Matcha has been trendy for the past five or ten years. Hipsters appreciate the ceremony that goes along with the green tea powder, the touted health benefits and perhaps in the flavor.

Quality powders are nuanced, teetering between sweet and savory. It’s more likely, however, to encounter less favorable notes. Some can only whittle it down to “green,” a compromise between vegetal and earthy.

But Sharon Koontz, owner of Color Me Bleu in downtown Mexico, has a solution. She sometimes adds a couple squirts of chocolate to the coffee shop’s iced matcha.

“It’s an interesting flavor, that’s for sure,” she pointed out. “The chocolate helps it.”

Indeed, a calming chocolate presence seeps through each sip, lending a sweet softness to the bitter, herbal savor of the tea. The matcha becomes mellow and nutty. Although the drink is icy and refreshing, there is a creaminess that makes it feel richer on the palate.

Urban tea room denizens who look forward to the precise steps involved in the matcha ceremony may cringe. But the combination of grassy, earthy, smooth and bittersweet iced matcha at Color Me Bleu is unique – in a good way.