Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Uji-no-Matcha: The inconvenient truth about Japan's most mythologized tea label

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Uji-no-Matcha: The inconvenient truth about Japan's most mythologized tea label · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:06
Hello and welcome to the specialty Match podcast.
0:09
My name is Ryan and I'm one of the Co hosts and today is a very
0:13
unique episode. I'm going to do a monologue of
0:16
the five part series that we released on Fujimacha that's
0:19
been released over on our sub stack.
0:21
If you haven't checked that out, highly recommend you do if you
0:24
want to read it along with the visuals that we have researched
0:27
and created for it and infographics.
0:30
So without further ado, Fuji no Matcha, The Inconvenient Truth
0:33
about Japan, Tan's most mythologized tea label and the
0:36
subtitle is untangling the complex identity of Ujimatcha as
0:40
an origin, brand, concept, trademark, UNESCO World Heritage
0:45
bid, flavor profile and idea that.
0:48
Lives in the mind of everyday consumers.
0:51
Introduction You pick up a tin labeled Single Origin Ujimatcha.
0:55
You whisk it, you drink it, and if you're anything like me, you
0:58
spend a moment convinced that you're tasting a place, a
1:00
valley, a river, generations of skill rooted in one specific
1:04
patch of earth South of Kyoto. That's what I believed for years
1:07
each. Overheaping Scoop carried the
1:09
taste of the land, tradition, care, legacy.
1:12
As if drinking this matcha allows you to tap into something
1:15
larger than yourself. And honestly, it's a beautiful
1:17
thing to believe. My Co host Ungjin and I started
1:20
documenting our learning journey on the Specialty Matcha podcast,
1:23
interviewing industry experts, traveling to Origin and getting
1:26
lost in research quests that went far deeper than we
1:29
intended. A different story started to
1:31
unfold. The further we went, the larger
1:33
the deaf definition of Ujimatcha became.
1:37
What we discovered is that Ujimatcha holds multiple
1:39
identities. It is indeed an origin, it's a
1:42
processing style, a trademark, and it's also an idea that lives
1:46
in the mind of everyday people drinking matcha and, you know,
1:50
an idea with expectations. And these identities don't
1:52
always agree with each other. This is the story of how Uji
1:55
slowly detached from its geography, became a brand large
1:59
enough to contain 4 prefectures, and in the process ended up
2:02
mythologizing all all the wrong things.
2:05
That makes great matcha great. So what is Uji matcha really?
2:09
Let's start with the most basic question.
2:11
What does Uji matcha actually mean?
2:13
Ask any consumer and you'll probably hear something like
2:15
matcha from Uji. And why wouldn't they?
2:18
It has a self descriptive name that implies an origin.
2:21
Many vendors spend paragraphs talking about Uji's pristine
2:24
landscape, It's legendary terroir and generations of skill
2:28
keeping the tradition alive. Consumers are primed to believe
2:31
that they found a single origin product with.
2:34
Unique and distinctive flavors from what is often.
2:36
Crowned as the ultimate terroir for growing matcha, the legal
2:40
definition tells a different story.
2:42
According to Japan's Patent Office regional Collective
2:44
trademark registration number 626519 quote, Fujimacha is made
2:51
from tea produced in four prefectures, Kyoto, Nora, Shiga
2:55
and Miye, which is processed by a Kyoto company using a method
2:59
originating from the Fuji region and then crushed and ground into
3:03
a fine powder. Post quote.
3:05
Nowhere in that definition does it say the tea must be grown in
3:08
Uji. By definition you can have 100%
3:11
VA leaves processed anywhere in Kyoto prefecture using a quote
3:15
UN quote Uji method and legally sell it as Ujicha.
3:19
That's not a loophole, it's the design.
3:21
Uji city itself is incredibly small and it's shocking the
3:24
urban place heralded as the cradle of the best matcha
3:27
production and terroir tucked between highways, roads and
3:31
residential homes. Uji's tea growing landmass is
3:34
even smaller. Although accounts vary, there
3:36
are only about 35 families who are actively farming in Uji
3:40
itself, according to the Kyoto Prefectures, 2024 Agricultural.
3:45
Report. Uji proper has 77.8 hectares of
3:48
tea fields, which represents about 5% of Kyoto prefectures
3:53
total tea acreage. By production volume, it's even
3:55
smaller, 37.6 tons of tensha or unground matcha compared to over
4:01
1000 tons across the prefecture. That's 3.6 of Kyoto's tension
4:05
production. And the four quote UN quote
4:08
Fujimacha trademark prefectures in total produced at least 1500
4:13
tons of tension combined. And then there's the blend rule.
4:16
Under Japan's T labeling standards, a product only needs
4:19
to contain 50% T. From the four.
4:21
Prefecture zone to qualify as quote an Ujimacha blend.
4:26
That means the other half can come from anywhere in Japan.
4:29
That doesn't just widen the definition, it double S the
4:32
theoretical pool of raw material eligible to carry the quote uji
4:37
name to around 3000 tons. Now that's just the ceiling, not
4:41
actual production, but it gives you a sense of how far the label
4:44
stretches beyond anything resembling.
4:46
A single origin product. True single origin Uji matcha
4:50
from Uji grown Tancha represents about 1 to 2% by volume.
4:54
Of what can legally be labeled and sold as.
4:57
Ujimatcha or an Ujimatcha blend? In reality it's probably far
5:02
less as most Ujimatcha farmers sell.
5:04
The majority of their tents are the wholesalers which gets
5:06
blended with tea from other region.
5:08
The fraction that remains truly single origin is probably less
5:13
than 1% of Ujimatcha sold. Was it ever single origin?
5:16
The answer is yes, but not for romantic reasons.
5:19
Ujimatcha was once a genuine single origin product, and it
5:22
was single origin because it was illegal.
5:24
For it not to be, the story begins not in Uji, but in
5:27
Togano. A cluster of hills northwest of
5:29
Kyoto for roughly 2 centuries after the monk Asai brought tea
5:33
seeds from China in 1191, the finest tea in Japan came from
5:37
Togano, where the Kegan priest Mayo planted seeds at Kosanji
5:41
Temple. Togano tea earned the label
5:43
honcha or quote real tea, while everything else was dismissed as
5:47
Ki cha or non tea. This wasn't a distinction of
5:50
processing method or flavor profile.
5:52
It was a status claim. You were either drinking the
5:54
real thing from the right mountain, or you were drinking
5:57
everything else. Historian Robert Hellyer notes
6:00
that Togano's advantage had a surprisingly practical
6:03
explanation. The temple sits deep in mountain
6:05
recesses and the natural canopy of tree.
6:07
Shelters the fields, blocking sunlight and reducing
6:10
photosynthesis. In other words, Togano's
6:12
microclimate was doing exactly what artificial shading would do
6:16
later on purpose preserving the amino acids, giving it
6:19
sweetness. It was a tribute to the mystique
6:21
of place was actually an accident of shade.
6:25
And it was this technique, the deliberate use of shading, that
6:27
uji farmers would learn to replicate and perfect.
6:30
At first by accident, by putting canopies over fields and spring
6:33
to prevent frost from forming on new buds.
6:35
And then with great attention, by the 15th century, uji had
6:39
replaced toga nose to premier tea region.
6:41
How it did so tells you everything about what uji has
6:44
always really meant. The third Ashikaga Shogun and
6:48
the most powerful man in Japan at the time, Yoshimitsu, from
6:51
1358 to 1408, and the constructor of Kinka Kuji Temple
6:57
or the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, is said to have ordered his
7:01
commanders to open several tea gardens along the banks of the
7:04
Uji River and to curb overproduction.
7:06
Granted the tea masters various privileges in exchange for a ban
7:10
on outside sales. This was an organic market
7:13
success. It was state directed
7:15
agricultural. Development The Uji brand, as
7:18
economist Teramoto Yasuhide writes plainly quote that the
7:22
Uji brand was created in the Moromachi era and developed
7:26
constantly under the protection of government officials.
7:29
That protection became explicit under Japan Unifiers.
7:32
Toyota Mikidoshi ordered a Vermilion seal prohibiting
7:36
anyone outside of Uji from selling their tea under the Uji
7:40
name Deweese Court, The Smithsonian ceramics curator put
7:44
it memorably that Hideyoshi conquered Kyoto with tea just as
7:48
surely as Nobunaga did with fire and sword.
7:51
For the unifiers, tea was not just a beverage, it was a
7:54
political instrument. Nobunaga granted the right to
7:57
hold formal tea ceremonies as reward for military service.
8:00
Both men used tea masters as diplomatic envoys and political
8:04
brokers. Under the Tokugawa Shogun it the
8:06
political protection was formalized into the Ochashi San
8:09
Nakinoma, a system of three hierarchical guilds of tea
8:13
masters who held the state enforced monopoly.
8:16
Documents from Uji City Historical Museum preserve the
8:18
complete roster. 2 heads both from the Kumbayashi family, a
8:22
name who still carries weight today in Uji, with more than one
8:26
Kumbayashi brand competing for that legacy. 11 Gomotu
8:30
rankmasters, 10 Gobakura rank and 11 go to rank.
8:34
The Kumbayashi family simultaneously held the position
8:38
of Uji Daikon, her magistrate, leveraging political authority
8:41
with production control. These families enjoyed special
8:44
privileges like tax incentives, the right to carry swords, and a
8:47
direct supply chain of the Shogun himself.
8:49
The Guild restrictions govern shaded cultivation, or the
8:52
technique that defines matcha. Other regions could grow tea,
8:55
and many did, but producing shade grown tensha under the
8:58
authority of the system was reserved for Uji.
9:00
The monopoly was enforced with surprising rigor, with all new
9:03
tea shipments from Uji were banned until the Shogun's own
9:06
tea jars had departed the city, and the terroir that made Uji
9:09
famous. It was deliberately manufactured
9:12
through fertilizer selection. This is a point that deserves
9:14
more attention than it usually gets because fertilizer is one
9:18
of the single most important variables in determining the
9:20
final flavor profile of matcha. It was true in Eto and remains
9:24
true today. And a 2012 paper titled How
9:27
Green Was My Night Soil, Harvard's Story and David Howe
9:30
documented the excremental economy of Eto era.
9:33
Japan night soil is the polite. Term for what it actually was.
9:36
Human excrement or poop? Collected from urban household
9:40
and sold to farmers as fertilizer.
9:42
And it was not all valued equally.
9:44
Half found that Ugg farmers in the 1830s insisted in sourcing
9:48
their night soil from only two streets in a wealthier district
9:52
in Kyoto where the residents of the nobility were concentrated.
9:56
The reason is simple. Wealthier households and diet
9:59
region protein produce feces with significantly higher
10:01
nitrogen content. Nitrogen is the key nutrient for
10:04
promoting amino acid production, which gives matcha its
10:07
characteristic umami. There's something remarkable
10:10
about this system, especially because the science wasn't
10:12
understood at the time. Fish is a dietary staple and
10:15
wealthier Kyoto household and fish based fertilizer were also
10:20
widely used in Japanese agriculture.
10:22
But applying fish directly to soil has a problem Salt.
10:25
The beauty of routing fish proteins or human digestion is
10:28
that the human kidneys filter. Out the salt.
10:31
Excreting it to urine and sweat. What results is feces.
10:34
That's nitrogen rich organic matter without the soil damaging
10:38
salinity that direct fish fertilizer would bring.
10:41
Uji farmers weren't just recycling waste, they were in
10:43
fact running a biological desalina tion process to
10:47
optimize the soil for tea production.
10:49
Talk about a circular food economy.
10:51
The obsession session with fertilizer management Nuji
10:53
families is not just a historical curiosity, it
10:56
persists to this day. A Souji son of Sei Cha Sujiki
11:00
and Uji Shirakawa is frequently cited as one of the most awarded
11:03
tension producers in Japan, with accolades including the Prime
11:06
Minister's Award and six Minister of Agriculture awards.
11:09
As Unjin and I had learned and documented in the Specialty
11:12
Months podcast after meeting Suji Son for the first time, the
11:15
art and science of fertilizer application in his field is
11:18
beyond meticulous. He weighs the pros and cons of
11:20
variables most people we would never consider how clay versus
11:23
sandy soil types affect fertilizer absorption, how the
11:27
ambient temperature and rainfall alter nutrient uptake and the
11:30
accumulation of gas created by rapeseed cake based fertilizer
11:34
damaging root structures, salt residues left behind different
11:37
types of fish meal, and even the power of glutamic acid rich
11:40
fermenting sugar cane byproduct. And that barely scratches the
11:45
iceberg of the list of the degree of sophistication that
11:48
Suji San does to fertilize his fields.
11:50
This matters because arguably the single most important flavor
11:53
profile to determine matcha quality Zumami.
11:56
And where does zumami come from? Amino acids like L theanine
11:59
produced in the tea plant from nitrogen rich soil.
12:02
Shading amplifies the effect by artificially inhibiting the
12:06
biochemical pathways that would otherwise convert the sweet and
12:09
savory amino acids into bitter and astringent catechins.
12:12
The entire system, fertilizer and shade together is an
12:16
exercise in human intervention. The flavor profile we now
12:19
attribute. To quote Uji, terroir was.
12:21
Never really about the dirt, it was always about what people put
12:25
into it. The supply chain was no casual
12:27
affair either. Over 2 centuries, from 1632 to
12:31
1866, the ochatsu bodoshu, a procession with samurai guards,
12:36
carried uji tensha or unground matcha from Kyoto to the
12:40
Tokugawa court in Edo or modern day Tokyo.
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It held the authority equivalent to the highest aristocratic and
12:46
religious institutions, second only to the imperial family
12:49
itself. Even the Lords of the Tokugawa
12:51
go, the three most privileged branch families of the shogunate
12:55
were required to exit their palanquins and have their
12:57
vassals dismount whenever the tea yards pass.
13:00
The roads along the route were repaired in advance.
13:03
Funerals, farming, and even flying kites were banned.
13:06
In 1867, the final year of the shogunate, tea was sent from Uji
13:10
to Edo, but for the first time without the procession, the
13:13
Togugawa government was in its death throes.
13:16
Shogun Yoshinobu would resign that November.
13:18
The ritual that had projected the state's authority through
13:21
tea for over 2 centuries simply had no state left to project it.
13:26
By 1868, the Meiji Restoration dissolved the feudal system
13:30
entirely, and the Ochatsu Bodosu passed into history.
13:34
So what happened? What happened next was near
13:35
extinction, followed by reinvention.
13:38
The Meiji Restoration from 1868 dissolved the feudal system and
13:42
the guilt protections that came with it.
13:44
Many tea companies went bankrupt without their direct
13:47
benefactors. The clientele for much of
13:49
vanished overnight. The shelving, the daimio, the
13:51
imperial court, nobles who had sustained this trade for
13:54
centuries. Macho production, which had
13:56
never exceeded more than about 40 tons annually under the Guild
14:00
system, collapsed it just 4 tons in 1872.
14:04
But the collapse was In total by 1884, tea production had
14:08
recovered to 48 tons. And the reason tells a familiar
14:12
story. The Meiji era produced a class
14:14
of wealthy industrialists, and with it came modern cultural
14:18
devotees that turned to tea ceremony.
14:20
For the same reason that he, Yoshi had to legitimize their
14:24
power. Men like Matsuda Takishi,
14:26
president of Matsunko and later known by the teen name Dono,
14:30
became some of the most influential patrons of Chanoyu.
14:33
As sociologists, A Christian Surak argues in Making Tea,
14:37
Making Japan a fantastic book by the way, tea developed in tandem
14:41
with the shifting contours of power politics.
14:43
Industrial magnets of Meiji Japan took up tea ceremony, much
14:47
as the warlords before them, as a vehicle for cultural
14:50
legitimacy and in doing so keeping Mata alive.
14:53
But the far more consequential shift wasn't at the top of
14:56
society, it was in the schools. Prior to Meiji, women held
14:59
relatively marginal roles in tea ceremony.
15:01
The official Orasenke approved narrative is that women had no
15:04
participation until Dankensai, the 11th generation Iimoto or
15:08
hereditary Grandmaster of Orasenke quote liberated women,
15:12
allowing them to study tea. However, as tea scholar Rebecca
15:16
Corbett argues, and cultivating femininity women in tea culture
15:19
and Edo and Meiji Japan, the reality of women's tea
15:22
participation in China. It was far more complex both
15:26
before Meiji and that the orthodox narrative reinforces
15:29
patriarchal assumptions by retrospectively bestowing credit
15:33
onto a quote great man of China, you history.
15:36
Regardless of this historiography, what happened
15:38
next was transformative. From matcha the Earth sank a
15:41
school. Through a stroke of strategic.
15:42
Genius worked in lockstep with the Meiji state to incorporate
15:45
tea ceremony and the curricula of girls schools.
15:48
Tea would teach young women manners, the related Japanese
15:51
arts that touched Chanu, and would serve as bridal training.
15:54
This is part of a larger campaign called Quote Good Wives
15:57
and Wise Mothers, a name that perhaps hasn't aged well, whose
16:00
goal was to cultivate a distinctly Japanese a generation
16:04
amid the rapidly globalizing world of the late 19th and early
16:09
20th centuries. Tea ceremony and by extension
16:12
matcha consumption would teach this generation about about
16:14
their own culture, and there is perhaps no living art more
16:17
richly and specifically Japanese than Chana Yu.
16:20
As it touches and supports a web of other crafts and industries.
16:24
From ceramics, incense, lacquerware, kaiseki cuisine,
16:28
flower arrangement, garden design, architecture, iron work,
16:32
textiles, bamboo carving and so many others, the idea was that
16:36
young Japanese girls would be trained in these traditional
16:39
arts and culturating them in their own heritage and equipping
16:43
them to pass it on to their children.
16:45
To this day, the vast majority of tea ceremony practitioners in
16:47
Japan are upper to middle class women who learn China you in
16:51
their youth and return to it after their children left the
16:54
house. It was this generation of new
16:56
practitioners that kept uji matcha alive through the 20th
16:59
century. Today, roughly 2 million strong,
17:01
they remain one of the most important domestic consumer
17:04
bases for the matcha industry. But even with this institutional
17:08
support, matcha remain marginal in the broader tea market.
17:11
From the Meiji Restoration to the 1980s, there was
17:14
significantly more Go Karl produced than matcha.
17:16
Even in 1980, matcha amounted to under 400 tons out of Japan's
17:22
100,000 ton T output. For nearly the entire modern
17:26
era, the product that now drives the global export boom was a
17:29
rounding error. Meanwhile, the tea industry
17:31
moved on. Japan's Meiji export broom was
17:34
primarily driven by sancha and bancha, not matcha.
17:37
In 1954, geographic study by Yukita Noriyoshi documented what
17:42
has been happening for decades. Production.
17:44
Was physically shifting away from Uji.
17:46
Proper to surrounding mountainous areas where Uji City
17:49
remained positioned as its commercial and blending center,
17:52
the pattern that defines Uji matcha today, where tea grown
17:56
elsewhere is produced and sold under the Uji name, was already
17:59
established by mid century. What changed the calculus was
18:02
mechanization. In 1912, the first electrically
18:05
operated Macha stone mills, or Ishiusus, were invented.
18:08
But the real. Breakthrough came in the 1920s
18:11
when Hori Chojiro of the Hori Shimai and Tea House completed
18:14
the Hori Style tension dryer after years of painstaking
18:18
effort. Before this innovation, tension
18:20
processing required artisanal hand drying skills guarded
18:23
within Uji families. It was a it was a hand processed
18:26
product. A Hori's machine used a
18:27
combination of radiant and convection heat to produce
18:31
uniform high quality tension in a fraction of the time.
18:34
And he didn't monopolize it. He taught the technique freely
18:37
to other producers. Most tension processing machines
18:40
in Japan today traced our roots back to the Hori style kiln.
18:43
The Hori kiln from a geographic dispersal possible for the first
18:46
time, but for 50 years almost no one needed it to all of Kyodo's
18:50
tanja was still handpicked, the market was limited to tea
18:53
ceremony, and the old production zone had more than enough
18:55
capacity. A fourth generation Uji matcha
18:58
wholesaler, whose family had been in the tea trade since the
19:01
adult period, documented the production landscape of the era.
19:04
In 1975, two years after he took over his family business, Uji
19:08
produced about 54 tons of tanja JoJo, nearby town produced 24
19:13
tons of tensha, Yowata produced 17, and huazuka, A mountainous
19:18
town that today produces roughly 41% of Kyoto's tensha, produced
19:23
nothing at all. And then came the ice cream.
19:25
In 1996, Haagen Dazs launched green tea ice cream in Japan.
19:29
It outsold vanilla 2 to one that Uji wholesaler, who was at the
19:33
Kyoto tea auctions that spring. Watch the market transform in
19:37
real time. A single buyer acting on a
19:39
massive Haagen Dazs order paid 2000 to ¥3000 above the going
19:44
rate for every lot, pushing prices to 150% the previous
19:48
year. Tenche that sold for ¥5000 per
19:51
kilo was suddenly going for seven or 8000.
19:54
The industry still calls it the Hagen shock.
19:56
Wazooka's tenche kilns went from one in 1989 to 4 by 1996, and by
20:02
2015 up to to 34. An entire town's matcha industry
20:07
was built in a single generation, driven not by
20:10
centuries of terroir, but by consumer demand for matcha
20:13
flavored ice cream. Obera himself identifies one of
20:16
the key reasons why Wazooka succeeded, and he wrote quote it
20:20
can be sold as ujimacha post quote Wazooka didn't unlock some
20:25
dormant potential in its hillsides.
20:26
It retooled when the market made it profitable and the uji label
20:30
made it possible. But didn't other regions always
20:33
supply uji, and that's the standard defense, and it's worth
20:35
taking seriously. Advocates of the broader
20:37
Ujimacha definition argue that the surrounding towns that have
20:41
supplied Uji blunt houses for centuries.
20:43
They point to the Wazuka, Uji, Tawara Jo Yo Kyotanabe as
20:47
integral parts of the Ujit ecosystem.
20:50
And they're right for Sencha. But for Macha, A shaded tensha
20:54
was a state enforced Uji monopoly through the Edo period,
20:58
and the town's, now folded into the Ujimacha definition, built
21:02
their tensha industries mostly in the 20th century, not over
21:06
centuries. For example, Wazuka produces
21:08
around 40% of Kyoto's tensha produced none in 1975.
21:13
The terrain compounds the point. The steep slopes and wind of
21:17
places like Wazooka would have made shaded cultivation
21:20
extremely difficult, perhaps commercially impossible, without
21:24
the invention of kamisha, or synthetic shading cloth that
21:29
spread throughout the 20th century.
21:31
The shading technology of the Otto and Meiji Japan was not
21:34
good enough for tension cultivation to spread to
21:37
mountainous terroir, especially windy mountainous terroir.
21:40
The Tana or the shelf and frame canopy needs relatively flat
21:44
ground and the Hanzu Reiden reichstra covers blow off
21:47
easily, especially on hillsides. Untangling sancha from matcha.
21:52
This is the conflation at the heart of the broader ujimacha
21:54
definition defense is that Uji Chao is a broad category that
21:58
covers Sancho, gokro and matcha, and the surrounding region
22:02
supplied sancha to uji blend houses.
22:05
And this is widely understood as true in the trade.
22:08
But here's the irony. You talk to any Uji based matcha
22:10
farmer and I'll tell you almost no one in Uji produces pancha
22:14
anymore and they never really did.
22:16
According to Yoto Prefectures own 2024 production survey, Wuji
22:20
City produced just 2.1 tons of Sancha, which is less than 1% of
22:25
the prefectures 250 tons Sancha output.
22:29
And this is just. Kyoto Prefecture Wuji is a
22:31
tensha town, but Tensha, the raw material for matcha, had a
22:35
completely separate supply chain governed by the Guild monopoly.
22:38
Historically, the most striking proof comes from Wuji Tawara
22:41
itself. Nagatani so and the father of
22:43
Sancha spent 15 years developing the steam leaf process, which he
22:48
completed in 1738. Specifically because, as Local
22:51
histories notes, he was quote troubled by the restriction on
22:55
the use of the canopy shading method or and shading in
22:58
general. This process technique is often
23:01
referred to as the quote Uji method, which gets conflated
23:05
with matcha all the time, but he's referring to the invention
23:08
of Sancha processing, not matcha.
23:11
Fuji Tawara's entirety identity exists because it was banned
23:15
from making tensho when shaded cultivation was a government
23:18
controlled monopoly exclusively within the boundaries of Fuji
23:22
itself. The town that many site is proof
23:24
of the Ugi T region's deep matcha roots actually proves the
23:28
opposite. Its famous contribution to
23:30
Japanese tea was born out of historical exclusion from the
23:34
macho supply chain. Even the institutions now
23:37
promoting the unified Ugi T narrative acknowledges if you
23:40
read it carefully in the research materials for the Ugi T
23:43
is a cultural landscape. UNESCO World Heritage
23:47
Application state that UGT masters utilize processing and
23:50
blending techniques to produce diverse and high quality tea,
23:54
firmly establishing the UGI name.
23:56
Processing and blending, not terroir, not geography.
23:59
The committee building the case for World Heritage status is
24:02
admitting, and its own research notes that the brand was built
24:06
on the crafting skill of blending, not the unique
24:09
properties of that specific land.
24:12
And the World Heritage bid itself tells the geographic
24:15
story that contradicts the label.
24:16
The proposal covers 8 municipalities across the entire
24:20
Yamashiro region, like Wazuka and Uji Terwara, areas that had
24:25
nothing to do with matcha production until very recently,
24:28
and the bid attempts to construct a unified cultural
24:30
narrative around quote. UGT is a broad category, and for
24:34
Sencha, historical and geographic connections across
24:37
these municipalities are defensible.
24:39
But for the product that drives the brand's global fame, Matcha,
24:43
that unity doesn't hold, the Macha story doesn't expand.
24:47
To most of these. Places until the 20th century.
24:49
The UNESCO proposal in effect borrows the geographic breadth
24:53
of Sanchez history and drapes it over a product whose supply
24:57
chain was historically confined to UJI itself.
25:00
Not to mention that this bid draws a boundary.
25:03
That the Uji. Matcha trademark completely
25:06
ignores by allowing tea from outside the Yamashiro region in
25:11
Kyoto Prefecture, like for example, Fukuchiyama, as well as
25:14
3 entirely separate prefectures, Narachiga and Mia.
25:18
The beef scandal and the label. The timing of the label
25:21
expansion and registered trademark in 2004, as discussed
25:24
in the beginning isn't a coincidence.
25:26
And two, in January 2002, Snow Brown food was caught relabeling
25:30
30 tons of Australian beef as domestic Japanese beef.
25:34
Consumer trust was shaken across the food industry.
25:37
Japan responded with a food safety basic law and industry
25:40
scrambled to formalize the regional labeling before someone
25:43
formalized finalized it for them.
25:45
In 2003, the tea industry introduced an experimental
25:48
framework. UGT must contain at least 50%
25:51
Kyoto grown tea, but no consensus was reached because
25:55
there simply wasn't enough Kyoto lease to meet demand.
25:59
On March 25th, 2004, the Kyoto Prefectural Tea Chamber expanded
26:03
the definition at Ugi City Hall as the Kyoto Shampoo reported
26:07
Quote. The Chamber decided on voluntary
26:10
standards for UGT origin labeling on March 25th,
26:13
stipulated that quote UGT must be quote produced in Kyoto,
26:19
Narashiga and Mia prefectures and processed within the
26:22
prefecture. The idea for a 50% Kyoto
26:25
requirement vanished. The industry's response to a
26:28
crisis of honesty was to make the label broader, not more
26:31
precise. And these are not centuries old
26:34
tensha and Macha suppliers. They are loosely tea regions
26:37
that pivoted when the market demanded it.
26:40
For contrast, look at Nishio produces a Nishio and IT
26:43
prefecture secure a Gia Geographic Indication Protection
26:47
in March 2017, tying quote Nishio matcha to a specific
26:51
place with strong sourcing rules only matcha from tea grown and
26:55
produced entirely within Nishio City, Anjou City, and excuse my
26:59
pronunciation, Hazu Gun Kiracho could carry the name.
27:03
But by February 2020 they withdrew from GI, the first time
27:07
any product have ever been removed from Japan's GI
27:10
protectionist. The restrictions priced them out
27:13
roughly 3 times above competitors.
27:15
They chose volume over provenance.
27:18
UJI chose the opposite path. Keep the brand loose and absorb
27:21
the volume. Neither choice serves the
27:23
consumer particularly well. What makes the Nishio story
27:26
especially interesting? A scale.
27:28
Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, or MAF,
27:31
describes IT prefecture as one of Japan's leading tenta
27:34
production areas, with 70% of its RHA, or unrefined bulk, T
27:39
being tenta. This is not a boutique
27:42
operation, and yet most consumers outside of Japan have
27:45
never heard of Nishio matcha. The demand cycle funnels their
27:48
tension elsewhere. Does it even matter?
27:51
As the earlier sections laid out, most matcha labeled Quote
27:54
Ujimacha neither comes from Uji nor his process there.
27:58
The loosest definition is the Quote Ujimacha blend.
28:01
It can be split 5050 half from the Four Prefecture trademark
28:05
zone Kyoto, Narashiga and MIE and processed in Kyoto
28:09
Prefecture, and half tension from elsewhere such as Nishio,
28:12
Kagushima, or among the industry's more shady players,
28:16
perhaps from China. From there, the definition is
28:18
Titan to the Four Prefecture zone alone, then the Yamashira
28:22
counties of southern Kyoto and the quote Wazzuka Macha equals
28:26
Ujimacha camp, and finally the true single origin Ujimacha made
28:31
from Ujigrown Tanja. And this is where the
28:33
Inconvenient Truth gets uncomfortable.
28:35
Because the deeper problem with quote Ujimacha isn't just that
28:39
it's geographically misleading and unclear.
28:42
It's that even if it were from Uji, wouldn't to explain the
28:45
quality. Over the past few years in the
28:47
Specialty Matcha podcast, some G and I have had dozens of
28:49
conversations with producers, blenders, researchers, about
28:52
what actually determines matcha quality.
28:55
The consensus, spoken quietly at first but now more openly, is
28:59
that tawar is one of the least important variables of the final
29:02
cup. The flavor profile of matcha is.
29:05
Overwhelmingly determined by human decisions.
29:07
Shade, timing and duration, fertilizer type and application
29:11
schedule, and cultivar selection.
29:13
Tensha kiln temperature and air flow management, and the speed
29:16
of the stone mill and pressure. Change any one of those
29:19
variables and you change the taste dramatically.
29:21
Given the same techniques quote Uji style matcha can be produced
29:26
anywhere, and it is, and it doesn't make necessarily fake,
29:29
it makes it a triumph of human craft, not just a miracle of
29:33
soil in place. The mythologizing of uji as a
29:35
terroir has reached the point of dogma, and the single origin
29:39
framework that the specialty market has imported from coffee
29:41
and wine doesn't map onto matcha the way we want it to.
29:45
When a company stamps quote single origin uji on a tin,
29:48
they're telling you to taste a place, but what you're actually
29:51
tasting is the accumulated knowledge of of shading,
29:54
calibration, nitrogen management, and centuries of
29:57
intentional genetic drift that produced.
29:59
Cultivars like Goko. Uji hakare Asahi and the
30:02
specific processing decisions of whoever handled the leaf after
30:06
harvest. The single origin concept is
30:08
being overfitted onto a product that it doesn't describe.
30:11
This misattribution has real cost.
30:13
Skilled producers outside of the quote right geography struggle
30:17
to get recognition. Mediocre matcha can write a
30:20
famous name and consumers never developed the vocabulary to to
30:23
understand what they're actually paying for.
30:26
The mythology protects the wrong things, its deception for the
30:29
sake of misattributing quality. The demand problem here's what
30:33
the mythologizing of quote uji matcha actually produces a
30:36
demand problem that is rapidly turning into a supply crisis.
30:39
National timeshare production has surged 2.7 times in the past
30:43
decade to over 5000 tons. Green tea exports hit a record
30:47
¥72,000, with 84% of it being powdered tea.
30:52
Powdered tea accounts for 85 percent of US green tea exports
30:55
by volume, and tensha commands a price premium nearly three times
30:59
that of sencha. Everyone wants in.
31:01
Pagoshima has quietly surpassed used wokas, Japan's largest tea
31:05
producer, by volume, for the first time in history.
31:08
But Kyoto cannot meet this demand, let alone uji.
31:11
Between 2000 and 2020, it's tea farming households dropped from
31:14
1300 to just under 500 on the 21.4% of Kyoto's tea acreage
31:20
uses riding style harvest machines, compared to 80. 7.5%
31:24
in Chisawoka. Most Kyoto tea is still machine
31:27
harvested but with handheld portable.
31:30
Cutters operated by workers on foot, not the right on style
31:33
harvesters that enable the volume.
31:34
Production of flatter regions and 85% of Kyoto's garden sits
31:39
on mountainous terrain where these right on machines simply
31:42
cannot go. The infrastructure behind actual
31:45
Ujimacha from Ujigrown Tencha is a handful of aging farmers
31:49
handpicking these for an industry that now measures
31:52
demand in the thousands of tons. Ask any new matcha consumer what
31:56
they want and you're very likely to hear I want matcha from Fuji
31:58
Japan. I hear that's what's best.
32:00
And who can blame them? That's what every blog, every
32:02
vendor, every educational article has told them.
32:04
The mythologizing creates the demand, which creates more
32:08
content, reinforcing the myth, which creates more demand.
32:11
It's a self reinforcing cycle. In fact, nearly every can of
32:14
quote Fujimacha sold in Europe as a single origin product are
32:18
entirely fake. If you believe in the intended
32:20
spirit of a quote single origin all but a a town full of Uji
32:24
tanja producers practice conventional Japanese farming
32:27
methods which results in macho that exceeds the E use pesticide
32:31
residue requirements and the people crowds out are the ones
32:34
doing some of the most interesting work in macho right
32:36
now in Nagasaki producers are experimenting with machines that
32:40
simultaneously steam and pan fry tanja.
32:43
In Wazooka 100 year old Sai Rai seed propagated field produce a
32:47
tea with a genetic diversity that a cultivar can never
32:50
replicate. In Uji Tawara, growers are
32:52
planting 10 mil, a new cultivar with its own emerging identity,
32:56
and Toyota IT. Some innovators are
32:58
intentionally withering their tension, producing a fragrance
33:01
closer to a baojong or a lightly oxidized northern Taiwanese tea
33:05
style than anything you'd expect from a Japanese matcha.
33:08
These stories don't fit on a label that just says uji, and
33:11
most consumers will never hear them because there's no space
33:14
left in the consumers mind for the regions doing the most
33:17
creative work, It's easier just to sell uji than to educate
33:21
someone about a place they'd never heard of.
33:23
The incentive model feeds on itself.
33:25
Vendors label things Uji because that's what moves.
33:27
Education materials reinforce the myth because that's what
33:30
people search for. And the regions that could
33:32
diversify the market and build resilience into the supply chain
33:36
remain invisible. The call to action for specialty
33:39
vendors is twofold. First, stop mislabeling Ujimacha
33:43
as a single origin product unless it is actually made from
33:46
Uji Gron Tansha. Almost all the quotes single
33:48
origin Ujimacha sold today is unknowingly fake.
33:52
Second, we should start highlighting other places not
33:55
for the sake of terroir necessarily, because we've
33:57
established that terroir is the wrong framework for matcha, but
34:00
for the sake of what we might call secondary terroir, the
34:02
human part, processing knowledge, the emerging
34:06
processing styles, and the specific decisions that
34:09
producers in other regions are making to develop their own
34:12
identities. We're starting to see this
34:14
emerge. Kagoshima producers bringing
34:16
different cultivar preferences like say, May, a cultivar
34:19
specifically bred for the region.
34:21
Nishio operations scaling with precision and Mia is relatively
34:25
new Tensha infrastructure. These are the.
34:27
Stories that move the market forward and give consumers a
34:30
more sophisticated set of preferences that break the cycle
34:33
of everyone just quote uji matcha without knowing what that
34:37
really means. The way past the demand problem
34:39
is through it. More names, more regions, more
34:42
stories about how the matcha was made and who made it rather than
34:46
where. Uji no matcha The best brands
34:49
are dropping the generic term quote Ujimacha.
34:51
At a rate. As fast as they're dropping
34:53
ceremonial grade, the ones that actually source from Uji drop
34:57
the generic quote uji name in favor of sub region cultivar and
35:01
farmer. Shirakawa Cocosho Uji city.
35:04
These names tell smaller, truer stories, and there's a 200 year
35:08
old Kyoto tea shop made clear in a 2013 notice to customers about
35:13
concerns over origin and sourcing.
35:15
Even within the system, there's a hierarchy of quote uji this
35:18
that that acknowledges what everyone in the industry already
35:21
understands. Not all Quote ujimacha trademark
35:25
supply regions are created equal, and the label says very
35:28
little about what's in the tent. To be clear, this is not an
35:31
argument against blending. The traditional Uji blend houses
35:34
represent centuries of accumulated skill, the art of
35:36
blending tension from multiple sources, and do a consistent,
35:40
balanced product that is a legitimately and deeply
35:43
respected craft. But a tent generation blender in
35:45
Kyoto combines leaves from Wazooka, JoJo and.
35:48
Pounds in NIA into a blend that tastes the way their families
35:51
customers expect that skill, and for most customers what they
35:54
think of as quote ujimacha is in fact one of these blends.
35:58
The problem is not blending. The problem is calling a blend a
36:01
single origin product or labeled as coming from quote uji Kyoto
36:05
Japan in a way that implies a single origin when it is not.
36:09
That's an erasure of transparency.
36:11
Every time A10 carries an implication, a set of
36:14
interesting human stories disappears.
36:16
The farmer in Wazooka who makes their own organic fertilizer
36:19
producers. Angelio, who have been recently
36:21
granted permission to grow the highly coveted and still
36:24
protected Narino cultivar. The farmer experimenting with
36:27
seed propagating from known cultivars, hoping the
36:30
genetically diverse offspring has similar taste
36:33
characteristics with the power of a taproot structure.
36:35
No cultivar could ever have their contributions vanish under
36:39
a single geographic label and the claim of provenance that
36:42
doesn't hold up to scrutiny. If you want to drink tea from a
36:45
blend house, that's a perfectly good choice.
36:47
But know that what you're drinking is an uji style matcha
36:50
blend, not a single origin product.
36:52
The industry owes consumers that distinction.
36:54
There's an irony buried in history here.
36:56
Wabicha, the austere style tea ceremony that emphasizes
37:00
simplicity and restraint over material display, traces A
37:04
lineage from Maratha Shuko through Senoriku.
37:07
It's the tradition Uji claims as its spiritual heritage, and it's
37:10
built on a rejection of material fetishism.
37:13
In the Nambaroku, Rico is recorded saying quote to be
37:16
concerned with the quality of the dwelling in which you serve
37:19
tea or the flavor of the food with it is to emphasize the
37:22
mundane. It is enough if the dwelling 1
37:25
uses does not leak water and the food served suffices to stave
37:28
off hunger. Riku is talking about the
37:30
physical trappings of the tea room and not the tea itself, but
37:34
the principle underneath that fixating on the material
37:36
prestige of the vessel rather than the spirit of the practice,
37:40
misses the point and maps uncomfortably well onto a market
37:43
that fetishizes a place name while ignoring the hands that
37:46
actually shaped the product. Fuji no Mata In Japanese it
37:49
reads now naturally the matcha of uji.
37:51
But reading in English a second meaning surfaces Uji no matcha.
37:56
Almost no uji matcha comes from uji.
37:58
One reading is a tribute to a centuries old accumulation of
38:02
processing knowledge and craft, and the other is a lament that
38:05
almost none of it comes from the place to label claims.
38:08
Both readings are true. The matcha of Uji is real, but
38:11
it's not just a place, it's a method.
38:13
It's a lineage of processing knowledge and accumulated
38:16
understanding of shade and steam and stone.
38:19
That heritage travels. It travelled when the Hori Kiln
38:21
left Uji. It travelled when Mazuka farmers
38:24
retooled. It travelled when Kagoshima
38:26
farmers went to Uji to learn directly from Uji Macha
38:28
producers and then brought those techniques home.
38:31
It's travelling now as producers across Japan are building new
38:34
facilities with new ambitions. And it's travelling beyond
38:37
Japan's borders entirely. Kitagawa Hambe, a 6th generation
38:40
Uji Tiha founded in 1861, has established a subsidiary in Dao
38:45
County in Hubei Province in China, applying uji cultivation
38:49
and processing methods with the stated goal of building a matcha
38:52
base. Quote as famous as Japan.
38:55
Aya, the major Nishio producer, set up a subsidiary in Jijiao in
38:58
China in 2005. The craft doesn't care about
39:01
borders. In a way, all matcha grown
39:03
outside of Uji is at least in part spiritually Uji matcha,
39:07
since Uji was the birth place of shaded cultivation and was the
39:10
only place place in the world where it was practiced for
39:13
hundreds of years. In recent years an explosion of
39:15
non Japanese founded quote single origin matcha companies
39:19
have begun celebrating the human stories underneath the tea.
39:22
Many of these founders wandered into Japan without context or
39:25
connections, fell in love with the product, and started asking
39:28
questions. Is this from Uji?
39:30
Turns out to be a shockingly complex question and is almost
39:33
always answered with yes and the unspoken communication is
39:37
typically yes. It is blended in Uji or in a
39:41
nearby Yamashiro town like Yutanabe or Uji Tawara or yes.
39:45
It meets the trademark definition of brand.
39:48
Owners and suppliers frequently talk past each other when
39:51
discussing origins and the all too painful and awkward question
39:55
of quote. Does this matcha come from Uji
39:57
grown tensha? Almost never gets asked.
39:59
This isn't just an Uji problem with Nishio's GI withdrawal.
40:03
Producers are almost certainly blending in Tensha from higher
40:06
volume areas and labeling it as Nisha.
40:08
Matcha. And the problem isn't just
40:10
limited to matcha. Until recently it was entirely
40:13
legal to blend in tea from a higher volume region with less
40:16
consumer cachet like Agashima into Shizuoka sencha.
40:20
Sourcing with accurate provenance to sell a truly
40:23
single origin product is very difficult in Japan.
40:26
We've even seen major Nishio based producers set up new
40:29
factories in Yamashiro counties in Kyoto Prefecture stating
40:32
quote as long as we deal in Kyoto matcha, we should
40:34
manufacture it for ourselves locally in Kyoto to deliver
40:38
higher air quality and fresher matcha to consumers.
40:41
The source is not disclosed but it's directly quoted from their
40:44
own marketing materials. Quote fresher Mata sounds
40:47
admirable until you realize that Nishio is a 2 hour drive from
40:50
Kyoto and this is how new uji matcha gets born.
40:54
It's not from uji based matcha farmers reviving an abandoned
40:58
teapot, or from innovations increasing yield, or from people
41:02
planting new gardens. It's the full utilization of the
41:06
loophole so generously carved out by the quote processed in
41:09
Kyoto. Ujimacha trademark definition.
41:12
So many players are literally manufacturing an origin under
41:17
these bulls. Even in Japan, most consumers
41:19
believe that Ujimacha comes from uji.
41:22
Nothing will change unless consumers start to demand more
41:24
transparency because everyone in the quote Ujimacha system has
41:29
every incentive to keep it going.
41:30
And it will probably take another scandal for MATH or the
41:33
Kyoto TI Cooperative Association who are the owners of the Fuji
41:37
Matcha trademark and other regulatory bodies to wake up and
41:41
build enough consensus to make a more meaningful and honest
41:45
change in policy. We've even learned through a
41:47
primary source that even some of the most respected Fuji based
41:51
Matcha blend houses that we've all heard of who claim to have
41:54
be sourcing from the four prefecture trademark zone of
41:58
Kyoto, Narashiga and MIE has started reaching out elsewhere
42:01
for their sourcing. Even the most generous
42:04
interpretation of single origin by recognizing the trademark
42:08
zone is being eroded. Unless you go to the source and
42:11
talk to the farmers who are selling the tea to these blunt
42:14
houses, you would never know many new matcha founders without
42:17
intending to applied a single origin frameworks imported from
42:20
specialty coffee and wine and in doing so became part of the
42:24
problem. This series describes creating
42:26
more demand for the name Uji rather than from the farmers and
42:29
the processing choices in the regions who actually to
42:32
determine what ends up in the cup.
42:34
And the best of them are adapting.
42:35
The weight of the name Uji flattens everything underneath
42:39
it. 1000 human stories about craft, tradition, innovation and
42:43
a place get compressed into two syllables on a label every time
42:47
a consumer asks for quote Uji without knowing what they mean.
42:50
A producer in another region loses a chance to tell their
42:53
story every time a vendor stamps quote uji on a tin without
42:57
asking where the leaves actually come from.
42:59
The feedback loop Titans creating demand for new region
43:02
takes work, and frankly it's much easier to receive a
43:05
priceless from a Japanese supplier offering quote ujimacha
43:09
and just not ask questions. To tell a more honest story
43:12
requires effort and at the very least, awareness.
43:15
After talking to dozens of matcha brand founders over the
43:17
past few years, I'm still shocked at how little awareness
43:21
there is about the true provenance of most ujimacha that
43:24
their marketing and selling. Getting to the truth can require
43:27
going against the grain, a practice which is enormously
43:30
difficult. Japan, with the social cost of
43:32
challenging an established narrative, is high.
43:35
The people doing the most interesting work in matcha are
43:37
paying that cost, and they deserve to be hurt.
43:39
One of the definitions of a commodity is that its components
43:42
can be seamlessly swapped for one another.
43:44
That's the status quo. Uji matcha.
43:46
But a salmidori cultivar from a specific harvest, from a
43:49
specific farmer in a specific region, that's infundible.
43:53
That's specialty, and specialty is the kind of market the matcha
43:56
industry is going to need if it wants to survive.
43:58
Many people assume that a quote licensed Japanese tea master or
44:03
a decade long tea ceremony practitioner are tea Conosaurus
44:06
and directly support an industry of farmers.
44:09
Not only appalling tradition but also innovating and moving the
44:12
ball forward. That couldn't be further from
44:14
the truth. Up to 99% of people that study
44:16
tea ceremony and they know less about the product than a matcha
44:19
influencer on TikTok buying a can of Rockies matcha single
44:23
origin Ogu Midori and comparing it to the same cultivar but from
44:26
a different prefecture. Until very recently, most tea
44:29
ceremony practitioners didn't even know what a cultivar was.
44:32
Tea ceremony practitioners ironically go to great efforts
44:35
to understand the history, craftsmanship and artistry of
44:39
calligraphy, tea bowls, and of course, their prized tea scoops.
44:42
But when it comes to matcha, they typically stop with the
44:44
poetic name, whether it's suitable for usachar koicha, and
44:47
the endorsement of the Iyamoto from their school.
44:50
They need to be told what is high quality by the brand or
44:53
Iyamoto. These are not people who have
44:55
been educated or trained enough to be willing to pay for a
44:59
product with true provenance, and a transparent label
45:02
recognizes the effort of the people who actually make the
45:06
tea. Every poetically named product
45:08
erases the hands of the people that touch the leaf and
45:11
simultaneously relieves the consumer of the burden of
45:14
acquiring preferences and cultivating their own gustatory
45:17
judgment on objective facts that determine macho flavor profile
45:21
outcomes. There is no celebration of
45:23
cultivar shading style, regional processing technique,
45:26
fertilizer, philosophy, and all of the factors that produce an
45:30
incredible, virtually unappreciated diversity of human
45:33
stories and flavor. Profiles.
45:35
Tea ceremony practitioners who represented the overwhelming
45:38
demand for macho through the 20th century are aging out.
45:40
Japan's birth rate hit a record low in 2024, dropping below
45:45
730,000 births. For the first time in recent
45:48
years, Japanese adult diaper sales have outgrown baby diaper
45:52
sales. The future of Japanese tea and
45:54
matcha in general, is not in the domestic market.
45:57
Young Japanese are not studying China Yuan Mass and the days of
46:00
quote good wives and wives mothers is gone.
46:03
Although abysmal by G7 standards, Japan has made
46:06
progress on women's rights, thus weakening the structural
46:09
pipeline of new tea ceremony practitioners discussed in Part
46:13
2. In 2024, Maruku Koyama and made
46:16
an announcement that was the shot heard around the world.
46:18
It shocked everyone and honestly came as a bit of a surprise that
46:21
for the first time in its 300 year history, they might sell
46:25
out of matcha. The matcha boom created global
46:27
demand like this industry has never seen, and nearly all of it
46:31
is for quote uji matcha. Everyone believes they're buying
46:34
a single origin product. The reality is that they're
46:36
guzzling trademark. This is a collective
46:38
hallucination and the industry has every incentive to keep it
46:42
going. Seemingly out of nowhere, an
46:44
entirely new and global market caught this very traditional
46:47
industry by surprise. And these consumers care about
46:49
very different things. Ideas of knowing where your food
46:52
came from, who grew it, and what makes special are the
46:55
cornerstones of contemporary global culture.
46:58
The matcha boom gave this industry a future.
47:00
Transparency is the only thing that will let it keep 1.
47:03
You pick up a 10, you whisk it, you drink it, and the liquid is
47:06
vibrant and thick and sweet in a way that has nothing to do with
47:10
sugar. The tin told you something
47:11
before you opened it. Sami Dori cultivar, 25 days,
47:15
shaded, fertilized with oyster shells, fish meal and rapeseed
47:18
oil cake. Stone milled by a producer who
47:20
you can look up and whose method you can trace.
47:23
Somewhere in that sweetness is an immunity acid called L
47:25
theanine, built from the nitrogen in that fish meal,
47:28
amplified by those weeks of darkness that kept the leaf from
47:31
converting it into something bitter.
47:32
Every decision is legible. Every hand is made.
47:36
The craft in your bowl has a lineage.
47:38
It started in Uji 4 centuries ago in a handful of families who
47:42
guarded it with the force of the state and has been traveling
47:45
ever since. You take another sip.
47:47
It's still beautiful. It might even be more beautiful
47:49
now that you know what you're actually tasting.
47:52
Not a place, not the false illusion of a place, but of
47:55
everything someone chose to bring that matcha to life.
47:58
A commodity is something you consume.
48:00
A specialty product is something you choose.
48:02
Most people never learn the difference because they stop
48:05
reading at Uji. And that concludes the end of
48:08
the Uji no Matcha series. Thanks so much for listening.
48:11
This was over one year of accumulated research.
48:14
It was quite the battle putting it together.
48:16
If you made it this far, I'm incredibly grateful.
48:19
If you have any questions or push back, let us know.
48:22
We have a couple other articles coming down the pipeline that
48:26
are kind of branch offshoots of some of the research that we
48:29
couldn't include in this piece because it would have really
48:32
exploded the length. And so stay tuned for more
48:34
content on the sub stack. And if you you enjoyed this,
48:37
please consider sharing with the friend and we'll see you in the
48:39
next one. Thanks.