Tea Diaries: Autumn Reflections

August and September flew by, and I’ve been meaning to write. As I prepared for this weekend’s presentation with the Urasenke Tankokai San Diego Association for this year’s Otsukimi, I finally found a quiet moment to drink some matcha, pause and reflect on the past year. More than half the year is behind us, and as we step into these last months of 2025, I’ve been sitting with a mix of gratitude and tenderness. It’s been a difficult year in some ways, both personally and in the world around us, but also an incredible one, full of growth, new experiences, and the kind of support that reminds me how lucky I am to be surrounded by family, friends, our tea-m, and the colorful communi-tea we’ve made through tea.

Farmer’s Market nectarines and a bowl of matcha

I usually like to write about what I’m looking forward to, and there’s always more to come, but this time I wanted to reflect on what we’ve already done. Even though I haven’t finished writing about everything, including our Southeast Asia trip, so much wonderful things has happened since.

Lunch in Bat Trang, a famous pottery village in Hanoi, photo by James Tran

I’ve been excited to finally share the new look and feel of our back tasting room, a space that’s become even more special to us. Lani and I were inspired by the colors and textures we experienced in Vietnam and Thailand and wanted to bring that in some way back home. With the help of some amazingly talented “magicians” (thank you for making our vision come true Jon, Charlene, Rachel, Reeka, and Enrique!) we transformed the space with textured colorful walls and thoughtful touches. Seeing it come to life in special photos taken by James Tran and myself makes me feel like I can be transported there any time.

My parents and Sylvester seeing it for the first time!

We also released over eight new teas from Vietnam. Some of these we’ve had in past years, but it feels different now, like revisiting old friends. Tasting our Lotus Flower tea again years later feels especially meaningful. It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come in sourcing and how much deeper our relationships have grown with the producers we work with. Tea really is a universal language.

Tea-m training days are some of my favorites

And of course, this has been a big year for matcha. We were fortunate to share four new ones, including Yoshi’s matcha, which is now sold out. I wrote about Yoshi san’s visit earlier this year, and it still amazes me how that moment in January has carried through all these months. Each new matcha we introduce feels like a reflection of the people and places behind it, and honestly it’s been really fun to share the excitement around matcha seeing how popular it got over the year.

We’ve also been quietly working on a new project for the past few months, and it’s something we’re excited to share more about soon. It’s centered around all the things we love - tea, culture, art, crafts, and education, and I can already feel how it will deepen our roots here in the community.

Mixing a special paint color for our new project!

To round out the month, a fun thing to share: our tea-m recently hand whisked over 200 bowls of matcha for a Grammy award-winning artist’s VIP experience. It was one of those moments where you realize how far tea travels, how it can offer stillness and care even in unexpected places. You bet we were tired but it was one of those things that we’d probably do again. We also took the day off to do a fun and thrilling tea-m building virtual reality game, in hopes to survive an apocalypse of zombies.

Preparing to sift ~1KG of matcha

Sometimes we take a break from tea and do virtual reality games. Thank you San Diego VR for such a fun experience!

Thank you for reading and for being part of this journey. As the moon grows full, I hope you can take a quiet moment for yourself too, to reflect, to breathe, to enjoy tea and good company. If we haven’t shared a cup of tea together in a while, I hope we do soon.

With gratitude,
Amy