Will the new Ayataka Matcha Latte prove more successful than New Coke?

Matcha latte seems like it should be a pretty consistent drink, what with it really only having four ingredients: matcha powder, sugar, milk, and water. And yet, depending on the ratios between them, you can end up with a lot of different flavors, and if you go too far in one direction the result can be clotting astringency, overly intense sweetness, or unpleasant oiliness.

When everything comes together just right, though, matcha latte can be magic on the taste buds, and surprisingly one of the best examples comes from none other than Coca-Cola Japan. As part of its overall beverage lineup, Coca-Cola Japan also produces the Ayataka brand of pre-made bottled green tea, and when they launched an Ayataka Matcha Latte in 2021, it was an instant hit, selling out in convenience stores and supermarkets as word of mouth spread about how delicious its specific mix of sweet, bitter, and creamy notes were.

Some fans would say Ayataka Matcha Latte is just about perfect. Coca-Cola Japan, though, has apparently taken the old adage that you shouldn’t tamper with perfection to, by corollary, mean that it’s OK to tinker with near-perfection, and so they’ve recently updated the Ayataka Matcha Latte recipe, with the new version now available in stores.

▼ Old Ayataka Matcha Latte on the left, new Ayataka Matcha Latte on the right

You might have noticed there are a few extra characters of Japanese text on the new label. The 濃い part is read “koi,” and in the context of flavors means “strong.” The partial rename is because the new Ayataka Matcha Latte uses 50 percent more matcha powder than the old recipe did, sourcing its matcha from Kyoto tea merchant Kanbayashi Shunsho Honten, who selects its high-quality ingredients from tea grown in Uji, Japan’s most respected matcha-producing town.

Koi can also mean “deep” when referring to flavors, and so the new Ayataka Matcha Latte’s label is also a deeper shade of green than its predecessor. That same difference can be seen in the drinks themselves too if you pour them into side-by-side glasses.

Taste-testing duties for this coveted assignment fell to our Japanese-language reporter Natsuki Goto, who started with a sip of the original Ayataka Matcha Latte to refresh her memory.

Right away, the old Ayataka Matcha Latte greets you with milky sweetness, and the gentle bitter flavor patiently waits its turn until after that. To Natsuki’s palate, the sweetness is pretty strongly pronounced, and it’s the part that leaves the most lasting impression.

Natsuki noticed far less sweetness, though, in the new Ayataka Matcha Latte. As soon as a single drop hit her lips, she could sense the strong matcha flavor, so the extra matcha powder really does make a difference.

This is probably a good spot to point out that unlike with black tea, simply pouring a bit of cream into a cup of green tea is never done in Japan. Green tea and matcha latte really occupy separate spaces in Japanese beverage culture, and even the new Ayataka Matcha Latte is sweet enough that it’s not really positioned as a substitute for a cup of green tea. What it is is a light dessert beverage, sort of a matcha sweet in drinkable form, and while some people might miss the old, sweeter Ayataka Matcha Latte, Natsuki is very happy with the new version, and thinks a lot of other people will be too.

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