Spring is finally here and I’m excited to bring you a new recipe for a spring themed drink! I got to work with First Leaves tea and their Sencha tea! What better way to celebrate spring than with a green drink?

If you’re unfamiliar with Sencha, it is a Japanese green tea. First Leaves tea’s sencha comes from Fuji City in Shizuoka. You can choose loose leaf or for an easy, on the go solution, the tea sachets. Check them out here to get 15% off your purchase!

Although I made a recipe with this tea, I highly encourage you to brew the tea first to try if you’ve never had sencha! When it comes to brewing in this recipe, you can do either brew it hot and let it cool down or cold brew in advance.

If you want to cold brew, run warm water over 2 teaspoons of leaves just to wake them up a bit. Place the leaves in a container and fill with 2 cups of water and leave in the fridge for about 12 hours. Make sure to taste it after 12 hours to see if the flavor is strong enough, if not you can leave it a bit longer.

The way I brewed the tea for this recipe was with hot water and let the mixture cool before creating the drink. The tea pot that I used (pictured) can hold about 2 cups of water and it is suggested to use about 1 teaspoon per 8 oz so I placed 2 teaspoons of loose leaf sencha in my tea pot.

At this time, I also placed the honey that I used to sweeten the margarita in with the leaves. I normally wouldn’t sweeten tea this way but it’s nice for the margarita to have a little bit of sweetness to it!

Brew the your water to no more than 175 F. It is really helpful for teas like sencha to have a kettle that shows the temperature. If you don’t have one don’t panic! You can let the boiling water stand for a little bit, maybe 5-10 minutes and it should cool enough to use.

Pour your water into the tea pot with the leaves + honey and brew for 30-40 seconds. Give it a stir so that the honey dissolves and strain your tea!

Let the tea cool enough to use in your drink! You can refrigerate it to speed up the process or use ice in your drink to wait less time. I wanted to note that I used a matcha honey in this recipe because I had it and thought it might be fun but it is not a necessity!

Salt! Who doesn’t love a salt rim?? If you don’t, skip this part :) If you do, take a lime wedge and wet the rim of the glass and then dip the glass in a plate of salt. What salt to use? You don’t have to have that margarita salt that you see at the store. If you don’t have that, you can use most sea salts that aren’t fine grain and they’ll work well. I used maldon sea salt flakes I had for this drink!

In your salted (or non salted) glass, combine the juice of half a lime + 1.5 oz of your favorite tequila! I used Altos tequila. It is my go to because it’s priced well and tastes great in margaritas! I also love espolon tequila!

Please feel free to alter amounts of lime + tequila to your liking!

Finally, fill your glass up with the sencha + honey brew, mix, garnish with a lime and enjoy!