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Reflections on Tencha Sourcing Trip · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
0:02
My name is Ryan, this is Michael Hozunjun.
0:04
Hello. Hello.
0:04
And we're the cofounders of Zanko Match Products.
0:07
Yeah. We launched this podcast to
0:08
discuss our learning journey in macho, share startup stories and
0:11
interview experts. And today we are being
0:14
interviewed and we are turning the mic to our colleague Gwen,
0:19
who is also part of the founding team and she is very curious
0:24
about our experience in Japan and we are getting a few
0:27
questions from her. Yes, I am very excited to hear
0:30
about your trip. I am hopeful to go on the next
0:32
one. I have a questions to get a
0:35
better perspective of what it was really like being in Japan
0:38
and seeing the tea farms in real life and meeting with all the
0:41
people you got to meet with. Yeah.
0:42
So to make this experience even more authentic, we don't know
0:46
about these questions in advance, so we are very
0:49
nervously waiting for this moment.
0:52
You'll do great. OK, ready.
0:54
We'll start with an easy one. All right, let's do it.
0:56
OK, do the farmers drink the matcha they grow?
1:00
Great question, but yes they do. I guess this question is
1:04
exceptionally interesting because tea farmers in Yunnan
1:07
who makes poor tea doesn't really drink their tea until
1:12
very recently. But historically they drink
1:14
green tea and they don't drink the poor tea that they make.
1:18
But in Japan they do. They do drink their their own
1:21
produce. Yeah, and we had a couple
1:24
instances of getting to drink tea prepared by the farmer, and
1:29
it was the farmer who grew the tea.
1:31
This is exactly the way they intended and really cool.
1:35
Amazing experience tasting it with their water, their
1:39
preparation style and all of their wares.
1:42
I have heard of though that some of the more middle sized tea
1:46
farm, some of the farmers do not drink their own tea, especially
1:50
the people who basically 100% of their business is selling tensha
1:56
to wholesalers and to then be blended or milled by other
2:00
people. I know that Jared from Jagasilk
2:02
did a vlog going to Wazooka, which is in Kyoto Prefecture,
2:07
and he sources tensha from a farmer there.
2:10
And that farmer had never had his own tea as matcha.
2:14
And Jared had milled some in Victoria, BC and brought it back
2:19
to that tea tea field. And it was the first time he had
2:22
ever had that tea, which is a pretty wild story.
2:25
I'd heard of that in like China, especially where it's not so
2:28
common, or at least historically it's not been so common where
2:31
farmers drink their own tea typically because they're not
2:33
the processors of it. But apparently that's still some
2:36
of the legacy supply chain for the, you know, farmers who end
2:42
there at the processing of fresh pig leaves or end at the
2:45
processing step of aricha or at Tanja.
2:48
Yeah, for Aricha especially so we have heard from one of the
2:52
farmers who also owns a factory in Izumo City that a lot of the
2:57
farmers from the surrounding area would just supply him
3:01
Aracha exclusively. And you know if it's Aracha then
3:05
they must not have really drink the tea from those production.
3:11
Yeah. And anyone this thing that's not
3:12
so familiar with RHR, it's a more crude version of the
3:16
product. And so I believe in order for
3:19
RHR to be converted to Tencha, it has to go through some heat
3:22
processing steps and I also believe there's some deveining
3:26
and de stemming steps. Yeah, the refinery process or
3:31
shiage, yes. So it goes from RHR to shiage
3:35
and then it's ready to be milled.
3:37
But aricha can be kept for quite a long time in refrigerated
3:41
units. There's a pretty new innovation
3:44
in the broad scheme of the the tea industry in Japan and where
3:48
you can keep this aricha for years and then it can get
3:51
processed and and finished. And we actually got to see some
3:54
processing of Aricha while in Japan of factory that was in a
3:59
different prefecture, but processing Aricha from
4:02
Kagushima. Yeah, that was that was very
4:05
interesting to watch. So you got to see a lot of the
4:07
processing. Was there anything of the
4:10
processing that you were surprised to learn or to see in
4:13
person? We didn't.
4:14
Get to see any direct processing from like spring material and we
4:18
were before the third harvest if some places were doing a third
4:22
harvest. But we did get to see all the
4:25
equipment and and walk through it.
4:27
I'm just surprised how large these factories are.
4:31
And we saw some smaller scale factories as well.
4:33
But the large factories can move some serious volume to very
4:37
even. The small ones are really highly
4:39
mechanized when you compare them to other tea growing regions of
4:43
the world. And they were mechanized very
4:46
early for some of the older tea houses.
4:48
Some of the machineries have very large portion of wood
4:53
components. Yeah.
4:55
These machines were like made back in the fees of the 30s.
4:58
Very interesting and very interesting that they seem to be
5:03
all made from Shizuoka. Shizuoka seems to be like the
5:08
mechanical or the technology center of Japan that supplies a
5:12
lot of these bespoke made machineries for different size
5:16
of factories. Like anything from a family run
5:20
factory to a multi warehouse, you know large plant.
5:25
They are all mostly I would say 90% or above are made by
5:30
Shizuoka. I forgot the exact name of
5:32
manufacturer but it's Shizuoka Manufacturer.
5:36
Yeah. And the other interesting thing
5:38
is apparently at least in Kyoto Prefecture, there are some land
5:43
restrictions on the way tensha factories or sencha factories or
5:49
all of these tea processing factories, the type of footprint
5:52
that they can have based on just land considerations.
5:56
And they're repurposing a lot of old buildings that used to be
5:59
other type of industrial. So they kind of have to get all
6:02
of this equipment to fit inside some existing building in some
6:06
of these regions. And they were saying, you know,
6:08
it's almost an unfair comparison when you're comparing building a
6:11
new factory in Kyoto Prefecture. Whereas opposed to somewhere
6:15
like Kagoshima where the land is just completely flat, like you
6:19
can just build as big a box as you want and you don't need to
6:23
have the contents inside the factory and you've shifted
6:26
around to meet your building requirement.
6:29
That was interesting. I'd never heard anyone talk
6:31
about that before until we were chatting with some people this
6:35
trip. I've never heard of that either.
6:36
Were there other parts of the matcha growing and processing
6:40
that you learned about from things like shading or how they
6:43
harvest? One thing that I would say most
6:47
I've really never heard of anyone talked about is how
6:50
tetsumi actually works, how hand picked matcha actually works.
6:53
So instead of picking, usually people consider the most
6:57
tendered leaf is the top part right?
7:00
Like the butt and the leaf that follow right after the butt.
7:03
But that's not true for matcha or tensha.
7:06
Tensha picking, you're picking individual leaves that growing,
7:10
stamping out off from the top part of the stem and you are
7:14
actually want to preserve the butt so that the bud would turn
7:18
into leaf again in second or third harvest.
7:21
And we also learned that that it's not the top leaf, but the
7:24
bottom leaf that tastes more tendered and more umami because
7:29
they receive even less sunlight. So the amino acid is more
7:33
concentrated. So that was.
7:35
Yeah, that was very counterintuitive.
7:38
And then apparently they saved the 1st and 2nd leaf in the bud
7:42
for different picks like a go kettle or some very high end
7:45
sencha. But using these, they're still
7:48
young and tender tertiary leaves.
7:50
But the fact that the ones further down the plant, the
7:53
still young ones, but we're not talking about the mature ones,
7:56
which are, you know, very leafy and coarse and kind of rigid and
8:01
then much darker color. But the ones that are still
8:04
young and tender at the base. Very counterintuitive from
8:08
everything you learn about tea processing for other types of
8:11
teas. Yeah, like you almost need to
8:14
unlearn to what you have to learn for Chinese tea to to
8:17
learn about Japanese tea. So the tea farmers that drink
8:20
their own matcha, are they able to taste the matcha in between
8:24
harvest to adjust fertilizing and light?
8:27
Great question. I don't think so.
8:31
And the best farmers only pick once a year.
8:33
The more high volume places will pick two, maybe 3 * a year,
8:39
maybe 4. But that's from what I
8:41
understand slightly less common. And these really large scale
8:45
factories, we were asking them how they know when to pick, what
8:49
kind of measurements they do. And apparently they can directly
8:53
measure the amount of chlorophyll in a leaf.
8:55
Like they basically have min labs and it's highly analytical
8:58
actually. And they go through the death.
9:01
Also from Shizuoka, like they were flying these experts from
9:05
Shizuoka to do all the testings. And they can like precision
9:08
target fertilizer or like they, they can control all this stuff
9:13
by like actual like analytical chemistry, looking at the amino
9:18
acid content in the leaves, looking at the chlorophyll level
9:21
in the leaves and doing soil samples, pretty sophisticated.
9:26
Yeah. Agriculture, very cool.
9:29
On the, on the smaller scale, one of the farmers that we were
9:32
with tasting tea, we were there in August I guess and we tasted
9:38
a tea with them and it was the first time they were drinking
9:42
this tea as matcha. Typically it's very common for
9:46
the matcha to undergo a resting period or the tensha to undergo
9:50
a resting period for a couple months.
9:53
And so when the first part of the harvest is you can separate.
9:57
Part of the first harvest in the spring is shin cha or fresh tea,
10:01
which is usually is a very grassy profile, but it's more of
10:04
a seasonal offering. But then a lot of the good stuff
10:07
gets held back and released in the fall, traditionally through
10:11
a holiday in China Yu or Japanese tea ceremony called
10:14
Roby Rocky. So like a lot of the vendors
10:17
that sell this very high NT, typically they're matcha doesn't
10:20
get released until September, October, November.
10:23
That just seems like a perfect intersection between these super
10:26
traditional farms that are generationally run and really
10:30
advanced technology that's able to analyze the components of the
10:33
leaf. True, although they're different
10:35
farmers, those are different people from what we understand.
10:40
It's a really, really different craftsmanship.
10:43
By the end of the day, there are almost two different products.
10:46
Yeah, it's almost hard to compare like people who are
10:49
doing insane volumes versus the smaller family gardens, which
10:54
are largely hand packed, harvested once a year in
10:57
incredible Taroir. It's like really hard.
11:00
That was that stark difference just in the amount of volume
11:03
that they're doing. It's almost not even the same
11:06
product in my mind. Now, having seen it, tasting it
11:10
side by side, you know, it's a different story.
11:12
But like the labor requirements and the amount of artistry and
11:16
artisanship and that goes in, the other stuff really feels
11:21
like agriculture. And the small family farms
11:24
really feel like an artisanal product.
11:27
And that difference couldn't be more.
11:28
Start. It's almost like comparing a a
11:32
Rolex to A to a Apple Watch. They can both tell time.
11:35
The technology behind them is very just very different.
11:39
Both produce good products. I mean most of the people drink
11:43
in the world come from these high volume places.
11:45
Yeah, they're both excellent product.
11:47
Although to maybe answer your question, Gwen, even though
11:51
these very high end artisanal farmers don't pick multiple
11:54
times through our year, they do develop this expertise to be
11:59
able to tell how different leaves mature in different times
12:03
of the year. So Uji Hakari versus a Asahi
12:07
versus some other cultivars. Between these two different
12:10
types of farmers and other people you were able to meet,
12:13
what is the opinion on how much is changing as it gains
12:16
popularity around the rest of the world?
12:17
Do these farmers have similar viewpoints?
12:19
Are they really different? What is like their vision for
12:22
Matcha? I'll give you the outside
12:24
perspective from what I heard in general.
12:26
And then, Sam, I'm curious to hear what your impressions were
12:29
on the ground. But the consensus when you talk
12:32
to industry people that own tea companies, interact with much of
12:36
farmers is that it really benefits the large players.
12:42
And we, someone that we were talking to who works in Mazuka,
12:45
put it in a really wonderful phrase.
12:47
It's either a race to the top or a race to the bottom where the
12:51
winners really, really win. And they make tons of money in
12:54
their small family farms, artisanal products.
12:57
And there's people all over the world who want to buy their
12:59
products. And then there are these
13:01
gigantic mass produced operations that, you know,
13:05
fulfill kind of the rest of the world's demand.
13:08
And there's a huge as a group of farmers in the middle, you'll
13:12
get kind of stuck in not being able to invest in quality and
13:15
kind of stuck in the buying system of just exclusively
13:19
selling to wholesalers who do the quality evaluation and set
13:24
the prices. Yeah.
13:25
So, well, we talked to multiple, multiple farmers, you know, in
13:30
different regions, in Uji, in Ismo City, in Yame, and I guess
13:36
we have learned a lot of different perspective for
13:41
smaller farmers. I think the key problem is that
13:44
the popularity of matcha overseas doesn't necessarily
13:49
trickle down to them. Like, they have heard of their
13:53
products being very popular outside of Japan and also
13:57
sometimes being sold for astronomical prices compared to
14:01
how their matcha can be sold domestically.
14:04
But that doesn't necessarily benefit them in any ways.
14:08
Their matcha is still being procured by these larger houses
14:11
getting rebranded into all kinds of product names, and they don't
14:16
necessarily have a lot of consistent repeat buyers outside
14:20
of all of these historical houses.
14:22
So I, I think the problem is that how do we envision or work
14:26
on a future that the popularity of much outside of Japan can
14:31
benefit these farmers, you know, alongside with the growth of the
14:36
market, all these other larger tea factories, you know, in
14:40
other places. They are, I would say, getting
14:44
very inspired by how flexible and how innovative all these,
14:49
you know, matcha brands outside of Japan's are.
14:52
So like they can like do basically anything, like
14:55
anything from single origin to blend to all kinds of much on
15:00
mix, different milling, milling mechanisms.
15:04
They have the flexibility and they have the agency to be able
15:07
to do so. But for these smaller artisanal
15:10
farmers, they don't necessarily have the agency to accommodate
15:14
these new growing need outside of Japan.
15:16
So there's has to be some mechanism to help translate that
15:21
popularity or that market growth into something that, you know,
15:25
these farmers in Uji or in other places can grow alongside with
15:30
us. Yeah, One of the things that Ian
15:32
was telling us when we had dinner with him is that even the
15:35
award-winning producers that are very famous, right, the
15:39
percentage by volume of their extremely high end tea from
15:43
their garden is still like a relatively small portion of
15:48
their business. And then we were talking with
15:49
another traditional farmer when we were in Uji and we were
15:52
asking them, you know, you have all these new Western vendors
15:57
that are coming here sourcing single origin, single cultivar
16:00
products from small tea gardens like yourselves.
16:04
Like do you do a lot of volume through those companies who are
16:08
buying it and then marketing the products to, you know, the West
16:11
and they said no. So vast majority of our volume
16:15
still is sold the wholesale. And so there's actually quite a
16:18
bit of supply that's available because these, you know, these
16:23
famous farmers who are all award winners, actually still produce
16:27
an incredible volume of matcha that is not being sold into what
16:32
I'll call specialty channels that celebrate their product,
16:36
their process and their farms. Is there a consensus of what the
16:40
future or or what they hope the future will look like?
16:44
I'd say there was a lot of pessimism and we were like
16:47
pushing, like trying to like pull out some optimistic
16:51
threads. But I guess it's especially so
16:53
for these artisanal farmers. Their concerns are mainly, I
16:57
guess, mainly about labor. Young people just don't want to
17:01
be working in this field. It's very laborers.
17:05
It's very, very tedious and hard and there's no guaranteed of
17:09
profit year by year because the climate is changing so much and
17:13
you see. Yeah, harvest season.
17:15
We've been told first hand that harvest seasons are getting
17:19
directly impacted by climate change, like getting pushed back
17:22
further and further. Pretty interesting.
17:25
Pretty interesting. And and all these empty lots
17:29
just sitting out there growing nothing in Wuji that's very
17:33
surprising. Like it's not a supply issue,
17:36
it's a labor issue. No one is out there growing tea
17:39
with all these tea gardens in Wuji.
17:42
And one of the tea farmers were even thinking about using these
17:47
unused lots to to like grow a lower quality tea and to turn
17:52
that into cosmetic products so that it will be more profitable
17:55
and attract more young people to come into the to the industry,
18:01
which is very sad. You know, like the Creme
18:04
delicate when? You think about it when you
18:05
think about it like everything is fighting them, like
18:10
everything is a fight. The labour is a fight, the cost
18:13
of the things to fertilize it are a fight.
18:16
The succession planning is a fight because no one wants to
18:19
get into this industry, right? A lot of it still hold sold at
18:23
wholesale. I mean, getting blended in a way
18:25
that you have no idea where it came from.
18:27
Like there's just all of these like headwinds that they have to
18:32
have to fight. And we're very lucky that a lot
18:37
of these Western vendors, I think are starting to tell the
18:40
story of a lot of these farmers when they did.
18:43
And they're like begging, knocking on their door.
18:46
Please sell me your tea so I can represent you and your family.
18:50
Like it's, it's, it's so weird. It's all like there's just a lot
18:55
of barriers. A.
18:56
Lot of friction. A lot of friction.
19:01
Even to be able to do business, you need to went through all
19:04
these obstacles. After seeing everything you got
19:07
to see in Japan and speaking to everyone, has your perspective
19:11
and hope for Matcha's future changed?
19:13
I'd say so you know what we're working on in a device to mill
19:16
matcha fresh with, you know, quality.
19:18
Being very quality minded and having taken the time to
19:22
research, like what the quality problems are when it comes to
19:25
milling matcha. We didn't experience any
19:27
pushback from the big players, from the small players.
19:31
And I would actually even say that some of the smaller family
19:34
gardens that we talked to were quite excited by the prospect of
19:38
milling matcha anywhere. And that's really the status quo
19:42
now. Shouldn't be seen as this thing
19:44
that's preserved in stone and traditional because it's not
19:48
industrial. Ishi uses are actually
19:50
relatively new. This, you know, top of the notch
19:53
packaging with nitrogen flushing capabilities and these little
19:57
oxygen absorbers are very new. It doesn't have to necessarily
20:01
be that way if someone can come up with a better way.
20:03
So no one was very opposed to this idea of people milling
20:07
their own much stateside if it could exist in a smaller form
20:10
factor than an issue. So and got a lot of advice and
20:14
knowledge and support when we were asking them questions about
20:17
what feedback or advice they had for us SO.
20:20
It was that made me very hopeful.
20:22
When you talk with people directly, they're really
20:24
pragmatic. Actually, they're not so bound
20:27
by these ideas of tradition. Yeah, very pragmatic and very
20:31
progressive. It's like people often forget
20:35
that how technology is so advanced in Japan.
20:40
You this is a country that had Sony and Toshiba and all of
20:45
these very advanced technology emerged in the past few decades
20:49
and they are keep innovating to this day.
20:51
So this is a land of innovation. There are a lot of tradition or
20:56
legacy baggage, but people doesn't.
20:58
Maybe people outside of Japan will view it more heavily than
21:03
people inside Japan, or people are Japanese.
21:05
Strange group. There's a strange group of
21:08
foreign people and foreign perspective on the matcha
21:12
industry that I think likes to get defensive or protective or
21:17
offended on behalf of traditional Japanese
21:20
artisanship, but it's not the case for the people who are on
21:24
the ground living and breathing this stuff.
21:26
Maybe the ECU soup makers will have a problem, but even them,
21:30
maybe not. Maybe not.
21:32
They are willing to mount a motor on their ECU soup.
21:37
That's not traditional. That's not traditional.
21:40
I mean like one thing that we are very sure after actually
21:43
being in Japan is that matcha is not dying.
21:47
Like this is very much a still very thriving industry in Japan
21:51
and it's that some of the more artisanal production of matcha
21:56
is disappearing. But matcha in large is growing
22:00
very much. So even domestically it's
22:02
growing. And also like, if this is going
22:06
to be a, a very bright future, then anyone can switch back to
22:10
matcha again in the future. Like the we have seen people
22:14
switching to home to shaving in Yami for like very recently.
22:18
If any of these practices end up making a change in the future,
22:22
like people are willing to adapt.
22:25
This is not something that, you know, like people are hold on to
22:28
for generations because of it. Yeah, when you look at the
22:31
demographic shifts of matcha farmers, there is something to
22:34
be worried about in in their age.
22:38
But from an industry, the industry that we saw felt like
22:41
it would, you know, still had a lot of life in it.
22:44
And it's easy to get very pessimistic when you look at the
22:47
statistics of like, the number of farms in Japan.
22:52
And I think in the 1980s, there were something like 200,000
22:55
matcha farms. But it's easy to forget the
22:58
1980s were a very weird time in Japan.
23:01
It was when Japan was just flushed with money.
23:05
There was a saying that if you had a hundred U.S. dollar bill
23:08
and it landed on the street in Tokyo, that that $100 bill was
23:13
worth less than the land that it landed on.
23:17
Like that's how rich the Japanese were.
23:20
And it supported and propped up this huge tea industry and all
23:23
sorts of retail. And it was still kind of a very
23:26
traditional culture where everyone was brewing tea in the
23:28
office, right? And now it's modernized and it's
23:32
shifted. And, you know, it's changed.
23:34
But, you know, it doesn't mean that like, it's going away.
23:37
It just means that like, like it's industrialized.
23:40
You can now probably in the same amount of farm and consolidate
23:45
way more tea and way more volume than you ever could in the 90s
23:48
with today's technology. Yeah, and they can always revert
23:52
back. Like it's not something that
23:54
people just like, move on and lost.
23:57
This is very much a living industry and a living art.
24:00
I want to move back to the tea fields a little bit.
24:02
Can you describe what it's like being in a field of tea bushes?
24:07
Like what this smells like, the how big the plants are, the
24:10
difference between the cultivars, and like your
24:12
experience actually being there. Lots of spiders.
24:16
That's really funny. I would not have guessed that.
24:18
Lot of lots of spiders. We were walking by a place in
24:22
Uji. We were just walking around and
24:25
we could smell the fish. It really smelled almost a
24:29
little off putting because of the marine notes that you can
24:32
smell in these umami bomb matchas.
24:35
I feel like I could smell that in the same way that you kind of
24:38
smell cow manure when you know, they're spreading around in the
24:42
States as fertilizer. There was this weird funky
24:46
fermented fish smell that was going on as we were walking by
24:50
that was less than appetizing, especially when you realized, oh
24:54
wow, this leaf is like literally sucking that up and turning that
24:57
into the amino acids that we're consuming in much of.
25:00
Very strange. Very strange feeling it's what
25:05
what you throw into the soil really turns into, you know the
25:09
tea leaf and you are you are actually drinking the production
25:13
of it. It's very interesting, like
25:16
people like matcha is very hyper engineered in this way.
25:20
And for some of the more artisanal farms that we visit,
25:25
you don't necessarily get that. And the tea there is not
25:29
fertilized the same way in all the other tea farms that we walk
25:33
pass by. And you can taste the difference
25:36
from from the tea. Like one thing that really
25:39
changed my opinions about Wuji tea is that it's not, it can be
25:46
not a umami bomb. Like it's it can be very
25:51
delicate, very creamy, very nutty.
25:53
It's not necessarily really umami driven if you don't, you
25:57
know, dump all these fish like oyster fertilized or sometimes
26:02
even synthetic for fertilizers into the soil.
26:06
Yeah, actually, I think it's the synthetic fertilizer that really
26:09
makes the concentrated umami bombs.
26:11
But all the tea that we had from the naturally fertilized small
26:15
tea gardens in Uji, they were not umami bombs at all.
26:19
You could really taste the cultivar.
26:22
You could really taste a lot more complexity.
26:25
Umami was a component, but it wasn't D component in a lot of
26:29
ways that you sometimes taste a lot of.
26:32
Blends. And for those naturally farmed
26:35
tea, they look very healthy. Ryan, I don't know, Like we, we
26:39
have heard that this year is a very hot year and a lot of these
26:43
tea plants get sunburned and are dying.
26:46
But for that farm that we visited, all of the tea bushes
26:50
are very healthy. Like we don't see any dying
26:53
bushes and they're all just growing and looking very burden.
26:57
Yeah. Very healthy.
26:58
I think it's this meticulous garden management must be, you
27:03
know, it's really a full time job, but that's the end.
27:06
You can really tell the difference between a tea Bush
27:09
that is handpicked and a tea Bush or tazumi or and a tea Bush
27:13
that is automated. You can tell by the shape of the
27:16
plant. You can tell by the way that
27:18
it's laid out, and it's pretty immediately obvious, and the
27:21
cultivars are also immediately obvious once you have an eye for
27:25
it, you know, identifying the difference between cultivars is
27:29
more less subtle than I would have ever guessed.
27:33
That's true. That's true.
27:34
And I I guess what surprised me the most is how large the tea
27:37
leaf of Asahi is, because for Chinese tea you tend to
27:41
associate larger leaves with coarser or more wild taste, like
27:46
some of the daya cultivar in Yunnan.
27:49
But the Asahi is the most tendered, most delicate cultivar
27:54
in matcha and and beliefs of Asahi is very large.
27:58
I think it's the largest out of all the cultivars.
28:01
At least that we saw. So that was very surprising.
28:04
OK, I have one last question ready.
28:06
Ready, ready. What is a piece of advice you
28:08
could give to someone who is looking to get into sourcing
28:11
their own matcha? Many different things.
28:14
Have you heard so many horror stories?
28:17
Huh. I'm sorry.
28:18
Go ahead, Ryan. So many different things.
28:20
We've heard so many different horror stories going in, so in
28:24
some ways they think we over prepared and in other ways they
28:28
think we under prepared. Sam, I don't know if you have
28:30
the same take. Yeah, well for the under
28:32
prepared part, definitely get a car.
28:35
Next time you're in Kyushu, or you know anywhere outside of
28:40
Uchi, you are going to need a car.
28:42
Yeah, getting around is kind of difficult.
28:45
We for one of our meetings, we were running late.
28:47
We had to grab a bus that you had to grab on the side of a
28:50
highway. Like we ran into this bus.
28:54
It showed up 10 minutes late. It didn't.
28:56
It dropped us off a mile away from the Tea place tea factory.
29:00
And then we like ran there. We were like, Oh my God, I hope
29:04
we pass a vending machine. We need some water before we go
29:07
into this meeting for an hour. Yeah.
29:10
And for the other place, we literally reached the end of
29:15
public transportation and we are still like 2-3 miles away from
29:19
the destination we want to get to.
29:22
So we end up walking through all the rice fields in this
29:26
subtropical burning sun and literally roasted into aracha or
29:31
bancha. But as far as like Sam, what,
29:34
what advice could we give to people?
29:36
Like one thing that immediately comes to mind is just like, do
29:39
your research. Like we came in and were able to
29:43
not ask any basic magic questions.
29:46
Like this podcast and the reading and the writing we've
29:49
been doing and all of our other T knowledge really allowed us to
29:53
engage with people to really learn on questions that they've
29:58
probably never been asked before, which I think really
30:01
helped us get a foot in the door.
30:04
Yeah. Well, unless you're talking to
30:05
one of the larger firms, which usually they have some sort of
30:10
orientation that's set up to intro you like what's going on
30:14
on site. But other than that, if you want
30:17
to talk directly to the farmers, talking to other people,
30:21
especially English speakers who has some sort of experience in
30:25
the industry will be very, very helpful to get you prepared, get
30:29
you learn all the vocabularies. Necessarily to be able to have a
30:35
meaningful interaction with the farmers.
30:38
I think that would be very helpful.
30:40
Yeah, absolutely. What other things do you think
30:43
will be? I think figuring out your
30:45
framing about what makes you or your company unique.
30:48
When reaching out to farmers, we contacted almost everyone we met
30:52
either through their website or through direct introduction
30:56
through some very kind people in the industry who opened some
30:59
doors for us. We're very grateful for that as
31:02
well as using Instagram and those are really the tools and
31:06
reaching out to them with a message that is authentic to
31:09
yourself, but also maybe is, you know, a little more innovative
31:13
than basically just repackaging their product.
31:16
I think would get them very interested, right?
31:19
Because like it most, almost all matcha companies that exist
31:23
right now are basically repackaging other people's
31:26
product and marketing it and selling it, etcetera.
31:29
And the spirit behind that brand really matters and what it
31:34
stands for and why it exists. And having a clear understanding
31:38
of that and being able to articulate it is important.
31:42
And I think these people have very well tuned and very
31:45
conservative ES meters and have a very good, we'll call it
31:50
immune system to working with the wrong type of people.
31:54
When is your next trip to Japan? So we actually got invited to
31:58
come pick tea during harvest season and some of the Tizumi
32:02
tea gardens in Fuji. So we're definitely going back
32:05
for that 100%, but we'll maybe go back sooner when the mill is
32:09
fully working. And so the mill is still mid
32:11
prototype. It's working.
32:13
We have failed enough that we're really starting to learn stuff
32:17
and we're getting a bunch of new parts made right now.
32:19
I don't know when this recording is going to come out, but when
32:22
it's fully, completely working and we feel like it's ready to
32:25
present to the world, we'll probably schedule a trip and
32:28
take it back to Japan. Yeah.
32:30
And we have heard that the tea picking is much earlier in the
32:34
South. So maybe we are going to start
32:37
from the South early next year and then slowly falling the
32:41
harvest hotline, moving from the South slowly to the north and we
32:45
end in Wuji. Yeah, that was a that was a cool
32:48
thing to learn. Basically is that we need to
32:50
follow the harvest season based just on the weather.
32:53
Yeah. So hopefully next trip too,
32:54
we'll we'll make it to Kagoshima and maybe she's a woke up as
32:59
well. Yeah, and maybe we can also see
33:03
some other tea production too, like Banchao kill Bancha or even
33:07
Goishicha, which is a Lactobacillus fermented tea that
33:12
we we really, we tried the tea. It tastes very interesting.
33:17
I would love to see how it was produced.
33:20
There's some pretty weird things going on in the fermentation
33:22
world in tea in Japan that we just kind of have a personal
33:26
interest in. I don't know if it's ever going
33:28
to make sense in the broader business, but it's just too
33:30
weird to ignore with these purposely inoculated
33:34
Lactobacillus or Koji fermented teas.
33:37
You don't hear about that in other places, especially outside
33:40
of China. Yeah, it's it's very interesting
33:43
technique ink and I wonder how they.
33:46
Would taste. Them.
33:47
Maybe they'll be too strong. Yeah, we're going to have some,
33:51
actually. Anyone sparkling Calpis calpis
33:54
tea calpis matcha? Yeah.
33:58
I wonder if anyone's tried it with fencha, these types of Koji
34:02
or Lactobacillus fermentations, because usually, I mean, you're
34:06
kind of using the bottom of the barrel leaves for these
34:08
techniques. But I wonder if there is
34:11
something there that could be some something cool and
34:14
different. Yeah.
34:15
Future, future stuff. Yep.
34:17
Once the machine starts actually be able to perform, it would
34:22
really unleash a lot of imagination for us to do
34:27
experiments. Very looking forward to that.
34:30
Me too. ME3, do you think you'll go to
34:33
any blunt houses on your next trip?
34:35
That's an interesting topic. And I go back and forth in my
34:39
mind like how specialty they are.
34:42
I mean, ultimately our goal as a company is to raise the floor
34:47
and the ceiling of quality by allowing matcha to be fresh
34:51
ground anywhere. So while I don't think they're
34:54
necessarily in the spirit of specialty, there is something
34:57
that is an incredible cultural artifact of Japan and is
35:02
evolving and has its own separate history.
35:06
So love to talk with them and hear their perspective on matcha
35:11
farms and the way they interact with them and the way they
35:14
blend. And I think there's so much we
35:16
can learn from these traditional houses, even though it's not
35:19
necessarily specialty matcha in the sense that you you don't
35:22
know where anything comes from. Yeah.
35:24
One thing that I don't really I guess getting any satisfied
35:30
answers in and this trip is how does blending actually works?
35:36
Like how does the naming scheme of all of these module actually
35:40
works? And what's the strategy, what's
35:43
the reasoning behind them? And how do you design A blend
35:47
for your customers and what are these customers like?
35:50
Who are they? Like, who are you designing your
35:52
product for? I think that's in.
35:54
Their minds. In their mind, I think that's
35:56
something that we are going to have to talk to one of these
35:59
plant houses to get a satisfied answer from.
36:02
There's such a big missing piece of this picture.
36:05
We're going like just direct to farmers and talking with farmers
36:09
and they know very little about matcha milling.
36:12
They know very little about blending.
36:14
It's pretty interesting. It's so little that you feel
36:18
like they're getting purposefully gated away from all
36:22
of these these these fields like they are very much monopolized
36:27
by some of the larger firms out there and they really don't know
36:32
anything about these. The knowledge segments are so
36:35
real. These are just really completely
36:38
different segments. The farmers from the processors
36:42
and blenders and Millers and like the end brands and then
36:47
like the traditional customer, which is the the tea ceremony
36:51
practitioners or different temples, it's really isolated
36:54
knowledge pockets. And like when it gets to like
36:57
Chanayu and traditional preparation, then in that case
37:00
the farmers are several layers removed and they'll be like,
37:04
yeah, I'm not whisking this traditionally, but I'm whisking
37:07
it my way. Actually, we've heard that more
37:09
than once, but they're just so far removed from the end user
37:14
and the cultures that are built around this.
37:17
And it really, we got a whole, a whole new picture of how
37:21
segmented the industry is and how no one, not a single person
37:26
I believe in the world is really qualified to say whether or not
37:31
something is authentic or traditional.
37:33
Because no one has the complete picture that across the whole
37:36
industry, from the farming to the preparers to the blenders
37:40
and the brands and the processors, it's just really so
37:45
segmented. And I feel kind of almost
37:48
arrogant saying that, but you really get the sense that these
37:51
knowledge pockets have existed for a long time and people don't
37:55
necessarily know what or why the other group is doing what
37:58
they're doing. That is very true, especially
38:01
when you're talking about tradition.
38:02
Like what tradition? Like are you talking about the
38:05
tradition in Meiji periods, in Edo periods or anyone, you know,
38:10
like before that, like like this is really a ever evolving and
38:16
changing industry. And you know, before I I bet
38:19
Ryan, like a lot of these segmentation are rooted on the
38:23
historical hierarchy of Japanese society, like the producers, the
38:28
growers and and the the retailers or the the
38:32
manufacturers and the end user of matcha are or were just from
38:36
different classes historically. So I bet that that's probably
38:40
the root and that somehow gets cascaded down to the modern
38:45
society. Yeah, it brought such clarity
38:48
seeing all of this and we have a huge missing chunk with the
38:51
traditional blend houses missing in our knowledge and knowledge
38:56
structures currently. But I really dislike this top
38:59
down positioning of traditional and authentic because no one is
39:03
qualified to make this statement.
39:05
It's really, it's very energizing to me actually,
39:09
because it's very firmly putting things into a very rigid box by
39:14
people who really do not have a full understanding of any of
39:17
these segments that produce these things.
39:19
It drives me up the wall. Yeah, well, let's talk to them.
39:23
Let's let's engage conversation with them.
39:27
You know, like something that I, I guess learned from this trip
39:31
is that sometimes you just just need to ask you go there and the
39:35
people are actually very open. Sometimes, you know, you get a
39:38
meeting and they there are actually are willing to share a
39:40
lot of information with you. So let's plan for that for the
39:44
next trip. Yeah, absolutely on our own
39:47
learning journey and we'd love to share it on this podcast.
39:50
And if anyone listening has any strong opinions on any of these
39:53
topics or disagrees, please reach out.
39:57
We're really we're strong opinions, but very open to
40:01
having our minds change with new data or new perspectives.
40:06
So our viewpoint is the same. In a year from now, shame on us.
40:10
Yes, indeed. Or if you are end up knowing any
40:14
of these plant houses and you know, like if you're willing to
40:17
give us an intro, we are, we'll be very grateful.
40:19
Yeah. And we'd love to learn from them
40:21
in the most respectful way possible.
40:23
Like we really would like to learn this industry, the depth
40:26
and breadth and it seems like it will be the hardest place to
40:30
crack into. But we we would love to get a
40:34
better understanding of what's going on for what is such a
40:37
historically and currently important part of the industry
40:40
that feels very black box. Very much so, even for a lot of
40:44
people in Japan. Yeah, a lot of the farmers, we
40:47
were asking them, blending questions or naming questions
40:49
about like, what does hatsumakashi mean?
40:52
And we heard the same thing over and over.
40:54
We have no idea. There's ought to be some reasons
40:58
like things don't. Just I think our first blend
41:02
that we create for the Sanco brand needs to be this is not
41:07
Hatsu Mukashi. Or hatsu mukashi, you know like
41:10
hatsu means like the beginning or the 1st.
41:14
Like I think there will be a very suitable name.
41:18
Hatsu. Anyway, I think it's a fine
41:22
place to end. Yeah.
41:23
So thank you so much for listening.
41:25
If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider rating this
41:28
podcast and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts really
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helps, especially in discovery so that other people can find
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41:39
topics. We really appreciate your
41:40
listenership and we'll see you in the next one.
41:42
Thanks. See you in the next episode and
41:45
thank you Gwen for all the great questions.
41:48
Thank you. See you.
41:50
Bye.