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Mythologizing in Matcha · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:06
Hello and welcome to Specialty Much Podcast.
0:09
My name is Ryan. This is my Coho Zumjun who also
0:11
goes by Sam. Hello, hello and.
0:13
We're the Co founders of Sanko Matcha products.
0:16
So we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey,
0:19
matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
0:21
And today we're talking about the concept of mythologizing and
0:27
mythologizing matcha, and mythologizing in tea more
0:30
generally. So I was recently listening to a
0:32
podcast about Chinese tea. I'm really also into Chinese
0:38
tea. And so Sam and it was about poor
0:41
and this concept of mythologizing a place or style
0:47
is, you know, it's really common across all tea.
0:50
And sometimes some places, there's some regions, there's
0:52
some methods get mythologized so much that it kind of eats all
0:58
the oxygen in the room. So some really classic examples
1:01
from the Chinese tea world are like Gushu trees.
1:05
If you go to like some random tea market in China and you're
1:09
shopping for tea and like you, you know, Gushu is probably in
1:13
your vocabulary, it means old tree or ancient tree.
1:17
It should refer to trees that are over 100 years old.
1:21
But sometimes it can be of even a little less maybe or 70 years
1:25
old. You go around and everyone's
1:26
trying to push you. This is gushu cha, Gushu cha.
1:29
And it feels very similar to like Fuji, for example.
1:33
Like there's just these names that just you and terminology
1:37
that like people are educated to learn and know and look for.
1:44
There's a lot of fakes. So for example, within gushu
1:47
tea, most of the gushu tea that people think that they're buying
1:51
probably doesn't come from 100 year old trees.
1:54
And we know at least legally and structurally when you're buying
1:58
uji matcha, it's not coming from uji.
2:00
It doesn't need to be processed in uji.
2:02
It's kind of riding off of this thing that has been mythologized
2:06
so much that it's where the demand concentrates.
2:10
It's a center becomes a center of gravity for demand and
2:15
education. And it starts creating these
2:17
interesting, what I like to think of as doom loop cycles.
2:21
And you know, Uji, this is going to be part of in my uji matcha
2:24
piece later. But like, people want uji
2:27
matcha. And because people want uji
2:29
matcha, like consumers want uji matcha, there's an incentive for
2:33
vendors to find uji matcha and write about uji matcha.
2:36
Learn about the place of Uji in reference to tywar of Uji, the
2:41
history of Uji. And it just creates this like
2:45
concentration of focus. And the reality is, is that Uji
2:49
produces 37 tons of matcha a year and across the four
2:53
prefecture zone it represents about 1 to 2% by volume.
2:58
So most of the tea that all of this mythologizing is being
3:01
dumped into is actually incredibly scarce.
3:06
There's like not very much of it that's actually made and even
3:10
less of it that is saved for a single origin product.
3:13
So this is something that affects, you know, all parts of
3:16
the tea world. Yeah, and honestly, I don't
3:19
think it's just tea. It's so prevalent in other
3:22
places too. Coffee, wine, kind of see this
3:26
pattern happening in all sorts of products, artisanal products,
3:31
specialty products that's being sold beyond its agricultural or
3:36
consumption value. Yeah.
3:38
This is, you know, a romance, a marketing story mostly that
3:43
people construct so that you know, they can essentially, in
3:46
reality, the goal is to add a higher price tag or else trying
3:50
to sell a concept of scarcity for a certain product.
3:55
Like if you really look into it, like these are all just
3:59
different facades of ceremonial grade, like all of these names
4:04
that people looking for. It's a it's a tendency like
4:07
people wants to look for like labels that signifies a higher
4:12
quality product. And for most of the consumers,
4:15
these labels are knowledge. They end up learning when they
4:19
get into a product and, you know, symbols or indicators they
4:23
will be forecasting if they would indeed getting a better
4:27
product compared to something else.
4:29
Yeah. So like gushu, you know, or
4:32
something like like a mating uji or wuji cha or even, you know,
4:37
you see this kind of geographical relationships
4:39
between, you know, higher quality.
4:41
And it's not just wuji, right? Like in poor too, like people
4:44
associate a certain area with high naturally higher quality.
4:48
But in fact, you know, it doesn't necessarily being the
4:52
case. Some some Xiao Xu in very famous
4:55
region called Manzung, which you know it's tea, has been
4:59
historically sold for, you know, 10s of thousands of RMB per
5:03
kilogram on average. So Xiao Shu referring to small
5:07
trees. Small trees and gushu or Chao MU
5:10
referring to larger trees. And then beyond Chao MU, you
5:13
have gushu, which refers to ancient trees.
5:16
So you have all these, you know, terms that are essentially not
5:21
regulated at all. There's no way for consumers to
5:24
verified is, you know, a tease indeed come from a different
5:28
size of trees just sitting in front of you for you to decide
5:32
if it's up to your quality or if you're willing to pay for that
5:35
price. It's it's actually quite
5:37
interesting. And somehow it has also
5:39
sometimes evolved into a test. Like if you do not have the
5:43
capability of taste the difference between a Shoshu and
5:46
a gushu or a Chow MO, then you deserve to pay the higher price.
5:50
They call this a intelligence tax in Chinese.
5:54
It's very interesting. And, but, but, but I think the
5:56
ultimate reason for this phenomenon to exist is that it's
6:01
marketing Vendors need a romance, a story to sell a
6:05
product with better profit. And consumers are looking for
6:09
these romance to either convince themselves to pay for a higher
6:12
price or, you know, tell their friends that, you know, this is
6:16
a interesting product that I acquired recently and, you know,
6:19
share the product and the story at the same time.
6:23
It's really good at creating the desire.
6:25
If you go back to like, like if you think about mythology and
6:28
myths in general, right? Like there's usually some sort
6:31
of lesson baked in. There's usually some sort of
6:33
like origin story. Like if you go back to Greek
6:36
mythology about the way things are and why they're like that
6:40
and, you know, different moral lessons.
6:42
And, you know, it's a way to tapping into sort of humankind's
6:45
greater past and connection to other people from the past.
6:50
I mean, my really interesting thing about Matcha, like let's
6:53
just cherry pick one mythology or over mythologized thing
6:58
within macho is that Zen Buddhist monks used it for
7:00
meditation. And this was like part of the
7:03
reason where how it came to Japan.
7:05
And monks have been using it for centuries to meditate and to
7:09
stay focused and to keep calm during meditation.
7:12
But you know, when you really dig into it, like if you go back
7:15
to the Kamakura period and those records, when T when it first
7:19
entered Japan was gaining its first footholds, some of the
7:23
earliest writings about tea in Japan was how good of a hangover
7:27
cure it was. And like one of the past kings
7:30
or emperors, I forget his name was like heralding it as a
7:34
wonderful hangover cure. But like, that is not a myth
7:38
that very many people are interested you can hire to like
7:42
this is what Zen monks. It's some secret mythical herb
7:46
and tea that Zen monks use. Like it's it's such a more
7:50
interesting story than hangover cure for someone who drank too
7:54
much the previous night. Actually, functionally, I've
7:56
seen this story being used by some, you know this Japanese
8:01
drug stores like they sell all these kind of hangover cures on
8:04
the shelf nearby your favorite Ajinomoto sleep sleep aid.
8:08
One of the product was a matcha hangover cure.
8:11
Really. I bet they recycle the story
8:13
from that from that tell. And like, you know, most of the,
8:17
you know, Macho's mythologized past about connections to tea
8:22
ceremony and Senori Q and Hideyoshi during that period,
8:26
you know, also like it was really just vanity.
8:30
It was this thing that you got together with a bunch of other
8:33
people to talk politics and with really expensive tea Ware.
8:38
And like, you know, the Japanese have done actually just such a
8:41
good job. Even China you has done such a
8:44
good job mythologizing all of the.
8:46
Best parts everything like. Everything gets all the like the
8:50
grits and the grime other than the wabi sabi just kind of gets
8:54
plastered over in these narratives.
8:56
But yeah, it's almost like anti wabi sabi if you think about it,
9:00
like all these bromance that they talk about relating to like
9:03
the tea where sitting in the room.
9:05
Or the inclusiveness everyone's equal.
9:08
And so you have to bow down by the little out the the little
9:12
door when you enter a tea room, like it's so much more vanity
9:16
than substance. Most likely when you dig into
9:19
these histories like there were no women allowed in those rooms.
9:22
So I guess the people that were allowed in who were in theory
9:25
equal. But whether or not it looked
9:27
like that in practice, when you know, the owner of the the tea
9:30
house who brought together this gathering showing off his
9:34
equivalent of $10,000 tea bowl he got from Song dynasty China,
9:38
you know, it's it's yeah, it's very, you know, the so
9:43
mythologizing kind of makes sense for like, you know, it's a
9:46
nice story to tell someone that doesn't know the history,
9:48
doesn't care about the history, that wants to feel connection to
9:52
something larger than themselves.
9:53
But where it gets in the way and where the real problem over
9:56
mythologizing is, is where it attributes success or quality to
10:04
the wrong things. And I think ujimatcha is a
10:07
wonderful example. If you take the four prefetcher
10:10
zone for what can be considered Ujimatcha, it's about a third,
10:14
maybe it's a slightly less, but about 1/3 of the matcha produced
10:18
in Japan can be called ujimatcha.
10:20
There is a extremely large percentage of that material that
10:25
is incredibly mediocre and it gets to ride on a famous name.
10:30
So we're talking about Uji, Uji, uji, Uji and how it's
10:34
incredible. It's not even uji.
10:35
You can argue maybe it's a processing style, but that
10:38
processing style can be really like reproduced elsewhere.
10:42
There's some really interesting stories we know of tea farmers,
10:45
an actual Uji that brought that had farmers from Kagoshima come
10:49
up and do kind of an understudy to shadow them to learn how to,
10:53
you know, learn from them and bring those techniques back to
10:56
Kagoshima. So there's all sorts of this
10:58
cross learning that's going on in the industry.
11:00
So like, not only is it disingenuous if you're thinking
11:03
about it, this single origin product and even a little bit as
11:06
a style, but it just allows it it.
11:10
It's not because it's from Uji that the matcha is any good, and
11:13
it's not even from Uji. And the deeper you go, you
11:18
realize that if you like stack rank, the things that make
11:21
matcha taste good, you know, the first, the list is probably like
11:25
fertilizer and then maybe like cultivar and processing and
11:29
shading style. And you could argue maybe the
11:32
handpick stuff and there's some stock rank and maybe there's
11:35
some disagreement on what the stock rank is.
11:37
But the actual soil, the actual dirt, the actual microclimate
11:42
and micro terroir, whatever word you want to use doesn't actually
11:46
explain quality. So you have all of these vendors
11:49
all over the place talking about Kagoshima volcanic soil or like
11:55
really mountain natural tea in Chizuoka or Ujimacha and these
12:00
beautiful river, our basins and riverbeds.
12:03
River tea. We're mythologizing so heavily
12:08
that even if it were true that the matcha is better because it
12:12
came from Uji and that there's some magic in this land and
12:17
terroir, it doesn't explain why it's actually good.
12:20
It's good because those farmers have so much knowledge and
12:23
skill. They take care of the plants
12:25
they're only harvesting once a year.
12:26
They use incredibly high quality fertilizer and it's like the
12:29
center of gravity where you have, you know, a bunch of
12:32
different producers that are able to share knowledge and
12:34
they've been doing that for what, 500 years?
12:38
It that's why it's good. It has really nothing to do with
12:41
the terroir. If someone who didn't know
12:43
anything opened a new plot, Uji the matcha probably wouldn't
12:47
taste very good unless they were able to tap into it like the
12:50
secondary terroir. And nothing that's over
12:53
mythologizing to the point of misattributing quality is such a
12:57
huge problem because people learn the wrong lessons.
13:01
It generates demand in the wrong places and the entire much
13:04
industry. Even if you look at ceremonial
13:06
grade like what a stupid term and like it's generating demand
13:11
in the wrong places. It's supposedly good enough for
13:15
Japanese tea ceremony use, but it has says there's no
13:18
underlying truth. It doesn't explain the quality
13:21
like it's it's you're just making up reductions in
13:25
complexities and stories to sell the product.
13:30
That's the goal. Yeah.
13:31
That's so that's why it happened and that's why it's it's so
13:35
successful. It's very effective.
13:38
Yeah. In reality, you know, like if
13:41
you even if you, you know, debunk and demystified, you
13:45
know, one term, people will invent another.
13:49
And essentially, consumers are pulling this invention out
13:54
because they need it too. Yeah.
13:57
And, you know, like it, like Asahi will probably be the new
14:02
term. Or like, you know, a certain
14:05
type of fertilizer or shading time will be the new term
14:09
probably like if you, if you keep just debunking all of
14:13
these, you know, marketing jargons and you are just, you
14:17
know, pushing a substitute of the new one in the future.
14:20
And, and for Wuji is particularly difficult because
14:23
like, it's, it's not really just a place, it's not really just a
14:28
style. I'm thinking this out loud, but
14:30
I think in reality, Wuji is a system.
14:33
It's, it's a, it's a tea making system for Japanese matcha and
14:38
all of these regions surrounding Fuji like Miyashiga and all of
14:43
these places, they cannot live without Fuji.
14:48
And you should, I think 1 should really consider they are a
14:51
extension, a very organic extension of Fuji itself.
14:54
Because like they are supplying Wuji tea makers or Muji tea
14:58
brands, they are being told how to make matcha because this is
15:04
what those Wuji plant houses or tea makers need.
15:09
These are suppliers for you know, wuji too.
15:12
I mean a lot of them are doing what you know what them being
15:17
told by Wuji farmers it's. There's like some contract in
15:21
place. They're like, we want this
15:23
fertilizer recipe and this and this.
15:26
And and they cannot sell like tea themselves, like all of
15:29
their produce productions get self funneled back to Ooji and
15:33
it is Wuji. And and if you really think
15:36
about, you know, the impact of Tawa, it doesn't really matter
15:39
for for matcha that much like with the usage of fertilizers
15:43
and shading methods and Shia gate and post processing,
15:48
theoretically you can recreate a very high quality Asaki honzu
15:53
Asaki in like me, But but no one is doing that because like no
15:58
one is going to pay for a higher price to make that cultivation
16:03
sustainable. This is where Uji is just
16:05
basically one big black hole. It's a big black.
16:08
Everyone has an incentive to keep it going.
16:10
I think it's a it's it's constructed.
16:13
It's being constructed that way so that Uji is the crown drew of
16:18
like Uji tea, like actual Uji Uji.
16:20
But all of these other places, you know, they are like also
16:24
Uji, right? Like that other than the land
16:27
being situated outside of Wuji city, like they are everything
16:33
Wuji but themselves. The cultivation method.
16:37
You know that the essential market, the procureurs, the
16:40
final product will be planned probably sometimes with Wuji tea
16:44
too, like tea from Wuji like they are, they are part of Wuji
16:47
as well. If you consider consider the
16:50
whole system as one entity. Yeah, it's just a really a shame
16:55
that so many people apply a single origin framework.
16:58
But I disagree. I think the I think the industry
17:00
would be much healthier. I think the solution is through
17:05
like the name Uji, like we got to have more places, more names,
17:09
more farmers, more regions to make this so that people can
17:13
actually understand like. I totally agree.
17:17
I'm just talking about the status quo.
17:18
Yeah, status quo, I agree. But the problem is, is then you
17:21
have this awful incentive loop. Consumers want to uji because
17:25
that's the only thing they know and people want to sell uji, so
17:28
they create content and educational content around uji
17:33
matcha, which is very easy to pick from because of its rich
17:36
history. There's a lot to talk about.
17:38
Like I couldn't be even begin to tell you about the tea that's
17:41
happening in me a the tension. But you can produce there, you
17:44
can buy it. Difficult to buy?
17:46
It very difficult. As a single origin product,
17:49
right? So like just obtaining that and
17:51
like lift, pulling it out of that orbit of Uji would be so
17:56
hard. But it funnels on itself because
17:58
that's what people want. That's what people make, and
18:00
that's what people well, what? And that's what people make.
18:02
And I would argue that there's, at least for now, there's no MI
18:05
A style tea. There's no MI A flavor.
18:09
For tensha maybe, I think the other tea maybe, but.
18:12
Other tea maybe? Yeah, like but but but for
18:15
tensha, for matcha. There isn't a a single origin
18:18
idea in MI A to begin with. They're just another supplier
18:21
for Uji. Yeah, largely speaking.
18:25
I mean, you do start to see more and more like separate farmers
18:29
and like Nara. I'm talking to someone in Nara
18:31
at the moment that is keeping us as a single origin product.
18:36
And they're selling their own tea.
18:37
They're selling their own tea, but they're also very weirdly
18:40
selling Ujimacha, which is much cheaper than the Nara tea and
18:44
like. Oh, that's a good strategy.
18:47
I'm. Trying to figure out like, what
18:48
is this Fuji team we're selling? Because it's not from Fuji, I'm
18:52
sure. I think it's a really good
18:54
strategy. Like when it comes to quality,
18:57
the first thing that the consumer will notice and
19:00
associate with is the price tag. If you're selling something, you
19:04
know, more expensive that than a thing that already has a quality
19:10
kind of concept in consumer's mind, consumer will probably
19:14
naturally think that, OK, this thing is probably even better.
19:18
I don't know, I want to try. Yeah.
19:20
I think it's a very good strategy to break the quality
19:25
ceiling and the price ceiling. Yeah.
19:28
It's an interesting strategy. It's but also it looks like
19:32
single origin framework also being miss applied by the
19:35
Japanese when you're looking through like a wholesale price
19:38
list and says Nara Nara, Nara Nara uji, uji uji.
19:41
Like what does? Like how am I supposed to
19:44
interpret what that means? Like it's and then it feels very
19:48
invasive to ask these questions. Yeah, it's, it's interesting.
19:52
I mean, ultimately, you know, it's, it's it's a marketing
19:57
issue for the farmers too. And and also, I would say it's
20:03
like like poor went through the same trajectory like it was at
20:07
the time in the very beginning, just poor tea because all Team
20:11
United gets sold and trade in a place called poor.
20:16
And later on, you know, like people start to have these
20:20
satellite markets in different tea mountains.
20:23
Then you have like Monkhai tea, you have E Wu tea and you have
20:27
all these house which are, you know, kind of like these blend
20:34
houses or proto tea houses. Yeah, exactly back in the days.
20:39
And then, you know, like, and then, for example, EU, it's a
20:44
name of tea region. It's also the name of regional
20:48
tea trading center. So all of these sub regions,
20:51
they take their leaves and they all got funnel into EU and get
20:55
sold as EU tea. And, and, and you know, like,
20:58
and slowly like all of these other regions become more
21:01
famous. You have, you know, 1 gong, you
21:03
have Mahe, you have bokota, and all of these places start to
21:07
gain their own thing because they acquired agency to sell
21:11
their own tea and process their own tea later on.
21:13
And the current Japanese system, I think it's just so that the
21:17
system is so baked in with processing capability that the
21:22
farmers are really having a hard time to break free.
21:25
It's the the processing constraints is the soil for this
21:31
weirdness of, you know, like not being able to do a more confined
21:36
or more granular geographic concept.
21:39
Or a more true concept. Or more true concept, but you
21:43
know, like it's difficult. Like even if you have, you know,
21:46
a farmer in one village that trying that that's trying to,
21:50
you know, build their own regional brand, you know, their
21:53
tea will probably still needs to be sent to like Ogu to get
21:58
processed to get shiage and the tea will indeed be like
22:02
transformed the remake in that particular region.
22:06
So like it's, it's, it's it's difficult to kind of separate,
22:11
you know, like other, other regions influence because like
22:15
as we also learned that different shiage factories, they
22:18
have different, you know, chiage flavor or processing flavor and.
22:22
During the refinement. Days because of their
22:25
machineries because you know of you know the the the style that
22:29
the factory runners like the machine to be run so they they
22:34
actually end up producing some very unique factory flavors on
22:39
top of the you know the farmers creation.
22:42
So it's very difficult to separate all of these influence
22:45
or factors when you are talking about single origin and
22:49
everything just. Gets murky because everything is
22:51
over mythologized onto a very simple concept which doesn't
22:55
explain any of the quality. Yeah.
22:59
But then it's also very convenient, right?
23:00
To mythologize or to to take one collective right of a big brand
23:06
like even if like even in in Wuji regions like Wuja Tawala,
23:11
Wazuka, right, they, they all, they, it's very convenient to
23:16
all get into this bandwagon because you know, the processing
23:19
a lot of these things are indeed happening in the very central
23:23
location that, that there are a lot of, you know, cross
23:26
influence and a shared characteristic between all of
23:30
these places maybe in a. Growing market.
23:32
But if the matcha market ever shrinks, which you know, I hope
23:35
it doesn't, or that the demand for medium quality matcha like
23:40
what we would consider to be like average quote UN quote
23:43
ceremonial, great matcha is being able to produce half the
23:46
price in China where there is no, what would be we would call
23:50
organoleptic difference. There's a sensory difference.
23:54
If you taste it blind, you're not able to distinguish quote UN
23:57
quote Fuji ceremonial grade from one that's grown in Guizhou or
24:02
Jujiang. Every Cafe, every B2B
24:04
environment would do so much better to source the one that's
24:08
half the price. Unless they I don't.
24:10
Maybe some Japanese associations where they want to source a
24:13
product from Japan. But for the vast majority of
24:15
cafes is actually the responsible business decision.
24:19
And in this type of over mythologizing then you are
24:22
working where there is much less demand and the people that are
24:25
in the middle will kind of get screwed.
24:27
The French wine industry has some interesting parallels here.
24:31
People in France are drinking less and less wine.
24:33
The French government actually spent close to €200 million last
24:39
year destroying French wine and converting it into industrial
24:44
alcohol. That was how much overproduction
24:47
was being done in France. And Bordeaux in particular,
24:51
particularly is getting hit very, very hard.
24:54
And if you're from like a famous region in Bordeaux, like Graves
24:58
or Street in New York, you're OK.
25:00
There's a famous name to write. There's good chateaus doing
25:03
interesting things and they're still able to sell it.
25:06
But if you go to regions that no one's heard of, like Cote de
25:09
Bourg, and that don't have a very good reputation like Cote
25:13
de Bourg does, an average bottle Cote de Bourg at a grocery store
25:16
in France, it's like 3 or 4 euros.
25:18
It's very cheap. This market is like totally
25:21
evaporated like no one the demand is for like these much
25:25
more granular things. So they're in like a very
25:28
interesting form of structural decline.
25:30
So let's say that the Chinese are able to beat the cost
25:33
equality ratio so hard against the the Japanese, then you know
25:39
Uji will probably survive. But what about a mediocre
25:43
producer in Wazuka where 40% of the tension Kyoto is made?
25:47
Or maybe Wazuka this fine, you can still call it Kyoto matcha
25:51
Kyoto Tensha. Yeah.
25:53
But what about Ashiga? Or like regions where you really
25:57
have never seen it as a single origin then for that?
25:59
Reality uji uji tea is going to be more valuable to them to.
26:04
Them to. Everybody that that will be the
26:08
only concept that will survive through this turmoil, this flush
26:13
of what if demand. For that UGT goes down like then
26:18
what do you do? It's going to suppress the
26:20
prices of everybody. Yeah, it's totally.
26:23
Possible. It's totally because it's all.
26:25
Riding this semi commodified term.
26:29
It's, I think we are a little bit overestimating the
26:33
difficulty of even building a brand or a brand of a place to
26:37
begin with, maybe for a. Lot of.
26:39
Regions, there's just not going to be enough interest in the
26:43
market to make it a sustainable brand.
26:45
Like like like your wine example is actually perfect.
26:49
Like all of these could be very interesting sub regions.
26:52
They're just not enough demand to support their existence.
26:55
Yeah, and there's not. Enough money to eventually cycle
26:58
for them, for the quality to improve.
27:00
I mean, all these contract tensha producers in these
27:02
varying regions, right? They're just told what to do by
27:06
the Kyoto companies who they signed wholesale contracts with,
27:09
right? Like and they're probably don't.
27:12
Those wholesale companies probably don't want them to make
27:16
Hansu Asahi. They need good decent like
27:19
filler bulk tea, just suffice the majority of their blends.
27:23
That's relatively consistent year over year.
27:25
But they're not making the special fertilized Hanzo.
27:29
Whatever you know it, it's it's so different and it is what?
27:33
We saw it's just seas and seas of Yabatita and Okumadori.
27:38
Okumadori like synthetic fertilizer knotted like it's,
27:43
it's good, but it's not great. And there's going to be some
27:45
turning point where most likely the Chinese figure out how to
27:49
just do it much better and much cheaper where you wouldn't be
27:52
able to distinguish them in a blind test.
27:55
And the only value that it has is that you can have this uji
27:58
name, but it's not good for consumers because like you're
28:02
still misattributing quality by the fact that you were able to
28:07
label it Uji matcha. It's it's like you're paying for
28:11
this thing that's not reflective and you're educating people on
28:15
these things. It's not actually reflective of
28:18
what makes a high quality product.
28:21
Yeah. It's difficult, but delusion.
28:24
Yeah, but. It's what the market is most in
28:26
most cases. So tea is a business too, right?
28:30
Yeah, tea is a. Business and most people in the
28:32
business are trying to earn the business of selling tea.
28:35
We're actually pretty weird position let's and I'm sure if
28:39
we were on the other side of the table, we would we wouldn't be
28:42
have any incentive to say these things.
28:44
But I was at the Berlin Tea Festival last year and I
28:47
listened to the CEO of Aya. Aya is a very interesting
28:51
company. I need to do a deep dive,
28:55
research, deep dive into them. They are one of the largest
28:58
companies in Nishio, but they are the quiet powerhouse behind
29:03
the majority of the matcha industry.
29:05
I've been told by someone who works at the the Hamburg office
29:10
of Aya in Europe that they're the largest matcha producer in
29:13
the world in terms of the amount of volume that's produced.
29:16
And they do tons of white label product.
29:18
But the CEO of Aya Europe and give a talk at the Berlin Tea
29:21
Festival, and one of the attendees asked a really
29:25
interesting question she had. She must have a lot of insider
29:29
knowledge or something, but she was asking about his thoughts
29:32
about Guizhou matcha and whether or not his thoughts are about
29:36
all of this Chinese matcha and tensha that's being produced.
29:41
And he's like, it's like wine. It's like you could never have
29:44
champagne out of champagne. China will never produce the
29:47
same product. I was a little bit flabbergasted
29:50
to hear that answer from him where this over mythologizing of
29:54
Japan was coming out. And it's just not intellectually
29:57
honest when you really are an expert about matcha, right?
30:01
Like you realize that is not what determines matcha quality.
30:04
We've had so many experts on this podcast that say, quote,
30:08
you could theoretically grow great matcha anywhere.
30:11
Yeah. It's.
30:12
Really not too large driven. It's not terroir.
30:14
Driven. It's mostly coming from the
30:16
fertilizer and all of the process.
30:18
It's like literary really the most processed tea I can think
30:21
of. So most human intervention, most
30:24
processed, most energy intensive, especially with the
30:27
cold chain and keeping everything cold and not
30:29
degrading. And she just took the answer
30:32
what I was. I was kind of shocked because I
30:34
didn't think it was very intellectually honest from
30:35
someone that is supposed to be, you know, a world expert in
30:39
matcha. But the other was this huge
30:41
irony his that Aya is one of the earliest investors into China,
30:47
specifically into Juju Jiang province in China in the early
30:51
2000s, setting up subsidiaries, making matcha.
30:55
They have a lot of the matcha that you see in the states is
30:59
probably coming from Aya that's in the middle land.
31:01
And Abby, the matcha scientist just put out a reel.
31:04
She got a tip and did some taste testing and you know, she she's
31:08
pretty sure that the Dunkin' Donuts matcha comes from Aya.
31:12
So they, they also supply some others and I, I wouldn't mention
31:16
it because I don't want to violate anyone's trust, but
31:19
it's, I mean like. It's it's just over.
31:24
Mythologizing of Japan, but the rides on Japan's fame first.
31:30
Their tea brand, Their tea manufacturer they're trying to
31:32
sell. They're trying to sell.
31:34
Tea and for now, you know, Uchi tea is like the product or the
31:38
the brand name that you can sold your product under with with the
31:42
largest premium, so to speak. And you know, if in the future,
31:46
like Yusha Matcha becomes like the new, like rock star Tawat
31:51
and that, but that Aya would like talk like all these new
31:55
stories about Yusha. And we heard, we heard some
31:58
gossip. That Aya just set up a new
32:00
factory in Kyoto Prefecture so they can buy that 10 sha from
32:05
the four prefecture zone and do their shiage and milling in
32:10
Chioto Prefecture. I think it's somewhere north or
32:12
something. Boom, you have a new, you've
32:14
minted a new Uji Matcha factory. Yeah, they're.
32:18
Marrying the system from producers.
32:20
Coming from Nishio and there's also something called the blend
32:23
rule where you can have some, you can call it something
32:26
something blend like Uji matcha blend which can contain up to
32:31
50% other tea, but not regulated.
32:34
No rule that I can find and I've done a lot of searching that
32:39
stipulate it's it has to be a Japanese product.
32:45
So it's very possible and we know that there's tensile
32:48
flowing and I don't know if I is doing this, but honestly, I
32:51
wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of quote Uji matcha blends
32:56
that contain Chinese tensile. Now we're calling it Uji matcha
33:01
saying it's special become it comes from Uji or the heritage
33:04
of Uji. But the people doing the
33:05
processing don't need to have any heritage in Uji.
33:08
They just need to set it up geographically in Kyoto
33:10
Prefecture. So in the case of Aya, right,
33:12
they're taking Nishio in IT, prefecture knowledge and
33:16
processing, which is a very interesting matcha history to
33:19
which we want to cover at some point putting it into Uji.
33:22
I would probably, as far as I can tell, legally bring in
33:27
Chinese Tansha to call something an UGI matcha blend.
33:31
And the crazy thing is if you care about quality, it actually
33:35
doesn't even matter. Like they can probably create a
33:39
very good tasting products. Yeah, no.
33:42
And so it's. UGI is just so mythologized to
33:46
the point where it clouding out all of this other stuff.
33:51
Yeah, it's a. System.
33:52
It's a system really is a system.
33:54
It's a history. It's a cultivation system.
33:56
It's a processing style system, it's a brand system, it's an
34:00
ecosystem system. It's.
34:03
A meta system. There's so many.
34:05
Layers to this onion. Yeah, yeah.
34:07
Where I have a. Problem is where it feels very
34:10
deceptive and I'm, I'm not talking about any specific
34:14
company right now, but like I'm talking with a lot of people
34:17
trying to source tensha and talking to people in Japan and
34:20
people get very cagey very fast and like asking, does it come
34:23
from uji grown tensha in some cases feels very inappropriate.
34:27
But this ambiguity, this vagueness, this lack of
34:31
transparency often feels like someone is trying to profit off
34:36
of my ignorance. And not just mine, but really
34:40
everyone's ignorance. I wouldn't be surprised.
34:43
You know when random matcha finders go to find single origin
34:46
uji matcha that they ask is this from uji?
34:49
They just get an answer yes, and there's no way that the person
34:52
that answered yes like, like I, they would just have to be
34:56
stupid not to see through what question they were actually
35:00
trying to ask. Yeah.
35:02
Yeah, especially when they're. Trying to Orient everything a
35:05
single origin I think. The solution to the problem is
35:08
very difficult. We talk about how like
35:11
intertwined everyone is to the system right now and how
35:14
everyone is actually indeed benefiting from having the
35:17
system in placed. We like talking about more
35:22
granular geographic regions will certainly make it more
35:26
interesting and valuable as a consumer to learn about a
35:30
product. But from a business standpoint,
35:32
it's not viable for most of the farmers and there is no
35:37
alternative ways for them to, to, to, to make their farming
35:41
practice and business sustainable in the future for
35:43
the time being, you know, and creating more granular
35:47
geographic concept, you might actually run into, you know,
35:51
just creating another Ooji, you know, paradox.
35:54
It's if there's no regulatory entity or law in place, you
35:58
know, you're just creating another Wooji by the end of the
36:00
day. It's like what Yani is kind of
36:03
going to be right now. And that this, all of these
36:07
regions sets just get lumped into a larger concept that's
36:11
easier to sell tea and you know that.
36:13
And I don't think it's unique to Japan either.
36:16
Like this happens in China, in Korea, in all the other regions,
36:19
not just tea as well, when all the other products too.
36:22
Like if there's a lack of regulatory entity and law or
36:25
even there is people who try to find loopholes too.
36:28
Like look at the whistling being made in Germany, but the grapes
36:31
are coming from Bulgaria. Like people find all these
36:34
loopholes to trying to work around and make money,
36:38
essentially. And business, I would argue that
36:41
is really the foundation of tea. Like if there's no business,
36:44
there will be no tea. Yeah, you need the.
36:46
Mythologies to create the desire to create the demand.
36:50
And it also can't be too complicated because the reality
36:53
is most consumers just don't care.
36:54
Yeah, but they could. I mean, the but there's
36:57
possibility for a specialty market could be huge.
37:00
Yeah, look at coffees. Too few of them.
37:02
Yeah, but you could. You could make the you could
37:04
make the same argument about coffee 20 years ago.
37:06
Who cares that it comes from this plot in Ecuador, Panama,
37:11
Costa Rica or something? Who cares about the processing
37:14
difference between natural and wash processed coffee, right?
37:17
Turns out that like $20 billion a year of people care.
37:22
Yeah, but coffee is a little different, right?
37:24
Because like Tawa actually matters, it matters more.
37:27
Well, processing matters a lot too.
37:29
Yeah, processing too. It's not not not a complete
37:33
parallel comparison. Well, honestly.
37:35
I think within matcha the the the overemphasis of terroir is
37:39
important, but actually it's just more human stories, more
37:42
farmers, more people doing these innovative techniques.
37:45
I mean, look at Suji Suns, like even Suji Suns Matcha I think
37:50
sits kind of on a league of its own.
37:52
It tastes pretty different actually than some of the teas
37:57
from the even the other Uji Macha farmers.
38:00
If you taste Furakawa secha, especially their organic
38:03
products, it has a very distinctive taste which is
38:08
really different than Suji San's.
38:11
And then if you go to like Tai Chi San from the Shimizu family
38:14
and try his tea in Uji, it also tastes very distinctly
38:18
different. Product variability, even within
38:21
the same cultivar amongst the UGI farmers is just such an
38:25
interesting study of, I don't know, like art like
38:29
interpretation skill method. But I would much rather learn
38:33
about, you know, Tai Chi son's processing difference than Tsuji
38:37
son's versus Furakawa's. And you know it, if they're
38:41
willing to. Share and I think you.
38:43
Know part of the the way that this gets solved is you just
38:46
there's so many interesting stories and people with like
38:49
very specific points of view. I want to taste points of view.
38:53
I want to taste someone's like passion.
38:56
I want to taste their organic fertilizer.
38:58
I want to taste their experimental cultivar they're
39:00
interested in. I want to taste the results of
39:03
their natural no pesticide, no fertilizer farming right like
39:07
it. It's all different points of
39:08
view and it could be much more human centric versus taroir
39:12
centric. I agree.
39:13
I agree but there still be the the risk of mythologizing people
39:18
too or cultivation methods. Like look at the biodynamic in
39:22
the wine world. That's.
39:23
True, you have these like I want sort of mythologizing sitting on
39:27
top. I I want.
39:28
My my Asahi seedlings to a grow from a rhino horn in the fourth
39:32
days of moon. You know, for the longest.
39:34
Time. I thought biodynamic just meant
39:36
like, it's a biodiverse, like it's not just a monoculture.
39:40
And then I went on a tour with my girlfriend.
39:42
Yeah, it's wow. Wow.
39:46
This is like it's a cult. I don't know that it might be be
39:49
a bit of a strong word, but only spraying chamomile on a Tuesday
39:53
under a full moon is a little anti scientific, too anti
39:58
scientific for my brain. That's great that you believe
40:00
those things. I am not convinced that it makes
40:03
the wine taste any better until you set up an experiment.
40:07
So, yeah, so. But that's true.
40:10
But I mean, that's also just an interesting story to talk about.
40:13
And there is real demand for that kind of stuff too.
40:15
Yeah. Yeah.
40:16
I. Agree.
40:17
I mean, by the end of the day, I'm I'm not again mythology and
40:20
romance, but it's great or nice that we can have the knowledge
40:24
or validated information to see through some of these romance.
40:29
But I think the necessity of romance is there is a necessity
40:33
of bromance or mythology to exist for T to be a sustainable
40:37
business. Yeah, but.
40:39
I think my problem is when it comes to misattributing the
40:42
wrong things. Like it's.
40:44
It's like false education. You just got to.
40:47
See through all the weeds, otherwise you'd be your
40:49
intelligent tax a lot of people are paying.
40:52
Well, actually it's unfair because like, let's say that you
40:55
have this concept of intelligence tax onto it.
40:58
Like there's not enough information out there to usually
41:02
sort through this as a consumer. That's true.
41:04
That's true. The verifiable information is
41:07
very scarce. It's very.
41:09
Hard to sort through the garbage from garbage misinformation from
41:14
mythologizing and like what is a perspective versus truth?
41:18
Like it, it, it's a really, it's a lot to untangle.
41:23
It's like it's, I think it's unfair to consumers.
41:26
Actually, I think it's just a sign that we're in an early
41:28
industry that this like all the wrong things are being
41:31
mythologized in my opinion, Right, Right.
41:34
And I think that there'll be some, you know, hopefully
41:36
there'll be some correction, right?
41:38
And I think it's just going to be a very local movement.
41:41
It's, it's your local barista that you trust.
41:43
It's your local matcha cafe that you know, and you're like, you
41:46
know, you taste through all of these different things and you
41:49
start realizing what makes great matcha great, right?
41:53
And it's. Not that some random kind of uji
41:55
macho is the best, I mean and. Hopefully this kind of mentality
41:59
will be the new norm for a large enough consumer community that
42:04
you know it becomes sustainable for the farmers to convert or to
42:08
confine into this new system. Because right now, from a purely
42:14
a business standpoint, this new community is not providing
42:17
enough buying power to pull the farmers from the other side to
42:21
this side. Yeah, that's.
42:22
True and reliable buying power, yeah, a lot of structural
42:27
barriers, which we always go back to.
42:29
But it's I hope, I hope that this industry can change, which
42:35
is what we feel like this the ending sentence in every podcast
42:39
we're doing all. Parts we're trying.
42:41
To we're trying to, we, I mean we would love to see a lot of
42:45
the industry switch from macho to tensha.
42:47
I think that will be a huge component because when you're
42:50
starting to deal in tensha you default or a one step back in
42:55
the purchasing system. So it's you know you get a
42:58
little closer to the agriculture into the stories and the
43:02
potentially the farmers etcetera.
43:04
So yeah, I don't know. So it's an interesting.
43:09
Future well it's at least for now I feel like it's a forgeable
43:15
future still we're still very early in in in this movement and
43:20
you know futures is for us to written yeah my.
43:23
Call to action for anyone listening to this episode that
43:26
has any, you know, leverage or power in whatever part of the
43:30
ecosystem you fall in, whether or not you're a consumer or
43:33
matcha brand or Cafe. Like it is that we stopped
43:37
mythologizing the wrong things and that we really questioned
43:40
some assumptions about what actually makes great matcha
43:43
great. And matcha is the like of all
43:46
the tea that's produced anywhere in any country, I'm like pretty
43:49
confident to say that it is by far the most amount of like
43:53
processing human intervention and skill.
43:55
And the fact that we attributed to this tiny little town and
43:59
South of Kyoto as being the reason why it's so good almost
44:03
spits on the face of all these people who put all this work
44:07
into making this fantastic tea and that we are all drinking.
44:10
And it's writing this name. And it's just so unfair and it's
44:15
misattributing quality. And I was recently went into a
44:18
cafe where I live in a different neighborhood where I live in
44:21
Paris. And I went in and there's all
44:23
these cans of Uji Matcha it says.
44:25
And what the, the, the tag set was Uji comma, Kyoto comma
44:31
Japan. Anyone who reads this in France
44:34
is thinking this is a single origin product and it's organic.
44:38
And I am almost, I would say 100%, but 99.999% that can does
44:46
not come from Uji. And if it did, it should be
44:48
triple the price because organic matcha that comes from Uji is
44:52
exceedingly rare. And it would cost way more than
44:56
the €30 that they were charging for that.
44:59
And like that can is riding off of this name, but it's also not
45:04
writing, just riding off of this name.
45:06
It's an eraser. It's erasing all of this work
45:11
that actually made that can taste good and sit there like on
45:16
that shelf. It's it's it's that that's the
45:20
part that bothers me. So I think consumers should
45:23
start being more discerning, trying to like pull truth out of
45:27
the industry. Like you're labeling this is
45:29
single origin. Like does it like doesn't come
45:32
from Ujigong tensha, but same thing for the cafes and vendors.
45:35
Because people just don't know. And the industry has no
45:38
incentive to correct anyone's knowledge about this.
45:42
The only reason you could be interested in this is so you
45:45
want to get serious about tasting place, about tasting
45:48
like an untangling and really making judgments for yourself
45:53
about what's good and not good. And that's a really small group
45:56
of people right now. But if we all start collectively
45:59
questioning these and trying to form our own judgments based off
46:03
of objective truth, we can breakthrough some of these, what
46:06
I'll call nonproductive myths that are erasing what makes
46:10
great matcha great. And and that's the people I
46:12
think it's a great. Place to end, although I I don't
46:16
totally agree with this call to action really.
46:20
Why it's a? It's a very complicated and so
46:26
sticky system that everyone is making depending on their
46:31
livelihood and living out of the current Wuji bandwagon.
46:36
And if we were ever to change the system, we need to show them
46:41
a alternative way to to be sustainable for them, for the
46:46
farmers that I'm talking to. Otherwise, like this call to
46:49
action, it's not going anywhere. It will not go go to anywhere
46:53
like people will go back to Uji because there is no alternative
46:57
for them to survive or to make money.
47:00
I don't know. There's no good way to doing it.
47:02
I don't have a solution either but I mean like it's just slowly
47:08
going to be more granular but the each more granular level is
47:11
just going to be another wooji. No, but at least.
47:13
It's mythologizing the right things.
47:16
It doesn't have to be a place. It can be a person, people,
47:20
processing style, or they can be talking.
47:22
About bullshit, right? You know, like after my Laotian
47:26
trip, the mindset or the idea of tea is a business has never been
47:32
so obvious to me. It's really the root of
47:36
anything. Like if something is not
47:39
commercially viable, then then it's nothing.
47:45
In order for any changes to happen really, we or the
47:49
collective, collective, we has to come up with a commercially
47:54
viable plant or a alternative path for everything to, to, to
47:59
essentially work. You know, I actually, I think
48:02
one of the largest romance or mythology for tea is that tea is
48:06
just tea that people can enjoy, that people can drink and people
48:10
can, you know, like, like, like and feel good.
48:13
But but what tea really is is a business.
48:17
There's there will be no tea if there's no business like
48:21
everyone is trying to make a living out of, you know, this
48:25
very plant and, and obviously consumers are paying for it too,
48:29
right? But for this business to work.
48:31
And if there's no, if this circulation of money doesn't
48:36
happened and that it wouldn't, there will be no change for that
48:40
to, to become the new norm. Because like right now, for Uji
48:45
to work so well for ceremonial great to work so well for all of
48:50
these mythology to work so well is because they are adding Lube,
48:55
they're adding oil, they're adding fuel into this grand
48:58
circle of money. And we're thinking that, you
49:02
know, money is sturdy, you know, like it's keep money or business
49:05
away from this pure drink. But without money, there will be
49:10
no pure drink. There will be no, you know, tawa
49:14
or, you know, tea that you can enjoy.
49:17
So true. So.
49:20
It's the very fact that you can enjoy, you know, a tea thousands
49:25
of miles away from its origin. It's because the whole system
49:30
lives on top of a, you know, modern system that's riding on
49:35
capital flow. Yeah.
49:37
It's the oxygens and we saw the case of Nishio.
49:41
Nishio is one of two teas in Japan that had GI protection, I
49:45
think from 2015 or 2017 all the way through like 2022.
49:48
And they formally withdrew GI protection because it priced
49:55
their tea three time or two or three times higher than the
50:00
other teas of the region because they were had to use certain
50:04
production methods and only use tea grown in those parts of
50:07
Nichio and I think slightly around Nichio.
50:10
And with that withdrawal now they can like make it more
50:13
economically viable because like that it there wasn't enough
50:17
mythology to support the Nichio farmers as a Nichio only thing.
50:24
They had to bring in other material and more efficient
50:27
methods to make it financially viable.
50:30
Yeah, it is. Like a onion, right?
50:32
Like the deeper you go is just more refined and more granular
50:37
mythology. But, you know, it gets you
50:40
probably a step closer to the truth, which is, you know,
50:45
progress. I will call that.
50:46
Yeah, but. Dismantling systems that work
50:49
and that everyone has an incentive to keep going is
50:51
almost impossible. But you know you're right.
50:54
Without money, there is no tea. Fertilizer is not free.
50:57
The people that pick the tea aren't free.
50:59
The tensile processing equipment is extremely expensive.
51:02
Like people are buying out loans.
51:05
I mean, constructing these new facilities and investing in
51:08
growth, then you could even I would argue that even the
51:10
business of tea in the way that money gets exchanged through
51:14
these wholesale relationships between farmers and the blend
51:16
houses through the auction systems is actually also just
51:20
part of the culture. But in that culture, you can
51:22
draw a straight line through through the history of making
51:25
tea actually matcha almost. We're going to talk about this
51:28
more on on the this series around Uji Matcha, but Matcha
51:33
almost died as a product. It was a state controlled
51:36
monopoly in the Edo era. You'd have special permissions
51:40
to do shaded cultivation for Tensha.
51:42
It was controlled by very few families.
51:44
Those families controlled both the blend houses and the power
51:48
at like local City Hall. They had a ton of political
51:51
power to keep this incredibly controlled and all of this tea,
51:56
The way the money flowed was from the feudal Lords all the
51:59
way down through the tea farmers who were given political power,
52:02
economic power, social power. And when the feudal system got
52:06
dismantled during the Meiji Restoration in the 1800s,
52:10
overnight the entire industry's money and cash flow stopped.
52:16
It's a miracle and a very interesting story which we'll
52:20
get into about how that shifted and how this whole industry
52:24
survived, but it almost nearly died because the money stopped
52:29
flowing. It's it is also part of the
52:32
culture, all of these things and the evolving definition of what
52:37
was once a very single origin product into this, I don't know,
52:41
crazy one syllable that gets slapped on so much tea.
52:45
And like that story is super interesting and it is a story of
52:48
mythologizing a place, a history and, you know, really endlessly
52:54
fascinating. And you're right, mythology
52:55
actually has great utility and I just don't like the fact that in
53:01
some cases you're being told a story to like something more.
53:05
It's just let's praying on people's or just.
53:08
Pure lies, Yeah, in a lot of. Cases with a lot of this
53:11
marketing, it's like there's this thing that you don't know
53:13
you like yet and I'm going to tell you these set of stories.
53:18
Hope that you will like it because Zen monks once used it
53:21
or these bamboo chasans are the traditional way that these tea
53:24
ceremony masters whisked this matcha.
53:28
God forbid you used an electric whisker.
53:31
It would be blasphemy. Cultural appropriation.
53:34
All of these mythologizing and judgments should only drink tea
53:39
grown in Japan. So important.
53:42
It's just praying on like people.
53:45
If you just connect the incentives, it's actually very
53:49
dirty. What's going on underneath.
53:52
It's very like malintent. It's not a pleasant thought when
53:57
you start connecting the intentions to the mythologizing,
54:01
to the production to the sales. They just want to.
54:04
Make more money, that's all. And, you know, spreading.
54:07
Culture or under the guise of spreading culture is not a good
54:11
way to spread culture. I think that's true.
54:14
That's. True.
54:14
That's a real cultural appropriation.
54:17
That's so. True.
54:19
Those are the real violators of cultural appropriation who are
54:22
making all of these connections. The thing that you know best has
54:26
a seed of truth, so it's for their own culture.
54:29
I think that's a great place to stop.
54:31
But over mythologizing is something that we all should be
54:34
vigilant of. And it's very important to
54:36
understand where our beliefs come from, what we think is
54:40
important and why we think it's important.
54:42
So it's a very important tool for understanding ourselves.
54:45
And sometimes, you know, something deserves to be
54:48
mythologized as much as it is. So we we also have to, you know,
54:51
exercise judgment and all of this.
54:53
And we're not the experts either.
54:55
I mean, we're learning. This is to document our learning
54:57
journey. I pay my.
54:58
Intelligence tax, Yeah, we paid. Our intelligence tax many times
55:02
over, but the tuition is well worth it to get closer and
55:06
closer to to what feel like a closer to objective truth.
55:11
Anyway, thanks so much for listening and we'll see you in
55:13
the next one. See you in the future.
55:15
Take care.