February 14, 2025 | matcha thomas x artisan wine shop; love is... community cocktail hour

Matcha Thomas x Artisan Wine Shop: Love is… Community Cocktail Hour 
 
This week, as we encourage love as a form of community building, we are collaborating with our dearly beloved neighbor, Matcha Thomas - A Wellness Teahouse for All, to bring you the cross-over episode you didn’t know your Friday night lineup was missing. There’s a certain beauty in ritual, and a large "matcha thomas" latte (their signature!) has become a staple of our mornings here at the shop, so we were super excited to craft a cocktail bridging our home to theirs. In lieu of our normal programming, we will be serving the aforementioned cocktail (don’t panic, we’ll have one or two wines open as well) and offering space to commune and sip on a heart-opening beverage amongst neighbors and friends. 
 
We love the subtle nuance of the "matcha thomas" - the rich and creamy coconut in harmony with the earthy bass notes of the matcha - and wanted to bring you all a cocktail reminiscent of the highlight of our day. So we borrowed a cup of matcha from our neighbor and added some rum, coconut milk, pineapple, and lime to curate the perfect clarified colada adorned with a strawberry daiquiri ice cube. 
 
This riff on the Miami Vice, a favorite libation of Miami club kids in the 80s and 90s, offers a taste of sunshine, something we are doing our best to cultivate in abundance given these gray days.

At the end of the day, love is a way of bearing witness to someone; of holding space in your heart for theirs. Love is an act of service. It is constantly shapeshifting in relation to the people you orbit and interact with, at times appearing as one thing and at others appearing as something quite different. Love is community. It is how we show up for each other on the days when it’s difficult to be kind to ourselves, let alone to the world. And if we stop and really take notice, it is so abundantly present around us. It’s in the little intimacies, the tiny romances of the mundane. It’s in the “Hey, I got you a matcha this morning. I remembered you only like it a little sweet.” It’s in these moments that we are reminded of cultivating joy, not in isolation, but in community with others. 
 
How romantic it can be, if we release ourselves to the simplicity of it all. We’ll cheers to that.