Coming autumn 2026.
Aomi is matcha for people who read the back of the tin. Grown in Japan or it doesn't ship, with its cultivar, lot, harvest, milling date and lab panel printed where you can read them. Until that paperwork exists, the blanks stay blank.
Thirty pounds. Dark green tin, gold letters, a word like "ceremonial" on the front. Inside, a dull powder that tasted of pond and turned to sludge in oat. No lot number. No harvest date. Nobody to ask. You didn't leave coffee for that.
青海
Origin: Japan· Region: · Cultivar: · Harvest: · Milled: · Lot: · Best before:
Tested for lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and pesticide residues.
Full panel: aomimatcha.com/lot/
Not certified organic. We'll say so until we are.
The base of every tin. The blanks fill in when the paperwork does.
Everything we know about it, on the base: where it was grown, the cultivar, when it was picked, when it was milled, the lot, the best-before. A code under that opens the lot's own page, with the lab report in full. If a line is blank, it's because we couldn't prove it yet, and the blank is printed too.
It will be, and only Japan. We're choosing the grower now. No region, harvest or cultivar gets printed, here or on a tin, until the contract is signed and the paperwork is in our hands. Until then, the panel stays blank.
Nothing yet. There's no lot to test. When there is, every lot goes to a UK-accredited lab for lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and pesticide residues, and the whole report goes online, not a tick box. You'll be able to read it before you open the tin.
Because we aren't. We could stay quiet and let the packaging hint. We'd rather print the sentence. Certification needs a signed grower and time; the lab panel needs neither, so the panel comes first. If a certificate follows, you'll read it here before you see it on a tin.
Because good tea costs that, and testing every lot costs more than a sticker. When the price is final, the breakdown goes here: tea, testing, tin, tax, and what's left for us. It's a lot for a tin. It's also the price of knowing exactly what's in it.
Iced, mostly. Shaken into cold oat before work, or poured over ice at 3pm when the office is warm and the coffee habit knocks. Whisked in a bowl, sometimes, on a Sunday. So it has to hold up in oat and full-fat or it doesn't ship, and it has to taste good enough that nobody needs to tell you it's good for you. We won't, either. That's the wellness aisle. Nothing here is against coffee. The job is to make you stop missing it.
Two tins, one shape. A band of colour and one plain word tell you which: sea glass for milk, deep green for water. No invented grades. Batch one may be the milk tin alone; we'll say so before anything goes on sale.
青海, ao-umi: the green sea. Ao is the old Japanese colour word that runs from blue to green without choosing. Umi is sea. The Baltic, where the founder grew up, is that colour most days. So is good matcha, whisked thin. One word for both halves: grown in Japan, dreamed up beside a colder sea.
First tins autumn 2026. The list hears first, then Instagram, then everyone else. Meanwhile the grower search, the tin samples and the lab quotes go on @drinkaomi as they happen, including the bits that go wrong.