About Me and Buckwheat Tea

Hi, I’m Lovina!

I’m a London-based mum of three, originally Indian and raised in Kobe, Japan.

Why soba-cha?

I grew up drinking buckwheat tea regularly in Japan, where it’s known as soba-cha.

I loved its smooth, subtly nutty taste and the fact that it's caffeine-free, healthy, and tastes good - even kids drink it.

When I moved to London in 2005, I could find almost every kind of tea, but hardly anyone seemed to know what soba-cha is. I tried plenty of alternatives, but nothing quite had the same feeling.

So I'd bring back suitcases full of soba-cha (amongst other Japanese treats!) after my visits home...and everyone I served it to loved it!

How it started

In 2021, the idea of T. Buckwheat Tea was born.

During lockdown, while sharing a pot of buckwheat tea with my husband at home, I found myself wondering why it wasn’t more of a staple here in the UK... being a nation of tea lovers, how could it be something not as well-known yet?

That conversation planted the idea for T. Buckwheat Tea — a “tipsy culinary experiment”, as the Ham & High later put it.

And from there, I decided to see if I could find a soba-cha that tasted like the one I remembered growing up with.

From idea to T. Buckwheat Tea

I sampled more than 20 different buckwheat teas before finding one that reminded me of what I had grown up drinking.

Once I found the perfect match, T. Buckwheat Tea was launched in December 2021!

Since then, the brand has won a Great Taste Award, found its way into shops around London, and introduced many more people to soba-cha.

My hope is simply to make this wonderfully smooth, comforting tea better known — and give more people the chance to discover it.

Lovina x