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle." You cannot understand awakening because it, like spring, is felt, not explained. So often, we do not comprehend what is happening to us, and stand amazed in the green fire, the crackling of new buds and blossoms, but in the ancient silence of blooms, something calls the sleeper awake.