Matcha has gone from a semi-niche Japanese tea to a global trend. Every few years, a new Asian drink gets catapulted into the mainstream — bubble milk tea a few summers ago, Dalgona coffee during lockdown, brown sugar lattes after that. Today, the spotlight belongs to matcha. Beyond just being another social media food fad, its popularity signals both the growing influence of Asian soft power and the shifting tastes of the American market.

But before being turned into a prop to farm social media engagement, matcha was a deeply traditional east asian drink, with its main influence coming from China and Japan. Originally made in the culturally flourishing Tang Dynasty China, it was brought to Japan in the 1100s by a Buddhist monk. There, it became the centerpiece of an elaborate tea ceremony – an exercise profound in ritual, patience, and green aesthetics. Every step, including the grating of the leaves into fine powder, the steaming of the leaves for oxidation, and even selecting the tea plants with the most chlorophyll so the tea comes out in the most vibrant green color is done with the most careful of production standards.

All that care and tradition made it, perhaps inevitably, the perfect drink to commodify for instagram and the wider global audience.

Although matcha is rich in culture and history, that’s probably not why it went viral. The real reason is much simpler: the color. Matcha’s vivid green color is eye-catching in a way most beverages aren’t, reading as exotic, striking, almost unnatural in its brightness. At the same time, color psychology signals green as being healthy, fresh, and rich in vitality. Indeed, matcha does have health benefits: being rich in antioxidants, L-theanine, and seemingly being able to provide a smoother energy boost than coffee, put that with the rise of the “clean girl” aesthetic and it makes sense why brands are tripping over themselves to release matcha menus and products. The market is expected to keep growing, because we seem to like our health and wellness to be photogenic.

But popularity comes with its own problems. Japan is facing a growing shortage of matcha as there’s more demand than the actual supply. Producing matcha isn’t easy to scale either, tea plants require ample shade, careful harvests, and other labor-intensive work. As a result, when producers attempt mass production, both the quality and quantity available in the global market declines. This strain in supply is now rippling outwards, with Bay area cafes and tea shops raising prices temporarily or removing matcha items from their menus.

In the end, matcha’s popularity says a lot about what this generation wants: health, aesthetics, and enough tradition to look cultured without being unfashionable. Just like the bubble milk tea that came before, matcha will eventually be overtaken by the next big beverage trend, something that might be brewing on someone else’s tiktok feed.