To all our dearest fellow tea drinkers,
We are writing with some bittersweet news: after much soul-searching, we have decided the time has come to close Matcha Alternatives.
We started this shop six years ago, and are so, so proud of what we have accomplished:
📖 We have published well over 100 articles about tea, tea health, science and carbon footprints, and have built up a dedicated readership of several thousand readers per month. This has continued even since we stopped blogging regularly!
🍵 We have supported Ethical Tea Partnership tea gardens and growers across the world, bringing delicious and ethically sourced teas to you.
🌳 And our largest achievement: we were the first ever carbon positive tea shop, offsetting more between 4x and 25x of our entire carbon footprint (depending on how you measure), including our emissions from the moment we conceived of this shop, as well as the carbon footprint of our teas, packaging and shipping, in the end planting more than 1200 native tree species in Appalachia and the American Northwest with the Arbor Day Foundation and OneTreePlanted.
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Throughout our journey, we have met so many people who have expanded our lives: our suppliers, our team, and of course you: our wonderful customers. Some of you have been with us from day 1, ordering dozens of times from us, and to those of you who have only recently discovered our shop, we are grateful to have shared our teas with you even if only briefly.
A very special mention to Stephany Morgan, our incredible tea science expert who taught us so much and worked so hard with us to create the blog posts and evidence them in the raw science and published academia. It has been a privilege to work and learn with you.
But now it is time for our next chapter. We started this shop while travelling permanently, however since the pandemic we have created a new base and life in Portugal. Our energies are being pulled in several new directions here, and despite our best intentions we never find time to return to the teashop. So overall we made the decision to fully focus on our projects here. We will look for a way to save the blog, with all its useful information and continuing readership.
Our New Lives Here
For those interested, our main new focus is to buy abandoned houses in the countryside here in Portugal, work to renovate them with all the mod-cons and then rent them. The demand we have received has been from those seeking to settle in Portugal. We offer a host of relocation support to smooth the process and ease the concerns of moving to this incredible country (Portugal is usually top or very close to the top of any list countries for Americans to retire).
Last Chance to Order...
Our last day open and accepting orders will be August 31st 2024, so if you want to stock up on our teas make sure you order before then! (Our teas have a shelf life of up to 3 years so you don't need to worry about them going off, whew)
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Thank you thank you thank you all for your support over the last six years, it has been an amazing journey 💚
If you want to keep in touch (that would be so lovely!), you can follow us on our personal Instagram @TravellingforTea
With all our most poignant of tea wishes, and excitement for the future,
Elizabeth & Vientiene
