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What is and was Uji Matcha? · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:06
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
0:09
My name is Ryan. This is Michael Ho Zhongjun who
0:11
also goes by Sam. Hello, hello.
0:13
And we're the Co founders of Sanko Matcha Products.
0:15
Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey,
0:18
Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
0:21
And today we're talking about what is and was Uji Matcha.
0:25
And this is a little bit different.
0:28
So last week, you would have heard the audio version of an
0:32
article we've been working on for a very long time.
0:34
We've been working in the research together.
0:36
And then I took the lead and putting it all in one article.
0:40
And Zhongjun just had a chance to read it.
0:42
He made some mild edits. And this is an editorial
0:46
conversation about this piece, what's in it.
0:50
It's sort of our thoughts and how it kind of all came
0:53
together. So if you haven't had a chance
0:55
to listen to it or read it, I recommend that you do either in
0:59
this podcast feed or also where we published it on Sub stack in
1:04
A5 part series. So Zongju, what were your first
1:07
impressions reading everything altogether in one place after we
1:11
have for so long been kind of down this research quest at
1:16
figuring out what Uji Matcha actually is, because it's a
1:19
shockingly come complicated questions.
1:22
And in those complications, it's a pretty interesting story.
1:25
After having gone to Wuji for so many times, this piece really
1:29
kind of weaved out of our findings and our discoveries
1:33
altogether in a very coherent way, which is quite fascinating
1:37
to read through in the 1st place and the second, it really made
1:41
the whole mess feels like it's inevitable really.
1:45
The the current status quo of Fujimacha is really being
1:50
constructed bit by bit in the past 200 years.
1:53
That led to the state that just has so many dependencies on it
1:59
that changing any bits or any components of this system will
2:04
create a very severe kind of cascading effect onto a lot of
2:09
other dependencies, farmers, makers, blend houses, consumers,
2:14
politicians, and also people and businesses in other countries.
2:19
It's doing research for this piece just got me down so many
2:24
rabbit holes. And the first rabbit hole that I
2:26
think would be a good thing to talk about is so it actually it
2:29
took us a decent amount of time to realize that Fuji Macho was a
2:32
trademark. And that's let's talk about when
2:34
you read Macha and Uji Macha literature online about people
2:38
trying to promote it, there's 1000 different framings of it,
2:42
so to speak. And actually the whole piece was
2:44
largely motivated by an online argument I got into with someone
2:48
who I won't mention here, who had a very different perspective
2:51
than me. And I like could feel that he
2:54
was wrong based off of all of the conversations that we've had
2:58
with so many people. I heard from three different
3:00
times in three different places from people that I really trust.
3:04
That was Zuka was never really a tension town until very, very,
3:08
very recently. And that's where I kind of
3:11
discovered a year ago this broader Uji Macha narrative
3:16
where this so-called Yamashiro region, which I think is 6 or 8
3:21
different counties, I think it's eight across Uji Uji, Tawara,
3:25
Wazuka, Idai Kyotanabe and some others as well that are part of
3:30
this spin actually for UNESCO status.
3:34
And when you go and read the UNESCO status document, it is
3:37
really interesting the way they frame it.
3:41
There are several things. There is like different
3:43
revisions of this UNESCO proposal to recognize the quote
3:48
Uji Macha landscape. And it's interesting how they
3:51
kind of like fold themselves into a pretzel trying to unify
3:56
this narrative. And that narrative actually
3:58
doesn't agree with the legal recognized intellectual property
4:03
status of the Uji Macha trademark, which is much
4:07
broader. And then there's like thousands
4:10
of questions like why does this trademark exist?
4:13
Why does this exist the way that it does exist across four
4:17
different prefectures, Narashiga, Yay, and Kyoto.
4:22
And then if you really dig online, but half of online
4:25
sources say that it has to be 50% Kyoto grown tea.
4:30
And then the other 50% can come from other regions and like
4:33
figuring out who's who's right here and who's wrong.
4:37
This contradiction between trademark and you know, this
4:41
whole concept about single origin and if certainties has to
4:44
be come from certainties have to be come from certain locations.
4:48
And this very interesting piece of UNESCO document, which in the
4:54
document it was not arguing about a location of tea being
4:59
browned, it's arguing arguing about a processing culture, a
5:04
manufacturing culture that exist within a certain region.
5:09
So I think this contradiction is really the answer to a lot of
5:13
questions. It did end up being an answer
5:15
and actually ended up being part of the answer.
5:18
I believe into why I had such a big disagreement with this one
5:22
person online that was I was getting so heated that I was I
5:26
was showing you these messages last year and you were like,
5:29
dude, you've got to move this to DM.
5:31
Get this out of this poor guys comment section because the
5:35
contradiction is is there such a thing called the Uji processing
5:39
method? And the Uji processing method
5:42
actually refers to sencha and the invention of sencha.
5:47
And the sencha culture and tensha slash matcha culture are
5:52
getting intertwined in these narratives.
5:56
So it's also very conveniently intertwined or intentionally
6:01
blurred the boundary between ujicha and wuji matcha.
6:06
The sancha is definitely ujita right?
6:08
Like it's it's tea. Yes, but weirdly enough, if you
6:12
go even to this day and talk to any of the Uji matcha farmers,
6:16
no one's growing Sancha and Uji. In fact, I don't think anyone's
6:20
really ever grown Sancha and Uji.
6:23
It's Gokoro and it's it's Tensha and there's we've only heard of
6:27
one person growing actual sencha and the person who knew who it
6:32
was wouldn't tell us the name of the farmer who was making it.
6:36
We very respectfully said, OK, OK, I get it.
6:42
It's dad to over there. We don't talk to him.
6:45
It sounded more like I actually I didn't.
6:48
I don't know why he couldn't tell us.
6:50
So that part was a little unclear.
6:53
Although if you go to Taishi San, the Shimizu family's cafe,
6:56
everything that he sells at the cafe is actually Uji grown,
7:00
including the Sancha. And so if you are interested in
7:02
actually tasting a tea that's more reflective of terroir and
7:07
you want to taste actual uji Sancha, you can you can buy it
7:11
from from the his cafe. These two things get conflated.
7:15
And I do believe that it's true that the Uji blend houses were
7:18
sourcing material, in particular Sancha, from the surrounding
7:23
Yamashiro region. Yamashiro Regent is like trying
7:29
to be thought of as this Uji Cha UNESCO landscape.
7:35
And by the way, it has not reached UNESCO status.
7:39
I'm very curious why it has not been approved.
7:42
Maybe it's because of all of this maneuvering and framing
7:45
that clearly you have to contort yourself into a pretzel to make
7:48
this all make sense, to understand it.
7:50
And not not to praise the article too much, but I've never
7:53
seen every this much context laid out in this way to truly
7:58
rock what uji matcha actually means and all of its
8:02
implications. Because Uji matcha is 100% made
8:06
famous. Because the matcha.
8:07
Yes, there's Sancha and Sancha and Uji Sancha.
8:10
Ujicha is very famous in Japan. But in terms of the
8:14
international stage and presence and the way Japanese tea is
8:18
presented to the world, it's matcha.
8:22
And if you dig into the history of matcha under the history of
8:25
Fuji, you'll very quickly find that shaded cultivation was
8:29
forbidden outside of people who had the license to make it.
8:33
It was literally a state controlled monopoly for the
8:36
majority of matches history, especially during the
8:39
foundations of what we call like tea ceremony chanoyu.
8:45
And it was, it was very, very much controlled by the state.
8:49
At the time there was this system called the Ochasis San
8:53
Nakanoma, which is a formalized legal system that's inclusive of
8:58
three types of chashi who were at the time the only people that
9:04
were allowed to use shaded cultivation.
9:06
And under them there, there were couple gardens associated with
9:10
these chashis and they will be growing tea using shaded
9:15
cultivation and then procure those tea and then turn that
9:18
into tancha and then you know, mailed it into matcha for the
9:22
shogunate. And it was under this system too
9:24
that all of these were very much supported directly by this
9:28
feudal system, The economy of the matcha, the way the money
9:32
flowed and the way the politics were arranged.
9:34
It really feels like a very oligopic state controlled
9:39
monopoly system where if you did have the license you could carry
9:42
a sword. You had tax 6 incentives when
9:44
you had some degree of social status.
9:47
So at one time it was truly indeed a single origin product
9:52
because it was literally forbidden elsewhere supposedly
9:55
and we had trouble finding any primary sources to validate
9:58
this. So it didn't make it in the
10:00
piece. But as the Eto era was
10:04
declining, it's unclear if producers started to do shaded
10:09
cultivation and push further and further and further outside of
10:14
Fuji itself, and so that part of the history is a little fuzzy.
10:18
I've read from a few articles mentioning about this class
10:23
called the hair Tashi. So the the commoners Tashi which
10:27
was granted also granted permission to do shaded
10:30
cultivation during the late adult era.
10:33
The number of those chashis and the amount of those tea being
10:38
produced and also the region where those hair chashis were
10:43
was very unclear. Very unclear.
10:46
And then like you can dig into a little bit longer, like a little
10:50
bit deeper too, about when some of these companies that are
10:52
still exist to this day, like in JoJo, for example.
10:56
And JoJo is very, very, very close to Fuji, especially in
11:00
terms of climate too. It's it's also sits sort of in
11:03
this River Valley. And they were very, very, very
11:06
early too, I think like early Meiji, but potentially even
11:10
earlier. But it's really hard to exactly
11:13
pinpoint when this started to branch out.
11:16
But you can actually look at the history and look at the politics
11:19
and it's unlikely it was branching out that much because
11:23
there was very little incentive. So imagine like during the
11:26
Renaissance you had all of this patron of the arts model can
11:30
imagine like the Medici family in Venice, you know, they paid
11:33
the artists and let's say the Medici family had a couple
11:35
different like some families and he had lots of aunts and uncles,
11:39
whatever. Each had their own little domain
11:42
and each were able to patronize different artists.
11:44
In this case, very similar type of model going on here.
11:48
And now just imagine that like the Medici family and this very
11:53
feudal system just evaporates overnight.
11:55
The money stops flowing and when the money stop flowing, the
11:58
artists starve. And when the artists.
11:59
Starve. They make great arts.
12:02
They've got to pursue different professions and a lot of tea
12:08
companies during the Meiji Restoration went out of
12:11
business. They literally lost the money
12:14
stopped flowing, they lost their ability to sell and create
12:16
products and tensha volumes dropped precipitously.
12:20
And it wasn't until later on that sort of the quote UN quote
12:24
great men of the Meiji era, the the railroad barons, the steel
12:28
tycoons, Japan went through a pretty Western style
12:32
industrialization. And those barons looked to
12:35
quote, UN quote, great man of Japan's past, and it started
12:39
incorporating tea into their lives.
12:41
Yeah, but let's rewind the time a little bit back, back to the
12:44
days of the Otashi's. There could not really be that
12:48
many teas being produced elsewhere that's further away
12:52
from Uji because at the time that was the population center
12:56
of Japan of all those tea growing regions.
12:59
And there was a very, very important factor that impacts
13:03
the production of Mata even to this date is super relevant.
13:06
But the source of that factor changed over time.
13:10
So what was the source this? Was one of the most interesting
13:14
rabbit holes and doing research for this piece and we had been
13:17
made aware of this. Actually.
13:18
Aaron from Matcha Yu is very good friends with someone that
13:22
comes from an Uji Matcha family and her father wrote one of the
13:26
books on tea. And she was telling us that back
13:29
in the day that they used human feces as fertilizer.
13:33
And I'd heard that one or two other places and it just kind of
13:35
stuck in the back of my head. And then I came across a
13:38
fantastic talk, an article by a Harvard historian about
13:43
so-called night soil. And night soil is just a polite
13:48
way of saying human excrement or poop.
13:50
And there was a whole economy and Ato era Japan around buying
13:56
and selling, aggregating literally human feces that were
14:00
used in the surrounding areas to fertilize it.
14:03
And he actually mentions Uji matcha farmers and how they
14:07
specifically like to at least for the best and oldest trees
14:12
that they had. And that was a very interesting
14:14
use of words to from the best and oldest trees, you know, from
14:17
these I ride plants that were in Japan's past were were this idea
14:23
of a old tree being better is something we also kind of want
14:26
to dig into further because nowadays the Ujimacha farmers
14:29
have a very short lifespan for that tree.
14:32
You feed it lots of fertilizer, you treat it like a performance
14:35
athlete, and then that athlete retires.
14:38
And in this case, it's a very special type of retirement
14:42
called being replaced and uprooted.
14:44
That was super interesting to read in.
14:46
These Ujimacha farmers for the best trees wanted to source
14:49
human excrement from very specific neighborhoods in Kyoto
14:53
where the diet of the the people who were living there would be
14:58
much more protein rich, much higher quality feces.
15:02
And what's super interesting is something that I kind of
15:04
connected the dots on is there's a big problem with using fish as
15:08
fertilizer and that salt residues.
15:10
And apparently there was a bit of a mix of demand.
15:13
Believe it or not, urine was also bought and sold during the
15:16
Edo period. And the rights to urine were
15:18
very important. And apparently an Edo, which is
15:21
the the old word for, for Tokyo, urine was not very desired.
15:25
It was not nearly as desired as as feces.
15:29
But in Osaka, apparently urine was much, much more in demand
15:33
and went for much higher prices. And I don't have, I don't know
15:37
if this is true, but one of my theories is that the crops that
15:41
they were growing in and around Osaka might be more salt
15:44
tolerant because the way salt leaves the body is it gets
15:48
filtered out by the kidneys and you end up urinating it up.
15:52
So when you think of pest, when you think of salt residues based
15:57
on different fertilizer types, fertilizing with urine probably
16:01
leads to much more salt contamination in the soil.
16:04
Or maybe it's that those soils around Osaka have better
16:07
drainage and the salt was just able to eventually leak versus
16:10
more clay soil types, which probably have higher salt
16:13
retention. It'd be really interesting to
16:15
understand why, but there's such a genius to using human feces
16:19
and because if you're just putting fish in the ground one,
16:22
it's very wasteful. Fish is still very good to eat
16:24
if you're just purely using it as fertilizer, but you're
16:27
essentially running a biological desalina tion process when you
16:32
filter it through human digestion.
16:34
Yeah, it's fascinating. If you look at the map of all of
16:39
these so-called Yamashiro region in the modern days, Uji is
16:43
really the tea production area that's closest to Kyoto, which
16:48
you know, from a anthropological perspective made Uji the most
16:52
relevant place for macho production historically.
16:55
And we heard that too from Oscar Breckel.
16:58
We had a pre call with Oscar Breckel before we had him on the
17:00
podcast. And I wish we recorded that pre
17:03
call, but he was making some speculation as well.
17:06
One of the reasons that Uji Macha, just by happenstance,
17:10
ended up producing such fantastic matcha was it's very
17:14
close proximity to a population center.
17:16
Because Uji was always an interesting town, because it had
17:20
temples, you know, there was other things going on in Uji.
17:23
Yeah, Pyong Dong in the famous temple used to be the House of
17:28
Damians throughout centuries, so it has always been a cultural
17:32
kind of heritage site for the Japanese.
17:35
And supposedly too, because of its unique geographic
17:39
positioning, the cold airs apparently more likely to sink
17:44
to the need to protect your farms or your your your crops
17:48
from frost. It might just be a geographic
17:50
coincidence that these Tana structures, these hanzu shaded,
17:54
these shading structures were, were much more necessary in this
17:59
River Valley than they would be even in a place like Wazooka,
18:03
which is much more mountainous. And the way that the air flows
18:07
and the way that the cold air settles protects the tea much
18:12
more than it does right next to the river as that cold air
18:15
sinks. So it might actually be a just
18:18
happenstance, geographical coincidence, geographical
18:22
accident. The necessity of shade
18:24
cultivation was first used for or frost protection and then
18:28
they realized that it tasted good, which is pretty cool when
18:31
you go back to learn about Uji. And that was also something that
18:34
didn't make it in the article, as it's a little bit more
18:37
speculation. Yeah, super interesting.
18:39
I mean, a lot of the modern practices and the modern status
18:44
of matcha really has a lot of historical roots connecting back
18:48
to what and how matcha was produced back in the days.
18:52
I'm also wondering how do they, because like people still use
18:55
fish to fertilize their tea gardens nowadays?
18:59
How do they like, desalinate all those fish being used in their
19:03
garden nowadays? I don't know.
19:05
They must. That's a good question.
19:07
It'll be a good question to ask the next time we go back.
19:09
I would also love to know about the historical transition from
19:14
night soils fertilizer to all the fertilizers that they're
19:18
using nowadays in Uji and across the tea agricultural, the
19:22
agriculture in general in Japan. Pretty interesting.
19:26
I highly recommend everyone watch or read the article from
19:30
from this Harvard historian on night soil and Edo.
19:33
I mean, it's not unfair to say that it was one of the most
19:37
sophisticated circular economies ever.
19:39
Even today, just the level of recycling that's going on, at
19:43
least in the food system. It's almost disturbing to think
19:46
of that the same households that were consuming the matcha, which
19:49
were primarily the wealthy and the more elite class, were
19:53
literally fertilizing it with their own excrement.
19:57
And they can. Zoom them back.
19:58
Talk about the cycle of life. And just to put some color on
20:02
it, if you don't end up watching the talk or reading the article,
20:05
there were literally contracts in place from large households,
20:09
you know, granting permission or selling the household waste to
20:14
go to people like this is something they literally set up
20:16
contracts and it was such an important part and it's such a
20:19
well integrated system into. Japanese history is that before
20:24
is that during the war, you know, a lot of the chemicals,
20:27
especially nitrogen for to create explosives and bombs
20:30
etcetera, gunpowder during World War 2, you know, you couldn't
20:34
just use synthetically generated nitrogen as easily for for
20:38
fertilizer. So that was actually very easy
20:41
for Japan's agriculture to switch back to this night soil.
20:45
It started to become a little bit more unpopular in the
20:47
beginning of the 20th century, became worth less and less and
20:50
less as Japan industrial realized and after the
20:53
dismantling of the feudal system.
20:56
But during World War 2 they needed to revert back to it
20:58
because it which wasn't enough nitrogen to grow the crops.
21:02
They need to prioritize for the weapon.
21:05
But it was a real economy. It was a very real economy of
21:08
buying and selling. And you typically sold your
21:11
household's waste and then someone would come pick it up.
21:14
Love to know like if there are receipts for this, if there's
21:18
any industry that has receipts for human waste, I feel like
21:22
would be the Uji tea farmers and the transition and the history
21:26
of fertilization practice of the 20th century would be so
21:30
interesting. You know, we all think that when
21:32
we're drinking Uji matcha, we're tasting heritage and something
21:35
deeply rooted and very traditional.
21:37
Authentic modern Uji matcha farming is the perfect
21:42
encapsulation of a living culture, a living art and
21:47
adaptive culture where you have different agents, different
21:50
participants with their own agency that are moving
21:53
everything forward the best they can.
21:55
There's still some hand picking, there's still some hanzu shaded,
21:58
but everyone's converted to cultivars.
22:00
That has such an enormous impact, right?
22:03
Because when you're using seed propagated tea, you have large
22:05
degrees of genetic diversity, which means not all the tea is
22:08
ready at the same time, which has so many secondary and
22:11
tertiary implications or operations of farming.
22:14
When it gets it's picked, how it gets picked, how it gets
22:16
batched, how it gets processed, how it gets blended, how it gets
22:20
valued right even now, like you can think of like different
22:25
Okumadori rates or Sammidori rates or yabuquito rates as
22:29
commodity rates that can be aggregated and compare prices.
22:33
How do you compare prices of of different batches of Xyride
22:36
depending on what it's picked in, its taste characteristics,
22:39
the level of intimacy you have to have.
22:41
That is such a massive change, and that change happened in the
22:44
20th century. Also, the way that these things
22:46
are getting fertilized nowadays, you never hear of anyone using
22:49
human feces to fertilize. They're using fish, rapeseed,
22:53
oil byproducts, sesame seed byproducts, all sorts of things.
22:59
Soybean byproducts. Sugar cane byproducts.
23:01
Oyster shells. Oyster shells, it's such a
23:04
interesting part. How did that transition happen?
23:07
That's also, is it more expensive now than it used to
23:10
be? That's that's another really
23:12
interesting question. So even within the 20th century,
23:15
in the past 100 years, the OOGEE monitors changed drastically.
23:19
You are tasting heritage, but it's not the heritage that you
23:22
probably have in your mind. The tea probably tasted very,
23:25
very, very different even 70 years ago, before for the move
23:29
to Xairi or 50 years ago. Yeah, well, you're basically
23:32
tasting human behaviors and human choices, human
23:37
intervention of the piece of the crops that's growing on a piece
23:40
of land and which I think strengthened the argument of
23:44
Fuji tea being more like a Uji style tea, Wuji styled matcha
23:49
instead of a Wuji cha. And if this practice is being
23:54
executed elsewhere that's outside of Wuji proper, calling
23:57
that Wuji style TI think will still be validated.
24:00
It's it it is a piece of culture being it the name is essentially
24:06
a piece of culture, a piece of farming guidelines that that
24:10
that kind of gets gets crystallized over time.
24:13
But if you are doing that, practicing it in other places,
24:16
you know, calling it Wuji style matcha, I think it's totally
24:19
valid. So Sam, if you look at the
24:22
numbers and this was the earliest part of my research, I
24:24
really was curious how much tea is actually grown in Uji today.
24:29
And it turns out it's about 37 tons, or at least it was in
24:33
2024. And which to put it into
24:34
perspective, that's about two to 3% of all the tension that's
24:38
produced in Kyoto. And then even more so if you
24:42
account for all the tension that you can find that was produced
24:46
that year and other tea prefectures, it represents about
24:50
1 to 2% by volume. But like, you know, you know,
24:52
Uji is a single origin product is actually very, very, very
24:56
rare. And where I take offense to
24:59
people's argument is that, you know, so much of the stuff gets
25:03
labeled as a single origin product because when you looked
25:07
at the Japanese tea wholesalers price list, it says Uji Macha,
25:12
Uzi, Uji Macha, Kagoshima Macha, Kagoshima Macha, Shizuoko Macha,
25:17
Shizuoko Macha, Nishio Macha, etcetera.
25:20
And almost all of those are probably actual single origin
25:23
products and Uji Macha definitely is not.
25:27
And then you ask like, where is it from?
25:30
Like usually you don't get a straightforward.
25:32
Answer yeah, it's a sad reality in the way that Uji is just too
25:36
small. It's tiny compared to these
25:39
other, you know, quote UN quote single origin place that you
25:43
mentioned, like Kagoshima and Shizuoka.
25:45
They just naturally have more landmass to a support a higher
25:49
volume. But whereas Uji like even for
25:52
the amount of tea or gardens we see today, still shrinking.
25:57
It's a sadly very urbanized, pristine towa.
26:01
We saw highways cutting through tea gardens.
26:04
We saw houses being built right next to some of the oldest tea
26:08
fields in the city. And not to mention it's called
26:11
Uji City. It's a city pretty far away from
26:15
what you would envision as like something or some place that
26:20
makes the best tea or some of the most priced tea in the world
26:23
nowadays. Yeah, actually.
26:25
It just goes to show how much human effort is actually making
26:28
it taste good. I mean, we were talking with
26:30
someone in the industry and they were joking saying oh, you mean
26:33
highway tea, referring to UG tea.
26:36
And it's unfortunately very true.
26:40
There are very few of these plots in actual uji that don't
26:44
look like highway tea. They generally don't make a very
26:47
good picture. But that's just the realities of
26:50
urbanization. It doesn't mean that the tea is
26:52
actually bad. If terroir mattered, Uji
26:55
probably wouldn't. Yeah, that's just another
26:57
evidence of tawa really doesn't matter for tea or like
27:01
geographic tawa doesn't really matter for matcha at all, I
27:05
would say. And what what really should be
27:07
considered is the human part of this equation, like human human
27:11
culture and human intervention should be part of this TOA
27:16
concept when it comes to matcha. 100% So Sam, if you are trying
27:22
to source teas with Origin and you're putting out educational
27:27
content and you're trying to make the claim, Wazuka tea,
27:32
wazuka cha, Wazuka macha is uji cha.
27:36
Do you agree with this claim? Well I mean goes back to how do
27:39
we define uji cha right? Like wuji style tea or tea prone
27:44
from uji. I think that the definition
27:47
really really needs to be clarified before we have any
27:50
kind of discussions like this. For me I would say that uji tea
27:54
really equals to uji style tea in modern days.
27:58
And calling Watsuka tea, watsuka macha, uji styled matcha.
28:03
I think it's totally valid. What about uji Matcha?
28:06
That's a single origin. Product, but geographically.
28:09
If I'm making the claim was zuka matcha is uji cha and I'm
28:15
labeling everything as a single origin product, is that
28:19
intellectually honest or dishonest?
28:21
Yeah, I think that's dishonest. I mean what what doesn't wasn't
28:25
producing any attention to I think the 80 in to to the late
28:31
80s. I think that they had the the
28:34
first tension kill. So historically now, but if you
28:37
put into the perspective of how Wuji Cha is operating as a
28:43
system in the modern days, all of these surrounding regions are
28:47
basically contractors of plant houses and manufacturer in, you
28:53
know, in Wuji or they follow a Wuji style of making tea, which,
28:57
you know, kind of extended this definition beyond its geographic
29:01
origin. So that's more of a complicated
29:04
question and the conversation that we'll probably we'll talk
29:07
about in depth for the next episode.
29:11
But, but, but for what? You asked Ryan, I think it's
29:15
dishonesty if we call Watsuka T Ujita.
29:19
So this was a big rabbit hole that I went down and I was like,
29:22
just so curious. And I use Wazooka as a great
29:25
example of like one of these surrounding Yamashiro towns.
29:29
And like trying to unpack, is there a legitimate claim that
29:32
this is Uji, right? Like were the Ochashi's and Edo
29:38
sourcing Tansha from Wazooka? When did they start producing
29:42
Tansha? When did this start getting the
29:45
you know, part of the broader Uji ecosystem?
29:47
And Wazooka didn't have a kill him until the late 80s.
29:51
And then it's very obvious when you look at the one of the
29:55
so-called shocks in matcha was the Haagen Dazs shock.
29:59
It was in the late 90s, Haagen Dazs placed a massive order and
30:03
basically outbid everyone at auction and the price went up by
30:07
an incredible amount that year. It's still referred to as the
30:10
Hagen Shock and David from Tazumi has done a really nice
30:15
job documenting this as well. And there's a there's a blog
30:18
that you can find by a Japanese author that was actually there,
30:22
whose family dates back to the Edo period in the tea industry,
30:29
who is at that auction. And he's a really interesting
30:32
first hand, first hand account that's worth looking into.
30:35
And he himself said one of the reasons that was Zuka was able
30:39
to succeed so, so drastically was because, quote, it can be
30:43
sold as Uji matcha. So, you know, this Hagen shock
30:46
really led to an explosion across was Zuka.
30:49
Now was Zuka accounts for 40% slightly more actually of all
30:54
the tension produced in Kyoto Prefecture and actually a very
30:57
large part of it is a second harvest tea and this is actually
31:01
is going to be a separate topic. A future blog post is that the
31:04
history of second harvest matcha is fascinating.
31:08
Second harvest matcha, like the idea of first harvest matcha is
31:12
a very modern concept. And if you look at the history,
31:17
it wasn't really, no one was really doing it until Nisha and
31:20
it was actually the history of Nisha.
31:22
The more I learned about it, it's fascinating, the history of
31:25
Aya. And basically, I think it's in
31:27
the 50s, they basically learned they just couldn't compete with
31:30
Fuji for the tea ceremony practitioners.
31:32
So they decided to lean really heavily into matcha as a food
31:36
processing ingredient. And actually it was because they
31:39
couldn't compete with Fuji in the Uji name that they decided
31:42
to be a lot more experimental. A lot of these innovations were
31:47
were coming out of Nishio and Nishio, and then they spread.
31:51
And one of them was the idea of a second harvest.
31:55
And then realizing, oh, actually, you know, the
31:57
increased bitterness and the stringency actually kind of
32:00
makes it suitable for confectionery.
32:03
And not only that, we can make it much, much, much cheaper.
32:07
And they had less cultural baggage.
32:10
Most people were actually handpicking tea in Uji and the
32:13
surrounding areas like Wazooka until the 60s and 70s until the
32:17
scissor style harvesters were were were brought in to have
32:22
larger degrees of mechanization. But second harvest tea literally
32:27
would not have been profitable without that level of
32:30
mechanization. You can't have a hand product
32:32
second harvest and have it be a commercially viable.
32:35
So there's a whole set of conditions that were happening
32:37
in Michio that led to this idea of Second Harvest and that later
32:41
did spread to Wazooka. So all of these people talking
32:44
about the difference between 1st and 7th Second Harvest and
32:47
Mazuka is a really, really, really modern concept.
32:50
And it clearly followed the money.
32:53
And Mazuka switched to Tensha because it can be sold as
32:56
Ujimacha. And it became very profitable to
32:59
do so largely from the creation of new markets that were really
33:04
pioneered in Nishio of promoting matcha as a culinary ingredient.
33:08
Really fascinating history which we want to cover later on.
33:13
Ryan, here is a piece of interesting thought experiment
33:16
about the idea of single origin as a concept that's geographic.
33:23
So Nichio tried and failed, arguably based on the reality
33:28
there's only one success story so far is Wuji, and everyone is
33:34
very conveniently taking this right.
33:37
But my question is, could the macho community or the current
33:42
market support another geographic brand?
33:46
Because these places are essentially brand brand names,
33:51
so people will associate with a type of product.
33:54
Like if anyone in the future is going to try to build another
33:59
brand, they need to basically go through what the issue has gone
34:03
through in a lot of ways unless they find a different solution.
34:07
Yeah. So what Sam's referring to is
34:09
that Nishio at one time had GI status where it was very
34:14
geographically restricted about where they can source tea from
34:18
to be called Michio Matcha, had GI indication, had indication
34:21
for about 5 years and then they formally requested to withdraw.
34:25
But. They asked to be removed.
34:28
Because it was no longer profitable.
34:30
They were I'll competed on price by two to three times.
34:35
And you know, is there space for GI protection?
34:39
So I don't know. There's only one other tea in
34:40
Japan that has GI protection and it's yame Gokoro and I think
34:44
it's labeled traditional authentic yame Goku.
34:48
And even that GI protection is a little weird because you can
34:54
find a lot of yame gokoro that's non GI.
34:57
What is the difference between traditional authentic yame
35:01
gokoro I think is the full name and just yame gokoro is really
35:06
weird. You don't really see the GI
35:09
protected stuff very often. When you do, it's extremely
35:13
expensive. I mean like I bet that will
35:16
happen to any other GI GIS in the future.
35:19
If one day uji got AGI status, it will be like authentic
35:24
premium home matcha uji and has a little label on the package
35:30
and versus all the other uji cha that will still probably exist
35:34
in the market that just doesn't have the label on.
35:37
Yeah, yeah. That just doesn't have the
35:38
little GI protection and everything else is Uji matcha.
35:42
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. The GI protection thing is, you
35:45
know it's a system that largely works in Europe and in other
35:50
places. It depends on what you're
35:52
protecting right? Are you we protecting these
35:55
farmers? There's only 35 ish active
35:58
farmers in Uji. Are they worth protecting?
36:01
More than probably thousands of tea farmers that can ride off of
36:06
the Uji name is a really great question.
36:10
Yeah, it's, I think, I think there's no good answer to to
36:14
that question. And honestly, I think that the
36:16
current Uji name is supporting so many lives, so many families,
36:23
so many businesses that, you know, like confining that into a
36:28
very small town that's South of Kyoto is essentially could be
36:34
catastrophic to the matcha industry nowadays.
36:37
It's essentially a brand that people spent generations of
36:42
efforts trying to build, and they finally reach to its
36:45
current status. And now people are making a
36:48
profit for it. And they are actually trying so
36:52
hard to do so because, you know, Japan is the shrinking
36:55
population. They're less and less farmers
36:58
every year. And it's, it's there will be
37:01
less and less people to make the endeavor.
37:04
Like building a new brand is hard.
37:06
It's very difficult. Yeah.
37:08
And it's interesting to go back and read the old histories about
37:11
how this trademark even happened.
37:13
The trademark is pretty recent. It's from the early 2000s that
37:17
this trademark actually existed. And I spent a lot of research,
37:21
time and energy trying to figure out what was Ujimacha before the
37:26
trademark in the early 2000s, in the 90s?
37:29
Like, was it the Wild West, or was it approximately the same
37:33
system that we had now? And why in 2000 before did they
37:37
decide to make the trademark in the 1st place?
37:40
So or, excuse me, 2003 or 2004? And what happened was, is there
37:45
was a gigantic food labeling scandal in the early thousands
37:49
where tons of Australian grown beef were being fraudulently
37:54
mislabeled as Japanese beef and the government wanted to
38:00
formalize food labeling standards.
38:02
And this is a, this is a huge problem in so many industries.
38:05
Japanese wine, I think it's 80% of Japanese wine has foreign
38:10
imported grape or grape must or grape juice as a base.
38:14
And that's was legally allowed to be labeled as Japanese wine
38:18
until about like, I think it's like 2014 or something or 2018
38:23
to really recent. That's funny where they put in
38:26
this law because most Japanese wine did not, and this is for a
38:29
product where Tower really matters.
38:31
I mean, that also happened to Japanese whiskeys.
38:35
Really. Yeah.
38:35
They were importing Scottish malt barley and then they they
38:40
germinate them in Japan and turn that.
38:43
Oh, they did the malting. They.
38:44
Did the malting in Japan, but they were importing the Scottish
38:48
barley in the beginning. I don't know if they switched
38:51
that model to domestic barley nowadays or they're still
38:56
importing the Japanese Scottish malt.
39:00
OK, so big. Well, it's a big problem in
39:02
other countries too, let's be honest.
39:04
But essentially there was a basic food labeling law, and all
39:07
these industries were kind of scrambling to regulate
39:10
themselves before they were going to be regulated.
39:13
At Uji City Hall, they convened basically a conference to try to
39:17
define what Uji much it was. In a stroke of what could be
39:22
argued A strategic genius, they decided to make it very vague.
39:25
At first. They demanded that it has to be
39:27
50% Kyoto grown tensha and then up to 50% from the four
39:32
prefecture region being Narashiga and MIE.
39:35
And there wasn't enough consensus.
39:36
It didn't pass. They was determined that there's
39:39
not enough volume in Kyoto itself and that they needed to
39:42
make it more broad. And first it was entirely A
39:45
voluntary standard, and then I got cemented in into IP rules,
39:50
which lead to that modern definition.
39:52
But it was actually a beef labeling scandal that forced
39:55
them. And you could say that it's
39:58
almost legal fraud. There is a legal There is an
40:02
argument to be made that instead of being more honest and being
40:06
more specific about where your tea came from, or admitting that
40:10
it was a blend, they decided to make the category.
40:13
Just much more vague. They decided to cast a wider net
40:17
to have larger amounts of safety rather than a more narrow net
40:21
that's more intellectually honest.
40:24
And the reality is most consumers, even in Japan, and
40:27
they buy Muji matcha, They believe that they're tasting
40:30
place. There are so many blog posts and
40:33
drone footage and history lectures and all sorts of stuff
40:38
mythologizing Ujimatcha, Ujimatcha, the history of
40:42
Ujimatcha, the heritage, the craftsmanship, etcetera,
40:45
etcetera. In the consumers mind, it is
40:48
very reasonable to state that they are being misled and all of
40:52
these marketing materials are misleading people into believing
40:56
that they are tasting something that is from this very historic
41:00
place just South of Kyoto. And the reality is if you drink
41:04
a fantastically well produced tea that's a blend of tea from
41:08
JoJo Wazuka and Uji Tawara, the reason why it tastes good has
41:14
nothing to do with the tiny patch of earth in South of Kyoto
41:19
that we call Uji. It was those farmers, it was the
41:23
fertilizers, it was the processing knowledge and skill.
41:26
And this reduction of the reason why this can is good that you
41:30
bought the only attribution of the effort and why that can is
41:36
different than matcha from other places is the name uji.
41:42
It gets reduced into these this two syllable word and it totally
41:47
misattributes the quality. And we have gone so far down
41:52
this uji matcha bandwagon, but it's reached the point of dogma
41:56
that the entire consumer base has been mis educated to believe
42:02
that's that's why that matcha is good.
42:05
Or even more extreme example, let's move prefectures.
42:07
Tea that was grown entirely in Nara processed in Kyoto, not in
42:11
Uji. The reason why that tea is good
42:14
is because of the farmer and the processors, not uji.
42:17
Uji people or place didn't even have to touch the tea.
42:23
So if we're just talking about processing knowledge and
42:26
culture, that can happen anywhere.
42:28
You hear stories of farmers from Kagoshima coming up to do like a
42:32
residency and shadowing people in Uji and taking those
42:36
techniques home, right Then if you're using this as your basis
42:41
for your argument that it's the processing knowledge and
42:44
culture, it could be done in China.
42:46
There is an Uji matcha house that set up in Hubei, China, not
42:52
about four hours from Wuhan, right?
42:55
They're bringing Japanese cultivars, Japanese processing
42:58
equipment, Japanese knowledge, even Japanese people to come
43:02
help manage this product. It's owned by the Japanese.
43:05
So like you, and we're going to get into this more next episode,
43:09
but this, this narrative of the broader Ujimacha definition and
43:14
what is it and what it's not, has a lot of hypocrisies if you
43:19
think through the implications of the arguments that are
43:22
actually being made by people trying to sell you this product.
43:27
Yeah, it's, it's complicated. And I think the fall really
43:31
largely lies on the marketers of the product because the system
43:35
itself is no organic, adaptive and quite sustainable.
43:42
But what is being the center of the contradiction is really the
43:47
consumers interpretation of the origin of a place of a product
43:52
versus what the product actually is.
43:55
And that misinterpretation or the miscommunication really
44:00
happened when the definition of the product was being
44:05
communicated. And that happened when the
44:08
consumer starts to read labels on a product.
44:11
There's nothing essentially wrong behind everyone that end
44:16
up getting the product into consumers head.
44:18
I will argue that and I will also say that it's really a
44:22
clash between concepts of place of origin between the East and
44:26
the West because like you kind of see this kind of naming
44:30
scheme in other places too, in not only just Japan, but but
44:34
also China. Like poor, for example, for
44:37
refers to a place in Yunnan. It's a city.
44:41
It's the trading center of Yunnan tea at the time.
44:44
And calling all poor poor, you're basically calling like
44:48
it's it's basically like you're calling like wujiti, wujiti
44:52
wujita. It's not actually from poor, and
44:55
the tea is actually, not actually from Wuji, but poor
44:58
kind of evolves into a style of tea later on, a concept the name
45:04
of a very distinctive and regional taste on the map
45:08
versus, you know, like right now there's still a very tight
45:11
association between Ujimacha and the city of Wuji, which is the,
45:16
you know, the origin of, of modern matcha.
45:19
What do you think? I totally agree with you and you
45:22
know it's not even something unique to poor.
45:25
You even look at things like Liubao, that's also the name of
45:28
a place. Yeah, you can.
45:29
You can see a lot of similarities between Uji and
45:34
these places, and I think Uji is uniquely complicated in the way
45:39
that because like when talking about poor, right, when you say
45:44
poor, everyone knows you're referring to that tea you'll
45:47
need. A category.
45:48
A category. You don't need to specify poor
45:51
like tea, cake or poor. Like you can call the poor cha,
45:56
but like people oftentimes just drop the name cha, just call it
45:59
poor. But you cannot call like Uji
46:02
Macha, just Uji that that that name has not yet been
46:07
disassociate from the product itself.
46:09
And also like historically it it has been the actual region that
46:15
produced that specific type of tea where a poor was just a
46:19
trading port, trading Center for for all you know, the tea being
46:23
grown in the surrounding regions.
46:25
So it's similar, but not entirely the same.
46:28
And I really don't have a good answer to to this question, but
46:33
but you know, like if in a parallel universe, poor tea was
46:39
indeed being growned in the poor city and now there's a group of
46:43
people arguing that, you know, like the poor tea being probably
46:48
grown in poor is the real poor. Like that.
46:51
That is a legitimate like argument, right?
46:54
Like if you put a modern concept or modern frame onto it.
46:58
But that's like that. That concept didn't exist in the
47:01
past. You know what's interesting is
47:03
that none of this was a problem until the Uji Macha families in
47:07
Uji started selling their product as a single origin
47:11
product. The the the frontiers of this,
47:15
because then what happens is let's say you're an early
47:18
company. Let's use Kettle as an example.
47:20
Kettle was a very early player in Uji, meeting these Uji Macha
47:24
families for the first time. As Zach Mungen has documented in
47:27
his book, Let's say he's the first Westerner to really come
47:32
in and have a major brand to sell it as a single origin
47:35
product. I don't know if that's true, but
47:36
let's say for the case of this argument that that's true.
47:40
Now you have a product on the market that's actually from Uji
47:45
and it gets communicated let's say through sub region like
47:48
Shirakawa or Gokasho, etcetera. And now all of a sudden you have
47:53
this weird example and the way you market it is, it's actually
47:58
from that place. Well then it leads you to wonder
48:01
what about everything else? And that whoever did that first
48:07
broke this whole system. Because if single true single
48:12
origin Uji matcha didn't exist, it's it's much more like poor.
48:17
And it would have been actually intellectually more honest
48:20
because all of the material would have gone to the blend
48:23
houses and it all gets blended out and everything that's
48:27
available, that's Ujimatcha is this heritage of blending from
48:32
all of these other places. And you could still argue it's a
48:35
modern definition, But these Uji blend houses grew, they started
48:39
sourcing material from other places.
48:41
They work with those farmers, right?
48:43
And everything just got blended together and everything was
48:46
controlled and part of that culture.
48:48
But the moment that this broke was the single estate idea of
48:53
these farmers gathering agency and wanting to sell it as a
48:57
single estate tea. And how is it possible that
49:01
these two things can commingle now?
49:03
Because it leads to this article like two or three years ago.
49:06
I was so confused the. Idea of single origin is just so
49:11
new to everyone. It's a introduced concept into a
49:16
very old system, and now part of the the system is all of a
49:21
sudden being accusatory to the rest of the system.
49:24
It's more there's every incentive.
49:27
If you're sourcing true, a single, single estate matcha
49:31
that was actually grown in Uji, you can sell it for a higher
49:34
price. It's a more interesting story.
49:38
You can highlight that farmers practices that actually made it
49:41
good. You shine a gigantic light
49:43
actually on what truly makes that can of Hanzu Asahi good
49:50
versus, you know, buying hatsumukashi from, you know,
49:54
some random blend house, right? It gives it dimensionalizes it
49:57
in such a rich way. You know, people in China do
50:01
have a solution to this in some area.
50:03
It's the idea of Jungshan, the original mountain basically.
50:10
So whatever a tea gets famous for example, like Wu Yan Cha or
50:15
like even some sub regions in Junan or Lao Banjang, right?
50:19
Like it gets, it flows to all of the surrounding regions because
50:24
it's just like Muji. Like people making the tea in
50:27
that style, using that type of a certain type of cultivar will
50:31
naturally yield a very unique taste that can be sold for a
50:34
higher price in the market. It's mixed total economical
50:38
sense, right? And what happened is that, you
50:41
know, instead of blocking everyone from calling themselves
50:44
that tea, the people from the actual region origin just called
50:49
themselves the, the, the Jungshan tea, the, the original
50:53
mountain tea. And like you, you see, you know,
50:55
the, the, the Jungshan and sometimes it's called and
50:58
sometimes you call Jung Yan or whatever.
51:01
This whole like kind of Jungshan system really in a way helped
51:06
the production of that tea in the area being more sustainable
51:09
and everyone can become prospered together, but at the
51:13
same time protected the name of the original place.
51:16
This is a fantastic comparison because it just goes again to
51:20
show just how processed Uji, matcha and matcha is in general.
51:26
Poor processing typically involves some sun drying, some
51:30
shashing on a walk, you know, then eventually and and even
51:34
later it can be steamed, impressed somewhere else, it
51:36
doesn't even matter. So the creation of the crude
51:39
poor or the malcha, it's much less capital intensive and it's
51:45
much much much cheaper to process internally.
51:49
Now imagine that place has all these blend houses that have so
51:52
much money to make by increasing their supply from other regions.
51:57
UGI is so weirdly particular because the farmers don't
52:01
control their own processing. It's either from a Co-op or
52:04
they're using someone else's equipment.
52:06
Honestly, they can't go from the agriculture to close to a
52:10
finished product entirely on their own.
52:12
It's too expensive and it requires the systematic support
52:16
of the local ecosystem to bring that tea to life, to bring the
52:21
matcha to life. It could be amazing and then you
52:24
do see some farmers. I think to our knowledge, I
52:26
think Suji San has very largely integrated his operations and
52:31
has quite a bit more control over the end processing of his
52:35
tea. But there's, I don't think
52:37
there's actually any others that have that level of vertical
52:40
integration in going from agriculture to a finished can of
52:45
matcha that's ready to sell. And maybe even parts of his
52:48
processing are outsourced, although we're not sure.
52:50
We do know he recently got a bunch of mills and then he's
52:53
able to do his own shiage. So that's interesting.
52:55
And you see some fibers exercising more and more of this
52:58
agency. There is no coincidence that
53:01
this idea of hand sorting tea, you see the Furakawa Secha doing
53:05
it, you see Hori Shimayan doing it and you see some others of
53:08
where there's literally a group of people going to with
53:10
chopsticks doing this competition grade tea hand
53:13
sorting it using this very old method.
53:15
Those tea cell for very high-priced, but it's also
53:17
something to have agency over. Can't be really done on very
53:20
large commercial scales. But it's interesting that you're
53:23
starting to see it. You know, I just think it's
53:25
another evidence of the fact that Uji matcha is so much more
53:29
processed and then you get into the even bigger arguments.
53:33
Does it even matter? Like you know it doesn't, And if
53:38
you know if it tastes good and you like it, it kind of doesn't
53:40
matter. But it does matter if you care
53:42
about attributing success to what actually makes it good, or
53:46
to learning about it. Yeah, it's it also comes down to
53:51
collect because like if this you know like segmentation of
53:57
refinery of what a product actually is will really only
54:01
benefit the consumers because they can have a more interesting
54:05
consumption experience and will only really eventually
54:10
benefiting that's the farmers. So the manufacturers when the
54:14
product can be sold for a higher price and they can get a higher
54:18
premium. Otherwise, it really doesn't
54:21
help anyone other than the consumers.
54:23
And for the farmers, you know, the question will be like, why
54:27
bother? Why do I need to do so much work
54:30
telling like all these things to consumers that are 10s of
54:34
thousands of kilometers away that you know, I have never met,
54:38
that I probably don't care about that much?
54:42
Yeah. Why do I have to go through all
54:44
the rigmarole of explaining why this process is great and
54:48
demonstrating the exact number of days shaded exactly what I
54:52
did for fertilizer? Like, it's just, you know, it's
54:55
not an open culture to begin with.
54:57
Yeah, it's not the numbers of shading.
55:00
The numbers of days of shading also can vary a lot from year to
55:04
year depending on the climate, the weather.
55:06
And there's fear of being misinterpreted.
55:08
Yeah. What if you have a bunch of
55:09
Karens on the Internet saying, oh, you shaded 23 days last
55:13
year, now it's 21. Why is that?
55:15
Must be worse Then you have to like be in the think through a
55:19
lot of defensive position. Well, actually it was raining
55:23
and we could we had to pick it earlier because of the weather
55:27
forecast. You know, you just don't know.
55:30
Yeah, it's complicated. But ultimately, I think the
55:34
difference between a commodity product and a specialty product
55:37
is having interchangeable components.
55:39
And I think the idea of matcha as a specialty product has so
55:43
much benefit to farmers in the long term by creating a new
55:47
market of people that do have that nuance and are willing to
55:52
pay a higher price for a more transparent product in a more
55:55
rich experience. Understanding really the closer
55:59
to objective truths about what this is versus buying into this
56:04
marketing vortex of uji matcha. Well, we are not advocating for
56:10
like people to sell tea more expensive in the future, but I
56:14
guess we are advocating for brand owners or, you know, tea
56:20
or bulk buyers that you know, it will be really beneficial for
56:25
the whole community, for the whole industry if the profit can
56:29
also be cascaded down to the farmers level, like let the
56:33
farmers see the money. This is going to be a profitable
56:36
path. Show them that, you know, this
56:38
could be the future. And it's not just economic
56:41
incentivization, but also at the same time, it's a confidence for
56:45
them to to be willing to work for more innovative practices
56:51
like investment of new equipments, investment of doing,
56:55
you know, more organic, you know, fertilization practice.
56:58
All of these practices and investments and innovations
57:03
requires a financial buffer for them to be willing to take the
57:07
risk. Now, as consumers and as
57:10
business owners, it's part of our job to actually think
57:13
through these incentive cycles, whereas safety, like how are we
57:17
going to get to a higher price? Can we create a culture of
57:20
people willing to pay more for a better product because they
57:23
happen to know a lot more about the product that they're buying
57:27
and the preferences that they have based off of a transparent
57:31
label, the cultivar, the processing, the fertilizer, or
57:34
some unique process that you're doing, whether or not using a
57:37
certain piece of equipment. In Nagasaki, there are people
57:40
who are using pan frying and steaming simultaneously.
57:44
That's resulting in some very interesting flavors.
57:46
It's about creating these incentive feedback loops to get
57:50
people to break out of their bubble instead of selling their
57:53
tea as a commodity to get blended into something that's
57:55
called ujimacha, right? It's it's kept out the the
58:00
evidence of humanity, the proof of life is in the tea.
58:04
Yeah, the human story, the human component of matcha, which
58:08
arguably is really the essence of matcha, is all about human
58:13
intervention that, as you say, Ryan gets missed.
58:16
And it's spirit is much closer. And everyone listening to the
58:19
podcast, I think actually really has a moral obligation to do so
58:24
and to take interest in these because the Japanese tea
58:27
industry is in structural decline from its traditional
58:30
practitioner base. The number of people practicing
58:33
tea ceremony die every year. And these people who are in
58:37
kimono practicing China, you everyday are not the consumers
58:41
that are willing to pay more for a better product that is
58:44
transparently sourced with verified prominence.
58:48
They don't know if you talk to tea ceremony practitioners, they
58:52
don't know what cultivars are. They're not interested in the
58:55
agriculture right there, but this market for understanding
58:59
and appreciating what actually makes quality tea, which are the
59:04
humans that are involved in this process, lives entirely outside
59:08
the scope of China. You.
59:10
And largely what's going to be the only growing part of this
59:13
market is in its foreign audience and with the matcha
59:17
boom that we've experienced. That's the Assad status quo, but
59:21
they could be interested in it. If you are part of the Channel U
59:26
community, we really encourage you to also talk about it too
59:30
with your peers. Yes, like like you guys are have
59:34
been the largest buyer from matcha historically and will be
59:38
a very important buyer of matcha into in the future.
59:41
And Channel U Community can make such a influential impact on the
59:46
Matcha industry if we all work together for a common goal.
59:51
Yeah, of not just buying a commodity with interchangeable
59:54
parts that are given some poetic.
59:56
Yeah, ask your sense of what the cultivar is of that matcha like
1:00:00
sense of my go back, you know, to their senses and you know
1:00:03
this. Could be the new culture that
1:00:06
gets talked about during internal youth session.
1:00:08
And it's such a shame too, because China you has such a
1:00:10
fantastic culture of artistic appreciation.
1:00:13
You know everything about your prize tea scoops, the bowls, the
1:00:17
history, the Potter, where it's from, why it's special.
1:00:20
It's literally baked into the pre scripted, partially pre
1:00:24
scripted dialogue of tea ceremony.
1:00:27
Beautiful bowl. It's pizza and what Potter is it
1:00:30
from? And then you.
1:00:31
Oh, I got it on my trip to Japan.
1:00:33
It's a element of discussion, even looking, and there's a
1:00:37
viewing of all of this stuff and it touches everything.
1:00:42
But the tea is so sad to me. Yeah.
1:00:46
There's its culture of appreciation already exists.
1:00:50
Yeah, this mindset already exists, it's just missing a very
1:00:54
unique component. Which are the people that
1:00:56
actually make the tea, which is ultimately what we're all about
1:01:01
here on the specialty much podcast.
1:01:02
So if you haven't read this article, we really recommend
1:01:05
that you give it a read or give it a listen, which is the
1:01:08
previous one in this podcast feed that you're listening to
1:01:11
now. And we're going to do a follow
1:01:13
up piece on what should Uji Matcha be, which will be an
1:01:17
opinion piece. And we're going to try to source
1:01:19
some opinions from across the industry where Sam and I will
1:01:23
have a dialogue about these different perspectives and
1:01:27
expanding on these ideas even further.
1:01:29
And if you have any ideas about or opinions about what Uji
1:01:33
Matcha should be, let us know. Please send us a message or an
1:01:37
e-mail. And we'd love to actually
1:01:39
include your thoughts in the piece as well as they see as
1:01:43
they fit into the broader discussion.
1:01:45
All right, thank you so much for listening.
1:01:47
If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing with Fran.
1:01:49
We'll see you in the next one. See you in the future.