The Matcha Craze Comes To The Cocktail Bar

LifestyleSpiritsThe Matcha Craze Comes To The Cocktail BarByBrad Japhe,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. You can find me at the confluence of food, beverage and travel.Follow AuthorJun 03, 2026, 06:15pm EDTSummaryMatcha is experiencing an unprecedented boom across the US, significantly outpacing coffee's growth. Its appeal spans cultural heritage, intense flavor, health benefits, and Instagrammable aesthetics, driving its presence from bustling cafes to luxury hotels and home subscription services. This widespread trend has now culminated in the cocktail world with the introduction of Yoshi, the first premium matcha liqueur. Launched last year, this 34-proof spirit combines ceremonial matcha with a stable oat milk base, offering a dairy-free, gluten-free, and lower-calorie option. Its rich, creamy texture and herbal, bittersweet notes, developed over two years to ensure shelf stability, position Yoshi to spearhead a new era of sophisticated matcha cocktails, justifying its premium price.Show More The Matcha MartiniYoshi Matcha Liqueur If you hadn’t already noticed, matcha is kind of a big deal these days. In fact, it’s the fastest-growing subsegment of coffee/tea in the United States today – expanding 8x more rapidly than the overall coffee sector today. If you live in or around any major city, you hardly need to see these stats in writing. You can simply walk down the streets and gawk at the massive queues perpetually forming outside of places like Cha Cha Matcha (or 12 Matcha if you’re in Manhattan, specifically). From coast to coast, the trendiest cafes these days are peddling ceremonial-grade expressions of the revered style of green tea that’s been powdered and celebrated in China and Japan for centuries. It’s this cultural significance, along with intensity of flavor – and caffeine – and even purported anti-oxidative health benefits, that make the drink uniquely suited to a modern, always-on-the-go au...