SOMEWHERE TEA

Our Story

We didn't start with matcha. We started with a feeling — that life was meant to be built around something we both loved. Somewhere Sips is what happened when we chased it.
01 - Before Somewhere Sips

The years before

Jack came from engineering, Alice from beauty. Two backgrounds that don't really overlap, but we'd always ended up helping each other anyway.

After marriage, we wanted to build something that felt like ours. For a long time that's all it was, an idea. Life kept going the way it always had, and we never quite got around to it.

Then both our careers shifted, and we found ourselves on a long break at the same time. The dream had been there for years. What we'd never had until then was the time to actually start.

That came later, on the other side of the world.

02 - The Spark

February 2025: First trip to Japan

Early 2025, we landed in Tokyo as proper tourists — taken in by the scenery, the people, the culture, and the matcha too. Back then, matcha was not part of our lives due to how bitter and fishy it was.

It wasn't until Kyoto that we sat down and actually drank it, at Ippodo Tea House. And it stopped us.

"This one didn't taste like anything we'd had at home." - Jack said.

The warm bowl in our hands, the cold air slipping in from outside, the quiet of an old building, the care everyone around us took just to enjoy something so simple. It almost felt like a ritual.

Both of us thinking the same thing: I wish we could bring this back to Australia.

That was the spark.

Before we left, we bought a few tins of matcha to take home.

03 - The Curator Stage

Early May 2025. Somewhere Sips is born

Back in Australia, we decided to build something of our own. Somewhere Sips arrived in early May 2025.

By then, we'd worked through a lot of matcha — Kyoto, Uji, Tokyo. Some of it was excellent. Some of it wasn't. And that contrast turned out to be the whole point of Somewhere Sips: curiosity-driven, experience-led.

We're curious enough to try everything, so you don't have to. Once we understood what you actually liked, we could go looking for it — the umami, the smoothness, the profile that suited you. That was the start of matcha curation, and it's still the heart of what we do.

Our first drop, in May 2025, sold out. People loved it. But what stayed with us wasn't the numbers — it was the connections. We listened closely, and treated every conversation as the same small question: which one is yours? We still remember everyone who backed us from day one.

Drop one became drop two. Then three. Then four. Again and again — until we hit our limit.

04 - Birth Of Somewhere Tea

Our matcha, on our terms

The drops kept selling — but the toll was real.

Constant jet lag, constant disruption to normal life. The fulfilment side kept falling apart while we were overseas. And worst of all, three pets at home we kept leaving behind. We loved the work, and we wanted to do it properly — but it was wearing us down.

So we took control and built our own matcha brand. One where we set the quality, the quantity, and the look, exactly how we wanted it.

The name? It came from our earliest plan: a speciality drink bar of our own. Somewhere to sit and sip. We're still building toward it — one tin, one ritual, one sip at a time.