Starbucks releases an official green tea chai latte with special Japanese ingredients

Forget Baby Yoda, go the full Yoda with this unprecedented matcha drink.

The first green tea harvests of the year take place in Japan around March to mid-May, making it the ideal time to enjoy the fresh taste of newly picked tea. It’s a season Starbucks is keen to help celebrate, and this year, they’re doing it with three new releases called New Green Tea.

The first release saw the chain add a Matcha & Crushed Pistachio Milk Tea Latte to the menu in April, followed by the addition of the “New Matcha” drinks a month later. Now, the third and final instalment in the New Green Tea trilogy has arrived, and it’s called the Green Chai Tea Latte.

While Starbucks is no stranger to a chai — it previously released a Japanese Chai Tea Latte back in 2022 — up til now the drinks have been built upon a black tea base. This new chai, however, is being billed by the chain as “an unprecedented chai” as it uses green tea instead, creating a novel flavour that many tea lovers will have never tasted before.

The main body of the drink contains sencha and green apple, which give it its stunning green colour, while Japanese citrus fruits yuzu, and sudachi are added to create a gorgeous aroma and freshness. The key spices used are cardamom and ginger, with accents of green pepper and sansho pepper (also known as Japanese pepper) providing a spicy kick to the mix.

Topped with a generous sprinkling of matcha, this is a drink that contains half a dozen very Japanese ingredients, so we can’t wait to see how they hold up to the cardamom and green pepper when it’s released on 22 May.

Priced at 678 yen (US$4.35) for takeout and 690 yen for dine-in customers, the drink will only be available at Starbucks Tea & Cafe stores, of which there are 14 in Japan and four in Tokyo, at Ebisu, Shibuya, Roppongi and Kichijoji, until 3 September.

Related: Starbucks Tea & Cafe location list
Source, images: Press release
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