First Leaf
A question that
followed me home.
In Uji, I came to appreciate how much of matcha’s flavour is decided long before anyone pours a cup. On a family-run tea plantation, even the decision of when to shade the new shoots draws on generations of watching how the plants respond each spring. What stayed with me was how each generation takes that knowledge a little further. They learn from the harvests their parents and grandparents remember, refine the way they grow their tea, and give the next generation something to build on.
I started First Leaf to connect family-run tea plantations with independent cafés in Australia. A family can spend generations refining a matcha and still have few ways to reach people overseas. A café in Sydney might be looking for exactly what that family grows. I want to bring them together, so the family can find a new market and the café can serve a tea it loves, with an understanding of the craft that gives it its flavour.
My hope is that a tasting leads to a place on the menu, and that a place on the menu becomes an order a family can count on. That’s how I’d like First Leaf to grow. Two independent businesses get to back one another, and someone stopping at their local café for matcha gets to share in a tradition that began half a world away.
Celina Diep, founder