Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Is matcha just a format now?

Transcript

Is matcha just a format now? · Specialty Matcha Podcast

• 0:06
  Hello and welcome to the specialty much Podcast.
• 0:08
  My name is Ryan. This is Michael Hosenjung who
• 0:11
  also goes by Sam. Hello hello and with the Co
• 0:13
  founders of Sankamacha products. Yeah, we're launching this
• 0:16
  podcast to discuss our learning journey in Matcha, or should we
• 0:19
  call that Morcha or Malcha or powder green tea Ryan and share
• 0:26
  startup stories and interview experts.
• 0:28
  But you know, today's topic will mainly be on, you know, the very
• 0:32
  name of this green powder that has been debated over and over
• 0:36
  again by many people with different point of view.
• 0:39
  So we wouldn't have a somewhat fresh take, but it's pretty like
• 0:43
  hot online topic in discourse about one.
• 0:46
  What is the definition of matcha?
• 0:48
  What is real and fake? And like what the word matcha
• 0:52
  even means now? And I'm think it's worth asking,
• 0:56
  is Matcha just a format now and versus something that needs a
• 1:02
  very strict definition? So this is sort of debate style,
• 1:05
  discussion style and topic between Salmon eyes on June and
• 1:09
  I about sort of our thoughts and the different perspectives that
• 1:13
  we've heard. Because I think you can
• 1:14
  legitimately argue like very different sides of this
• 1:18
  depending on what you care about and what you prioritize first.
• 1:23
  Like the consumer, the culture, the history, the legacy, and
• 1:26
  whether or not you care about small brands, whether or not you
• 1:29
  care about innovation. There's got these different
• 1:32
  lenses you can put on it, which makes it a really interesting
• 1:35
  podcast topic. Yes, indeed.
• 1:37
  And Ryan and I have been actually debating over this
• 1:40
  topic over and over again in the past few years.
• 1:43
  And our perspective has shift a little bit to different
• 1:46
  spectrums, but largely we're still in a, I said I was in
• 1:52
  fairly intense disagreement at the moment still.
• 1:54
  So which makes this podcast, I think will be very interesting.
• 1:58
  Yeah. So let's start inwards and zoom
• 2:01
  out. And one of the things that
• 2:02
  prompted this is one of our good industry friends, Jules Reyes
• 2:06
  put out a put out a reel where she was discussing some Chinese
• 2:10
  matcha that she was drinking or Chinese mocha if you are in that
• 2:14
  camp and was asking her audience with what people thought about,
• 2:21
  you know, matcha coming from places outside of Japan.
• 2:23
  And a really prominent well known producer in Wazuka in
• 2:29
  Kyoto Prefecture commented that it's and you know, they said
• 2:32
  something that we've heard over and over in the matcha industry
• 2:35
  is that matchas like champagne, if it's not grown in champagne,
• 2:38
  it cannot be called champagne. And that's Japan has done a very
• 2:42
  bad job protecting it. But, you know, anything coming
• 2:45
  out of Japan should be green tea powder.
• 2:47
  So Sam, how would you interpret that comment sort of at face
• 2:50
  value and then we can kind of zoom out from there?
• 2:53
  Yeah, we Chinese didn't do a good job protecting mucha.
• 2:56
  That's why it got to Japan, actually.
• 2:58
  You know, intellectually I agree with him.
• 3:01
  This Japanese tea producers, I mean, like, it's really in the
• 3:05
  name Matcha. That's a Japanese name for a
• 3:09
  very much Japanese product. And you know, I have always been
• 3:12
  advocating for using a different term, whether or not it's more
• 3:17
  cha or malcha in Korean or whatever language they use
• 3:21
  speaking in your local area to kind of bucket this powder green
• 3:26
  tea format tea underneath this new name or a different name
• 3:30
  other than matcha. But, you know, realistically
• 3:33
  speaking, it's really not that actionable, like from a, you
• 3:38
  know, consumer perception and recognition point with you
• 3:41
  pushing out a new name just makes things more confusing for
• 3:45
  everybody. And there's no regulatory entity
• 3:47
  to enforce that. And you are just introducing
• 3:51
  another confusing term into this already chaotic environment.
• 3:56
  But you know, intellectually speaking, matcha is really it's
• 4:01
  matcha, right? It's you're literally
• 4:03
  pronouncing a Japanese words when you speak matcha.
• 4:06
  Yes, but you can also argue the other side.
• 4:09
  So let's talk about the semantic argument for matcha, or what the
• 4:12
  words actually mean and where they came from.
• 4:15
  Originally it came from what the Chinese term for powder tea and
• 4:19
  they and then in Japanese kanji they add a hand radical to
• 4:24
  signify that you know, this powder format is powderized by
• 4:28
  hand, which was implying the usage of Ishiyusu, which was
• 4:33
  powered by hand back in the days.
• 4:36
  That's the evolution of the semantic meaning of these names.
• 4:40
  But you know, if you really date back to the origin, it's right.
• 4:44
  It's powder tea. And it's a description also,
• 4:46
  like literally powdered or rubbed tea.
• 4:48
  That's that's right. But also like, if you really
• 4:52
  trace back to the origin that was very vague from the very
• 4:55
  beginning, people in Song dynasty didn't just drink like
• 4:59
  pure or pure tea. Like it's there's still some
• 5:01
  mixture of some other ingredients.
• 5:03
  And if you date back to Tang Dynasty, which is the previous
• 5:07
  dynasty before Song dynasty, where people also were drinking
• 5:11
  powder tea, they were adding like gingers and mountain
• 5:14
  junipers and all kinds of things into the tea soup.
• 5:17
  It really was a soup at the time.
• 5:19
  And that was also in the powder format.
• 5:22
  It's powder tea. It's still mocha, mocha.
• 5:24
  And it just gets evolved into what nowadays people are
• 5:30
  perceiving what matcha is like. If you trace back the linkage,
• 5:34
  it's that there's there isn't a clear cut of, you know what is
• 5:38
  truly the most traditional or the most pure or the most right
• 5:44
  version of this T format. Yeah, indeed.
• 5:46
  I mean, if you take a can of like Mariu Q Kalyama and back to
• 5:50
  someone studying before Riku's time, let's say 100 years before
• 5:55
  Riku, who was drinking matcha, matcha wasn't shaded at that
• 5:59
  point. It was likely not not shaded.
• 6:01
  It would be almost an unrecognizable product even
• 6:04
  within Japan, taken out of its time and out of its context.
• 6:08
  So the very meaning and understanding of what matcha is
• 6:12
  is fluid and has changed throughout the centuries and
• 6:17
  actually even throughout the millennia that the history goes
• 6:20
  back that far to semantically, you know, speaking, it is a
• 6:24
  descriptive name. It literally just means powdered
• 6:26
  tea. Now you can argue the other side
• 6:28
  of this too, that at any time and place and context, everyone
• 6:32
  has an an idea of what certain words mean, right?
• 6:35
  Everyone has an idea of what champagne tastes like.
• 6:38
  And a wine produced outside of the champagne region may or may
• 6:43
  not live up to those expectations.
• 6:45
  And that someone gets when they think that they are purchasing
• 6:48
  or drinking champagne. And same can be true for matcha,
• 6:53
  right? The idea of matcha as a product
• 6:56
  and part of the reason it's gotten famous globally are
• 6:59
  because of its color. A lot of people have
• 7:01
  expectations around its health benefits.
• 7:04
  A lot of people have expectations around the taste.
• 7:06
  And if you deliver a product that might deviate from any of
• 7:10
  these things that meet consumers expectations, it can drag down
• 7:15
  the whole industry. Now, is it fair that a Japanese
• 7:18
  tea producer is calling all Chinese matcha essentially fake
• 7:22
  and then it's green tea powder? I don't know.
• 7:25
  Actually a lot of the Chinese made product is made with
• 7:29
  Japanese cultivars, Japanese processing equipment.
• 7:33
  And even Japanese people. And by Japanese people in some
• 7:38
  cases and milled on Japanese ishiyusu in China, which we we
• 7:43
  know exists. And the more you learn about
• 7:45
  matcha and matcha like production and speak about
• 7:47
  experts in agriculture, you learned that, you know, matcha
• 7:51
  is significantly less terroir driven than other teas because
• 7:56
  there's so much human intervention, the impact of
• 7:59
  fertilizer, the impact of shading, the impact of cultivar
• 8:02
  and the impact of processing. So long as you're able to
• 8:05
  replicate these things, the terroir, so long as you're not
• 8:08
  killing the plant, actually matters significantly less than
• 8:11
  if we're talking about, you know, other types of tea or even
• 8:14
  other types of crops. So the ability to dislocate
• 8:18
  where it is grown to replicate that product, there's no
• 8:22
  fundamental reason why it can't be done.
• 8:24
  So it's, you know, is it fair to call a product that is grown in
• 8:29
  China that is processed on the same equipment from the same
• 8:32
  cultivars with intervention from people that have the same
• 8:36
  knowledge, Japanese people doing work in China with the same or
• 8:40
  similar fertilizers and milled on similar equipment fake?
• 8:44
  I don't know. I think that's a bit
• 8:45
  disingenuous actually. But if you're comparing it to
• 8:48
  just some random green tea powder crap that was not shaded
• 8:52
  at all and then, you know, quickly ball milled from non
• 8:54
  Japanese cultivars, yeah, that's bastardizing.
• 8:57
  But you deliver that to a consumer and you call it matcha,
• 9:00
  it brings down the whole industry.
• 9:02
  But on the other hand, if we were to bring one of these high
• 9:04
  end Chinese matcha, especially one that we recently had and to
• 9:08
  this producer, I would be a little bit surprised if they
• 9:13
  would be able to identify it as a non Japanese product.
• 9:16
  Well I would be very surprised. It's better than a lot of the
• 9:21
  mid tier lower tier Japanese matcha from like Shizuoko
• 9:25
  Kagoshima that I have tried before.
• 9:27
  Yeah, significantly better actually that made from a
• 9:30
  Japanese company with a roots and Uji no less, but produced in
• 9:34
  mainland China. That's like the semantic side of
• 9:37
  this debate. And but we're still talking
• 9:40
  about tea that comes from 10 cha, right?
• 9:42
  So the, the the processing is still very similar.
• 9:46
  But Sunjin, what if we zoom out and talk about tea that is
• 9:50
  milled into a matcha like consistency from non 10 cha?
• 9:54
  Is it fair to call that matcha like Gokoro matcha?
• 9:58
  Is that like a fair description? I'll just, well, I think from
• 10:03
  the Japanese perspective, they already made a decision.
• 10:07
  They will not call a hojita powder hojita matcha or matcha,
• 10:12
  black matcha, dark matcha or brown matcha like they called a
• 10:15
  hojita powder. And I think that's a interesting
• 10:20
  judgement framework. If we want to borrow that, like
• 10:23
  if we kind of strictly adhere to the current definition of for
• 10:30
  matcha should be it should be powder that's coming from
• 10:34
  tensha, not from any other format of, of tea based
• 10:38
  material. But on the other hand, you know,
• 10:42
  how how would you enforce, how would you enforce that
• 10:46
  definition to consumers when they understand a definition?
• 10:50
  It's very difficult to kind of re educate them into, you know,
• 10:55
  understanding some other things like it's just adding confusions
• 10:58
  into a already, you know, low awareness or growing awareness
• 11:04
  market. And you have all these discourse
• 11:07
  constantly fighting for each other.
• 11:08
  And obviously, if you use the term matcha, it's like people
• 11:13
  trying to use the term ceremonial grade.
• 11:15
  It's trying to imply for a higher quality or a matcha like
• 11:19
  product. Like people are naturally
• 11:23
  incentivized to use a more premium term to describe their
• 11:28
  product. Yeah.
• 11:29
  Natural path of incentive. So I mean, it is going to happen
• 11:32
  and I've seen a lot of just very famous and respected or even
• 11:36
  upstart tea companies that will label things as like Gokaro
• 11:39
  Matcha, for example. And like, you know, going back
• 11:43
  to the episode that we recorded with Mark and Jules, both
• 11:46
  formerly of Jade Leaf Matcha, one of the really early, early
• 11:51
  predominant e-commerce matcha brands in the United States.
• 11:54
  He said something interesting, you know, and it really stuck
• 11:57
  with me. He said, you know, marketers
• 11:59
  will say and do whatever they want and it's just a reality of
• 12:03
  the world. And you know, the majority of
• 12:05
  that person's job is to get someone to understand something
• 12:09
  in 2 seconds. The cost of customer acquisition
• 12:12
  is not free. If you're a tea company, or any
• 12:15
  company for that matter, finding someone who will buy the thing
• 12:19
  that you're selling costs money and costs time.
• 12:22
  And any layers of complication that you put on top of that is a
• 12:27
  barrier that you're putting up for yourself.
• 12:29
  And if you're a random upstart tea company and let's say
• 12:32
  Germany and you're labeling your milled Gokoro product as Gokoro
• 12:38
  Matcha and you're sourcing it from a producer in Japan, right?
• 12:43
  Like it's just going to get across much faster about what it
• 12:46
  is to someone than calling it just like Gokoro powder or
• 12:50
  gokoro is a word that the average German consumer might
• 12:53
  not know. You know, the matcha is
• 12:55
  definitely a word that the average person knows and it's
• 12:58
  still honest. And you know, quite frankly, the
• 13:01
  person that they're buying it from might literally have it
• 13:04
  labeled as Gokoro matcha on their catalog from a Japanese
• 13:09
  producer themselves. So like it's you can't fault
• 13:12
  that. Person.
• 13:13
  Yeah, that's right. That's right.
• 13:15
  And now you even have brands like You know Me, who has a very
• 13:19
  long and descriptive page kind of defining different grades of
• 13:22
  matcha, you know, different styles of matcha.
• 13:26
  But like they're even saying like Midori matcha is anything
• 13:29
  from powdered non tenscha leaves.
• 13:32
  So they're defining it, but they're still using the term
• 13:35
  matcha because it instantly communicates or ulong matcha or
• 13:39
  roasted matcha, which they put in parentheses is Ho Chi cha
• 13:43
  powder or black tea matcha, etcetera.
• 13:45
  And they have many of these different things and just
• 13:47
  communicating something as matcha just gets the idea
• 13:51
  crossed so much faster. It's arguably be much better for
• 13:55
  consumers. For now, for now, I guess
• 13:59
  actually an interesting thought, kind of a segue from the current
• 14:02
  conversation, but it's still related to I think marketers are
• 14:06
  doing so because matcha is really what consumer knows for
• 14:11
  the moment and it's the only term that people would use to
• 14:15
  imply for a higher quality product.
• 14:18
  But I think that might change in the future, especially if we
• 14:22
  continue to see the quality of Chinese Marta increase in the
• 14:26
  future. The tendency of people trying to
• 14:30
  use a unique word to kind of differentiate their own product
• 14:35
  from a product that's made from somewhere else will be, will be
• 14:39
  much higher in the future. We actually saw this happen for
• 14:43
  Baijo. It's the Chinese liquor.
• 14:45
  They, they used to just call it, you know, Chinese vodka or, you
• 14:48
  know, Chinese grains, grain spirits.
• 14:52
  They're trying to use a, you know, a term that people will
• 14:55
  understand from the Western perspective to describe the
• 14:59
  product. They're calling it Baijo.
• 15:00
  They're marketing it as Baijo and Baijo is getting recognized
• 15:05
  in the global context. And I think that might happen in
• 15:08
  the future. If you know the the quality of
• 15:12
  powder green tea or Chinese matcha continue to increase and
• 15:15
  there are more, you know, either processing or farming technique
• 15:21
  or farming culture or cultivar that emerge as more uniquely
• 15:28
  Chinese versus adopting technology or technique from
• 15:32
  Japan. I think this this this might
• 15:34
  actually happen as at some point and will become a new term that
• 15:40
  implies for something that's uniquely Chinese and also
• 15:43
  equivalently high quality. Yeah, and there's a lot of
• 15:46
  incentive for people to do that. You know, like it's like
• 15:49
  champagne, you know, other places called a sparkling wine,
• 15:53
  but you know, in Spain they call it Cava and you know, people are
• 15:56
  perfectly fine with that. It also implies for a very
• 15:59
  uniquely Spanish product that is champagne liked.
• 16:02
  The problem is though, within the case of China, is that
• 16:06
  there's a huge economic incentive to make imitation,
• 16:10
  what I'll call an imitation product, which for that sounds
• 16:13
  there's a lot of judgement. No, no, no.
• 16:15
  But I'm saying there's always going to be two camps, right?
• 16:18
  You're, you're developing 2 very similar products.
• 16:21
  There can be some producers in China that are doing innovation
• 16:25
  in their own thing and like leaning maybe more into
• 16:27
  different processing techniques or Chinese cultivars, etcetera.
• 16:30
  But on the other side, right, there's going to still be people
• 16:34
  that are trying to create what they're creating in Japan.
• 16:38
  And that's an imitation product. It's like everything about that
• 16:41
  recipe, that tensha creation and then matcha creation is what
• 16:46
  people know and would associate with as matcha.
• 16:50
  So then where do you draw that line?
• 16:53
  Well, it's it might be confusing for for the near term, but in
• 16:57
  the future it might not SP as you might expect it.
• 17:01
  I give you another example, Ryan, the term whiskey spells
• 17:04
  differently in Ireland and in in the UK.
• 17:08
  The difference is missing E Honestly, there's no like that
• 17:12
  much fundamental difference between whiskey making in
• 17:14
  Ireland versus whiskey making in Scotland.
• 17:17
  But you know, they are different enough name, there's a
• 17:20
  difference of the one character. And you know, it's an
• 17:23
  interesting comparison. If you compare the kanji
• 17:26
  between, you know, matcha and mocha, you know, it's basically
• 17:30
  the same kanji with just a different radical.
• 17:33
  And they're historically related to and now people perceive them
• 17:37
  as a very distinctive product based on their Geo location and,
• 17:40
  you know, and the cultural lineage and history lineage of
• 17:44
  both products. But there are always be people
• 17:47
  in China that are trying to produce a Japanese like product.
• 17:50
  And there might be some people like geolocation like almost
• 17:54
  doesn't fit. It's like more of a, a style or
• 17:57
  category creation. And then even within that
• 18:00
  category creation of let's call it a Chinese mocha renaissance
• 18:04
  where they really start developing their own categories
• 18:06
  going to have enormous variation.
• 18:09
  Like if you're just looking at the product itself, right?
• 18:12
  There's going to be product that is distinctly Chinese with
• 18:15
  Chinese characteristics in its taste and in its processing and
• 18:19
  in the people who made it. And there's going to be products
• 18:22
  that are distinctly Japanese in its processing and
• 18:24
  characteristics, I think, that are being produced in China.
• 18:29
  These are, you know, champagne producers and cover producers.
• 18:33
  They learn from each other all the time.
• 18:36
  Irish whiskey producers and Scottish whiskey producers, they
• 18:39
  learn from each other all the time.
• 18:41
  And I think the same thing will happen between, you know,
• 18:43
  Chinese macho morchai in the future and Japanese matcha.
• 18:47
  I think the but the incentive is that the producers want to make
• 18:51
  a difference in the future. Right now they are, you know,
• 18:54
  kind of taking a ride from this Japanese matcha height and
• 18:57
  calling it, you know, Chinese matcha.
• 18:59
  But as in the future, when there's a distinctive style and
• 19:03
  culture being formed eventually in China, and I think it will
• 19:06
  happen, I think, you know, people will naturally want to
• 19:09
  call their product differently. Yeah, maybe even more confusing
• 19:15
  for consumers and then? May not like that then it will.
• 19:20
  I think it will be like if you really want a specialty movement
• 19:24
  to happen or fertile soil for specialty.
• 19:27
  I think making distinction is important and I think people
• 19:31
  would love to learn about that. And it's easier, I think, for
• 19:35
  people to to remember or to recognize the product from a
• 19:38
  different area if the name itself is different.
• 19:41
  And what do we call this? The powdered tea industry?
• 19:43
  Like if we look at the coffee industry or the chocolate
• 19:47
  industry, right, it's not or the wine industry, like you don't
• 19:51
  call it by 1000 different things like it's it's like the matcha
• 19:56
  is like really forming its own very distinct category with
• 20:00
  consumers who love it as a coffee replacement.
• 20:02
  It's a non coffee replacement, right?
• 20:04
  Like it even lives outside of the realm of tea a little bit in
• 20:08
  consumers. Like it's pretty interesting.
• 20:10
  We we get trapped in this bubble of people who know and have a
• 20:14
  very opinionated about matcha and I really love opinionated
• 20:17
  people. I I find exploring these
• 20:19
  perspectives just fascinating from just like a like almost an
• 20:25
  anthropology perspective. But I was talking, I was in, in
• 20:28
  New Year's Eve, which my girlfriend's friend group in
• 20:35
  Brittany and France and there were about 10 other French
• 20:38
  people at this New Year's Eve party and was chatting with some
• 20:41
  people. You know, it's just shocking.
• 20:43
  Like these are all people, A lot of them live in Paris or in some
• 20:47
  other French city. And you know, we're all the same
• 20:50
  age. We're all around, you know, 3030
• 20:52
  plus years old. Everyone has a decent amount of
• 20:55
  international experience. Actually French people in
• 20:57
  general are much more likely to have international experience
• 21:00
  than other people because at least at their university that
• 21:03
  they all went to and met at, it's mandatory to spend 6 months
• 21:07
  abroad. And if you're not very if you
• 21:08
  don't want to explore those people go to Belgium because a
• 21:12
  French speaking part of Belgium. But you know, a lot of other
• 21:15
  people went to Japan, Costa Rica, the US, like all over.
• 21:20
  And so these are like pretty decently travelled people.
• 21:23
  And we were talking about matcha.
• 21:24
  Most people here have no idea it's a Japanese product, which
• 21:28
  is like shock. And most of these people, most
• 21:31
  of her friends work in agriculture.
• 21:32
  And so that's really weird and not every, everyone knows that
• 21:35
  it's tea, right? But the, where the average
• 21:38
  consumer is AT is in like, it's, it's very different than I think
• 21:43
  where the, the, the bleeding edge of this conversation trying
• 21:46
  to define what matcha is, right? Like it is almost new category
• 21:51
  formation for a lot of people, the vast majority of people,
• 21:56
  right? You have matcha, you have
• 21:57
  coffee, you have Chai. And like, where those things
• 22:00
  intersect and what they have in common is, I think, less clear
• 22:04
  in those people's minds that we all like to think.
• 22:08
  I think this complication already exists for for tea and
• 22:13
  it's already embedded in a lot of languages in the world.
• 22:15
  Like if you look around the world, like how do different
• 22:19
  languages call this very plain Camellia sentences?
• 22:22
  Like someone some people call them Chai, some people call them
• 22:25
  tea, or any variations of tea actually.
• 22:28
  You know it can all be traced back to how Chinese call this
• 22:33
  tea originally in China from different regions.
• 22:37
  Like all of the tea calling customs can be traced back to
• 22:42
  Hokan, which the local Hokan people call tea tea.
• 22:45
  And all of the cha calling culture can be traced back to
• 22:50
  southern China or northern China through the Silk Road.
• 22:53
  That's routing through the land versus if you route it through
• 22:57
  whole cab, it's from the sea. So from the land culture, it's
• 23:00
  all cha or Chai or any, you know, variations of that.
• 23:05
  So it's already, you know, a pretty confusing name to begin
• 23:09
  with for the plan itself. And I think this might also
• 23:12
  exist for a matcha or more Chai in the future.
• 23:15
  People will eventually just pick a side.
• 23:18
  Pick a side or use both, I don't know.
• 23:20
  Or use. Both or use both, yeah.
• 23:23
  And then you have the legal side, right, If we talk about
• 23:26
  like legal definitions for food categorization, right, like one
• 23:30
  of the only rules in like Japan is that it has to be made from
• 23:35
  tensha. But even this rule is we've
• 23:38
  heard is frequently violated, especially for a lot of the mass
• 23:42
  market matcha products coming out of out of Japan, where
• 23:47
  there's a significant amount of what's called mogacha, which is
• 23:50
  like almost tensha. It's tensha that's not processed
• 23:53
  in a tensha factory, but it's processed on Sencha processing
• 23:57
  equipment. They just turn off the rolling
• 23:59
  function, which apparently gets blended in all of the time to
• 24:02
  stuff that gets labeled as matcha from.
• 24:04
  So we even within, you know, the country of Japan, you have
• 24:07
  quote, UN quote fake matcha being sold as matcha, let alone
• 24:11
  having also other countries tensha getting blended into
• 24:14
  those products, violating even the Japanese farmers complaint
• 24:18
  or perspective that anything outside of Japan should not be
• 24:24
  considered matcha. There's a big collective
• 24:26
  problem, not only the broader community, but also I think
• 24:31
  within Japan and this legal status of what can be sold as
• 24:35
  matcha doesn't exist in Japan. It doesn't appear to be really
• 24:39
  enforced in Japan, and I don't see it happening anywhere else
• 24:43
  in the world either. For what can be legally sold as
• 24:46
  matcha, because how in the world could you enforce it?
• 24:50
  They can. If you can't enforce it in
• 24:52
  Japan, if someone like the government of Thailand or or the
• 24:56
  European Union stepped in and said, OK, we're having a strict
• 25:00
  definition for matcha. It has to come from Japan, has
• 25:02
  to come from tensha, and it has to be shaded for this number of
• 25:06
  days and only come from these cultivars.
• 25:08
  You could never. It'd be so difficult to enforce
• 25:12
  if you know even the Japanese are blending in Mogichar Chinese
• 25:15
  tencha and do their own products.
• 25:16
  Yeah, very true, very true. I mean, there's no regulatory
• 25:21
  entity to enforce any of these ideas or ideologies that people
• 25:26
  imposed onto this product. And I think there's very little
• 25:30
  thing that anyone can do about it.
• 25:32
  I'm a little more pessimistic on on this and maybe pessimistic is
• 25:37
  the wrong word. I actually pretty neutral in
• 25:40
  terms of how Macha is being used freely by by different parties.
• 25:46
  I mean like in reality it has transcend its cultural and
• 25:51
  language context. It's no longer in anyone's
• 25:54
  control and no one, no one has any power to really do anything
• 25:58
  about it. I mean, intellectually speaking,
• 26:00
  I think, you know, matcha is inherently Japanese.
• 26:03
  It's in its name. It's a Japanese term.
• 26:06
  But you know, realistically speaking, I think there's
• 26:10
  there's very little things that anyone can do about.
• 26:12
  Yeah. And even if you were to Geo
• 26:14
  restrict what you call and like what you would call matcha, like
• 26:18
  what you know China maybe gets a pass because there's a Chinese
• 26:22
  legacy and tradition of Malta in China.
• 26:25
  But what about tensha that gets converted into macha or some
• 26:29
  type of imagine a world where like what is it called when you
• 26:33
  produce tensha on the north of Thailand and grind it into a
• 26:37
  powder or in northern Vietnam or if what if Myanmar and starts
• 26:41
  producing tensha or other countries.
• 26:44
  What about Korea? I mean they have their word
• 26:46
  malcha. But then what do you call it?
• 26:48
  Like that would be super weird. Like you have the exact recipe
• 26:51
  for tensha being produced in northern Thailand.
• 26:54
  Let's say to our knowledge as a few people doing it.
• 26:57
  So then, then what do you do? They all can use the name more
• 27:00
  cha. I give them the pass.
• 27:02
  But and then you have like, actual behavior, right?
• 27:06
  Like words are kind of strange because they're outside of
• 27:10
  people's control. You can try to enforce it and
• 27:14
  but the enforcement I think always needs to be top down.
• 27:17
  There has to be some authority that says OK, Champagne, we're
• 27:20
  recognizing this as it must be grown within the region that the
• 27:24
  French government determines is Champagne and every single
• 27:28
  country on earth goes with this, has to comply in that as well.
• 27:34
  It actually in the case of Russia, Russia, I think maybe,
• 27:38
  maybe North Korea too, I don't know.
• 27:40
  But I know Russia for sure is one of the only major countries
• 27:44
  that doesn't has never honored champagne as a what we call like
• 27:50
  protected single origin because Stalin loves Champagne and they
• 27:55
  started making some within the USSR.
• 27:57
  And typically it's actually incredibly sweet.
• 27:59
  And so if you go to Russia, IA couple years ago in 2019, I
• 28:03
  spent two weeks in Russia doing consumer research for food and
• 28:07
  beverage preferences. And the idea of champagne, that
• 28:11
  word in Russia has taken on a very different meaning to the
• 28:15
  average consumer there. To them, it is the sweet,
• 28:19
  sparkly wine, and that's what it's been since the time of
• 28:25
  Stalin, who loves champagne and loves specifically loves sweet
• 28:28
  champagne. That word is taken on an
• 28:30
  entirely new meaning in a place where it is outside of its
• 28:35
  context, right. So it's.
• 28:38
  You know, Ryan, like it already happened once when the mocha
• 28:43
  gets transferred into Japan. You know Japanese matcha is does
• 28:47
  not taste like what mocha tastes like back in the days in China.
• 28:50
  Like the judgement of high quality is thick foam and as
• 28:56
  white or as held as possible back in Song dynasty.
• 29:02
  It's not the same like not how the Japanese would appreciate
• 29:07
  for matcha even since the days of Riku.
• 29:11
  It's a different product. It's a Russian champagne for the
• 29:15
  Chinese. Even the words have been used in
• 29:18
  abuse throughout time, especially if you look into
• 29:20
  Korean tea history, they you know, we use the character cha,
• 29:25
  the Chinese character cha for T and for a lot of T scholars it's
• 29:29
  actually pretty confusing. And to my knowledge the same
• 29:31
  with an ancient Chinese texts is that T is actually a very
• 29:35
  general term, especially during when you reference the Josen
• 29:38
  dynasty. When they use the character cha,
• 29:40
  it does not imply that it came from Cornelius Anensis.
• 29:44
  It could be any like hot herbal infusion.
• 29:47
  I mean, this is still true to this day where you have these
• 29:50
  very generic words that kind of blur boundary, but people kind
• 29:54
  of understand what it means. But it gets used in abuse
• 29:57
  because technically can't be tea, and this comes from the tea
• 29:59
  plant familias and Ansys. But all throughout history
• 30:03
  actually, people have been abusing and using this word to
• 30:06
  communicate some type of herbal infusion, right?
• 30:09
  So it's not even unique to matcha.
• 30:11
  Yeah, it's not unique to Korea either.
• 30:14
  People in China do it all the time too.
• 30:17
  Usually we would add a prefix like something, something cha.
• 30:21
  Like if it's Mulberry leaf, we called it, you know, stangia
• 30:24
  cha. People still make a difference.
• 30:26
  But but, you know, back in the ancient time, like the tea Bible
• 30:30
  charging, actually there was a difference.
• 30:32
  And some of the uses of those old terms do exist today.
• 30:35
  So the the leader Camellia Senances has a unique name
• 30:39
  called Ming and the more bittered Camellia Senances has a
• 30:44
  different character called 2 and and people still use those
• 30:50
  characters nowadays. Ming is more popular too, less
• 30:53
  so, but. Is they refer to cultivar or
• 30:55
  processing? What what?
• 30:57
  What is makes it sweeter or more bitter?
• 30:59
  I think from what I have read from charging, it's probably
• 31:03
  referring to the cultivar like Lu Yu was talking about.
• 31:06
  You know, some tea tastes naturally sweeter, some tea
• 31:09
  tastes naturally more bitter. For our audience, Sam, who might
• 31:13
  be less versed in general tea history, you want to talk a
• 31:16
  little bit about Lu Yu and about charging.
• 31:18
  So charging or tea Bible is written by this scholar called
• 31:21
  Lu Yu who lives back in the Tang Dynasty and it was the first
• 31:25
  codified text that kind of consolidate the usage of farming
• 31:30
  tea, processing tea, consuming tea, also preparing tea and all
• 31:34
  of the culture and utensils related to for tea preparation.
• 31:37
  You know, in the history when people kind of trying to trace
• 31:41
  back the lineage of any tea cultures or tea consumptions
• 31:45
  habit in history in different areas, this is often times the
• 31:48
  reference of the origin. Yeah, it's like the the
• 31:51
  documentation of the first tea culture ever existed.
• 31:56
  Yeah, codified tea culture and, and, and, you know, certainly
• 32:01
  it, it has a lot of differences compared to how tea is consumed
• 32:05
  today in China or in any other countries in the world.
• 32:08
  But it's a, it's a pretty interesting time machine that we
• 32:12
  can kind of kind of see how, you know, even the very term for tea
• 32:17
  evolves throughout time. And it's actually quite, quite a
• 32:21
  short book to read, even for the translation version.
• 32:24
  You can probably finish it in like one or two hours.
• 32:26
  So I strongly encourage everyone to read it at least once.
• 32:30
  Indeed, and there's a great scholar, great blog if you want
• 32:34
  to learn more about this in the US.
• 32:36
  His name is Stephen O Young that does a lot of translations with
• 32:40
  a lot of footnotes of tajing the so-called T Bible written in the
• 32:45
  Tang dynasty to bring a lot of context because apparently it's
• 32:49
  very difficult to read if you don't have the references for a
• 32:52
  lot of what is referenced. But it's very interesting, like
• 32:57
  when, if if you do read it, you would be surprised how much
• 33:01
  similar people care about tea back in the days versus how
• 33:04
  people caring about the tawa, caring about the water, caring
• 33:08
  about the cultivar, the climate. Lu Yu was writing things that he
• 33:12
  cared about like the the same way as we care about tea today.
• 33:17
  He talks about different tea being grown in different areas
• 33:21
  and how is that impact the taste of the tea and you know, what
• 33:25
  kind of water is the best for tea.
• 33:27
  He actually has a ranking of how to harvest your water in
• 33:31
  different areas and which one is more suitable for tea
• 33:34
  consumption and you know, different utensils.
• 33:36
  How do you use that for tea preparations and how do you
• 33:41
  judge from, you know, the appearance of the tea to to
• 33:45
  judge its quality and all sorts of interesting things?
• 33:48
  And it's exactly how people would care about for a specialty
• 33:52
  product nowadays. Yeah, really aged well.
• 33:55
  First, first how to guide comprehensive guide to making.
• 34:00
  Delicious tea, Yes, indeed, indeed.
• 34:03
  And that was that was it was written like some like 700700AD.
• 34:14
  Yeah, like 1300 years ago. Yeah, 1500 years ago, 1200 years
• 34:20
  ago, 1300 years ago. Millennia ago, at least.
• 34:24
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty crazy.
• 34:27
  It is pretty crazy. But yeah, Ryan, I mean like the
• 34:31
  definition for tea, like we we're talking about the
• 34:34
  definition for macho being fluid, but the definition for
• 34:37
  tea itself was fluid since the very beginning.
• 34:41
  Yeah, it is. Yeah, very true, very true.
• 34:44
  And somehow not only, you know, the cultivation and the
• 34:48
  consumption being localized in all these areas, it even got
• 34:53
  localized in their languages. And I think it's really a
• 34:56
  beautiful thing. And I think that there's no
• 35:01
  fundamentally different. There's no fundamental
• 35:06
  difference of, you know, how people adopting the term matcha
• 35:12
  or morcha or malcha or however you want to call it in the
• 35:15
  future. You know, you know, if you want
• 35:20
  to compare that to, you know, how people adopt and adapt to
• 35:24
  the usage of tea or Chai or tae in different areas.
• 35:28
  Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to see a lot of local
• 35:31
  adaptation. Something that I've been
• 35:32
  thinking a lot about is both Japanese tea culture in general,
• 35:36
  tea culture, right? Let's talk about Japanese tea
• 35:38
  culture and matcha culture. Where does it stop and start?
• 35:42
  Can matcha culture or even Japanese tea culture live
• 35:47
  outside of this context? I would say that like the
• 35:50
  Aurisenke Foundation of people, I'm practicing chanoyu in France
• 35:55
  or in Brazil or in the United States, right?
• 35:58
  Like they're participating in Japanese culture, right?
• 36:01
  I would firmly put that on on on the side of the line of
• 36:04
  participating in matcha and Japanese tea culture.
• 36:07
  But then what about someone, a Brandy cafe in Rio de Janeiro
• 36:12
  drinking a matcha latte, drinking tea from Wazooka?
• 36:16
  Are they participating in Japanese tea culture?
• 36:19
  Are they participating in Japanese tea culture?
• 36:21
  More if they're consuming in Usicha versus a latte or more if
• 36:27
  it was hand whisked with the Chasen a versus batch prepared
• 36:31
  And like where we draw these lines as an industry of
• 36:35
  participating in culture. I don't think people necessarily
• 36:39
  need to participate in a culture when they consumed matcha.
• 36:43
  It's like people in the UK drinking a a chimen honcha and
• 36:48
  and milk and sugar into their cup.
• 36:49
  They're not participating in the Chinese culture.
• 36:52
  It's a uniquely UK culture, British culture, and I think
• 36:56
  it's totally fine. Like people doesn't necessarily
• 36:58
  need to carry the the cultural heritage when they just want to
• 37:02
  enjoy a cup of tea in the afternoon.
• 37:04
  Well, I would argue that they are participating in their own
• 37:08
  culture and they're. Participating in their own
• 37:11
  culture. Exactly.
• 37:12
  I totally agree with you Ryan. It's new culture.
• 37:15
  New culture. And if you zoom out, you can
• 37:17
  group this together. I mean, like if you just look at
• 37:20
  cafe culture and the culture of 1/3 space and of a coffee house,
• 37:23
  I mean, how different is someone enjoying a matcha latte in
• 37:27
  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from Paris, France to New York City.
• 37:31
  It's all this similar coffee culture, cafe culture, matcha
• 37:36
  latte, say culture like you see like all of these quote UN
• 37:39
  quote, matcha girly groups, but it's entirely new cultural
• 37:42
  formation as we, as we recorded on another podcast, unlike this
• 37:46
  idea of tea culture stopping and starting.
• 37:49
  It's just these different pockets and some of them
• 37:51
  overlap. Some of them are concentric
• 37:53
  within one another. But you know, the idea of matcha
• 37:56
  culture being as broad as possible I think will lead to
• 38:00
  the most innovation. It's the most inclusive, and
• 38:03
  saying that all tea or matcha that's grown in China is fake,
• 38:08
  it's just green tea powder is not very inclusive.
• 38:12
  And I do not really appreciate or like this spirit within the
• 38:17
  tea community. It's protectivism, it's insular,
• 38:20
  it's looking inwards. Typically it means looking
• 38:23
  backwards to justify one's own existence.
• 38:26
  And it leads to a less interesting world for consumers.
• 38:29
  And I think it also traps and culture in the cage and makes it
• 38:35
  much more difficult to expand, to grow and to to bring on new
• 38:40
  practitioners. I don't think it's actually very
• 38:42
  healthy for the Japanese tea industry.
• 38:45
  But then on the other hand, you don't want a bunch of people
• 38:48
  calling like a really shitty product, you know, Matcha.
• 38:51
  So like then you can protect almost Matcha's quote UN quote
• 38:55
  brand. Well, how do we enforce that,
• 38:58
  Ryan? I mean, there's also a lot of
• 39:00
  really bad matcha that's made in Japan too.
• 39:03
  I mean, let's be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:06
  I mean, like there, there's no way like we can enforce anyone
• 39:10
  from using the term matcha. It's it's already freed and and
• 39:14
  however people want to dignify it or bastardize it, you know,
• 39:18
  like it's out of anyone's control.
• 39:20
  Yeah. And like, what are you going to
• 39:22
  do? Like, especially these players
• 39:24
  that are much more powerful. I mean, look at Starbucks.
• 39:27
  I mean, Starbucks matcha is it comes from many different
• 39:30
  countries, like from China, from South Korea, from Japan itself,
• 39:35
  and depending on what country you're in and the tariff
• 39:37
  situation, like, for example, it's incredibly expensive to
• 39:41
  import Japanese tea into Korea. Korea and Korean policy don't
• 39:45
  really like Japan very much, culturally speaking.
• 39:48
  So there's an enormous tariff on green tea.
• 39:50
  So to have a matcha latte in Korea, right, it's not
• 39:54
  economically viable to have a Japanese product.
• 39:56
  So you have all of that complication, too.
• 39:58
  And when you have a company as large as something like
• 40:01
  Starbucks calling matcha latte the same thing, whether or not
• 40:05
  it's made from the Japanese product, a Chinese product, a
• 40:07
  Korean product, or who knows where else they source from,
• 40:10
  they're just fighting an uphill battle.
• 40:12
  And then if you look at it from the small business perspective,
• 40:15
  you know, if Starbucks can do it, why can't the mom and pop
• 40:18
  tea shop also call it, you know, Chinese?
• 40:21
  Matcha if it allows them to sell it easier or Gokura matcha
• 40:25
  where, you know, then the burdens on them to do all that
• 40:29
  education and all of this technicality when really these
• 40:33
  products aren't fundamentally changing at the end of the day,
• 40:36
  you know, Japan kind of lost its opportunity to protect this and
• 40:40
  quite frankly, I don't think the Japanese tea industry and the
• 40:43
  people that have money and power want to protect it.
• 40:46
  It's there's so much money to be made in other countries
• 40:50
  producing. Oh yeah, matcha like it's.
• 40:54
  And if it's, and if anyone wants it to be a truly globalized
• 41:00
  product and movement, I don't think it should be quote UN
• 41:03
  quote protected. It's protection also means, you
• 41:07
  know, authority, right? It's implies power and no one
• 41:10
  has the power over matcha anymore.
• 41:12
  Yeah, it's too hard to top down the side.
• 41:17
  It's so weird set of incentives. And I really think matcha is
• 41:21
  just a format now. Like if you were to say, how can
• 41:24
  I get someone to instantly understand that a tea is
• 41:28
  powderized in two seconds, right?
• 41:31
  Calling something hojicha matcha or calling something black tea
• 41:35
  matcha or calling something ulong matcha for that matter,
• 41:39
  right. People will instantly understand
• 41:41
  what you mean, especially if you put some form of qualifier on
• 41:45
  it. So it's it's a whole can of
• 41:47
  worms. I don't think there is a right
• 41:49
  answer, but it leads to a lot of very interesting and different
• 41:52
  perspectives. And I think people who are very
• 41:54
  opinionated are extremely interesting actually on this
• 41:57
  topic. I think that there should be a
• 42:00
  really healthy tension and you know, I don't agree with some
• 42:04
  people and we can still remain friends and have these quote UN
• 42:07
  quote imperfect allies and you know it.
• 42:10
  It just all depends on what you care about and what like
• 42:13
  perspective you take. I mean, if you look at matcha
• 42:16
  and the past 200 years as a Japanese product, yeah, I mean,
• 42:20
  Japanese matcha is matcha, right?
• 42:22
  Until, you know, a couple decades ago, no other country
• 42:25
  was producing a product that was even remotely similar or similar
• 42:29
  to quality or characteristics as what the Japanese were making.
• 42:33
  That statement is no longer true.
• 42:35
  We live in a very different world.
• 42:37
  So much investment has been made in places like China and Korea.
• 42:42
  What they are starting to produce a product that has
• 42:45
  similar characteristics to what the Japanese are making, right?
• 42:49
  That is such a different world than we were living in and let's
• 42:51
  say, like the 1980s or 1990s, right?
• 42:54
  And then if you really zoom out 200 years, OK, yeah, the
• 42:58
  Japanese were the only people doing anything remotely similar.
• 43:01
  And then if you zoom out 600 years, well, the Japanese were
• 43:05
  producing a very different product.
• 43:07
  And then if you zoom out 1000 years, Japanese weren't doing it
• 43:11
  at all, it was the Chinese, right?
• 43:13
  So like you can just like draw claim and legitimacy to whatever
• 43:18
  perspective you have depending on like how narrow or broad you
• 43:23
  want to be and how you're trying to claim that legitimacy.
• 43:26
  Yeah, I, I totally agree, Ryan. I mean, like it's back to my
• 43:30
  argument, right? Like the definition of of this
• 43:35
  powderized tea has been very fluid throughout history.
• 43:39
  And right now how it's just happens that, you know, like
• 43:42
  everyone is an understanding, a version of this product at this
• 43:47
  time that's mostly made by this very country.
• 43:50
  But I mean like that it might change in the future.
• 43:53
  I'm I'm, I'm, I'm certain about that.
• 43:56
  Like they, the Japanese will not have any control over the
• 44:01
  evolution of how this product is going to be called.
• 44:04
  And honestly, you know, I'm still team Mocha and I welcome
• 44:09
  everyone to use the term mocha for your product, whether or not
• 44:12
  you sort. Yeah, if it's or if it's made by
• 44:15
  somewhere else, you know, like if it's made in Vietnam or
• 44:20
  Northern Thailand, you know, call them mocha.
• 44:22
  However, however you want it's there's there isn't necessarily
• 44:29
  a culture of protecting a name in the community of tea in
• 44:34
  China. Historically speaking, which is
• 44:37
  I guess the cultural difference between China and Japan.
• 44:39
  People welcome the usage of the term in other areas
• 44:43
  historically, like black tea or Hong cha or green tea or even
• 44:49
  poor like people in Yunnan. They still call the poor liked
• 44:54
  tea being made in Laos and Northern Thailand or Myanmar are
• 44:58
  poor, although it's not made in China.
• 45:01
  People did not trying to ban other people from using the
• 45:04
  word. Well, you know, what I hate
• 45:06
  about this question and about this whole argument is that the
• 45:10
  only way that you can defend whatever your position is, and
• 45:16
  you know, the position could be the base material, right?
• 45:19
  Is it fair to call something Gulkaro matcha?
• 45:21
  And the position could also be origin, like Chinese versus
• 45:25
  Korean versus Japanese matcha. Is it to claim any legitimacy?
• 45:30
  It is an endless look backwards. It is such a pointless question
• 45:35
  from the perspective of innovation and what comes next.
• 45:40
  Yes, history is worth protecting.
• 45:42
  Yes, people have strong opinions and it matters how we got here.
• 45:46
  But it's still an endless look backwards.
• 45:49
  Depending on how far where you finish your look backwards, you
• 45:54
  can arrive at different conclusions.
• 45:57
  Yeah, totally agree. So, you know, and even our
• 45:59
  perspective is constantly evolving and changing.
• 46:02
  There is very clearly not really a correct answer to this.
• 46:06
  And the thing about, you know, people's movements that are not
• 46:10
  like top down controlled is that like these words just get used
• 46:15
  and incorporated into the average lexicon and they start
• 46:19
  to form their own meaning. And they already have, right?
• 46:22
  Starbucks didn't call it a Gokoro latte or a Gokoro frappe.
• 46:27
  They called it a Gokoro matcha frappe.
• 46:30
  And there's a reason why they did that, because it instantly
• 46:35
  communicates what it is. Maybe in a parallel universe
• 46:38
  where macho was not that popular and everyone knew what gokura
• 46:43
  was, they would never use that word.
• 46:46
  But that word has adopted new meaning to a large enough group
• 46:51
  of people that it is the better and more descriptive and more
• 46:55
  accurate word to use by most people's understanding of that
• 47:00
  word, whether or not it meets the technical definition of how
• 47:04
  it's defined in Japan or how it's legally defined, right.
• 47:09
  These folk folksonomy, like the folk use of language, is that it
• 47:14
  has taken on the southern meaning and there is no going
• 47:18
  back. And reversing this trend would
• 47:20
  be impossible even if you didn't legally protect it.
• 47:24
  It's still, there's still tons of people, tons of travel
• 47:28
  influencers will go and like, do a business class review and take
• 47:32
  a glass of Prosecco and call it champagne.
• 47:36
  This fight will never be over. No, you will not.
• 47:38
  It's by the end of the day a linguistic science issue or or
• 47:43
  language anthropology issue. It's like just like pointless
• 47:48
  education. I hate matcha videos and matcha
• 47:51
  reviews and matcha educators that like the very what they use
• 47:56
  to capture someone's precious attention when they're
• 47:59
  describing what matcha is to someone who doesn't know what it
• 48:02
  is. Spends the first two or three
• 48:05
  minutes talking about what ceremonial grade is.
• 48:07
  It is completely made-up term like it, it, it, it's, it helps
• 48:14
  them maybe navigate the market, but it is no objective truth or
• 48:18
  reality to what someone is. And when you're capturing
• 48:22
  someone's attention for the first two or three minutes,
• 48:25
  you're choosing to define a term that we've all made-up in the
• 48:29
  past 20 years. It's like, I hate it when things
• 48:32
  start off with these types of definitions.
• 48:35
  Like, it's such a pointless thing, right?
• 48:37
  But, you know, saying that matcha is a shaded tea that's
• 48:41
  turned into a powder that came from China, that, you know, it's
• 48:45
  now in Japan, Like, this is a much more accurate and
• 48:48
  interesting story than just jumping in to the difference
• 48:52
  between ceremonial and culinary grade, which are things that
• 48:55
  we've made-up anyway. And there's no definition and
• 48:57
  there's no consensus. And even here's here's the irony
• 49:01
  SIM in what I just described, I said it needed to come from
• 49:04
  shaded material. And if you have like sencha
• 49:07
  matcha, right, doesn't come from shaded material.
• 49:10
  If you have Oolong matcha doesn't come from shaded
• 49:13
  material, right? So it's this all?
• 49:16
  Powder Woolong powder Sencha morta, Woolong morta.
• 49:20
  There we go, right solutions. Morta is really nice of a term
• 49:24
  because it has no cultural baggage.
• 49:26
  Not even the Chinese is going to hold you accountable.
• 49:29
  Yeah, but it's, it's new, it's new category creation.
• 49:33
  And it's so close to something that already exists.
• 49:37
  And the reality is, is that people are just going to use the
• 49:40
  word that they already know. And then then you're in the same
• 49:42
  position of that stupid person who's using someone's precious
• 49:46
  attention that thinks that they're interested in matcha in
• 49:49
  the beginning, trying to define this new word that's a new
• 49:52
  category that no one knows and that no one agrees upon.
• 49:55
  So like, it's still like, we've made-up this new thing and now
• 49:59
  we have to waste people's precious attention, which could
• 50:02
  be used to get them interested in something that they're much
• 50:05
  more primed to be interested rather than educate them on a
• 50:08
  term that's made-up and there's no consensus for, right?
• 50:11
  Like. Well, there's no consensus from
• 50:14
  Matcha either. Yeah, well, there's yeah,
• 50:17
  depending on who you ask. Depending on who you ask
• 50:20
  exactly, but there's no consensus from for matcha
• 50:22
  either. From the consumers mind, I agree
• 50:25
  from from the industry perspective, I'd say that there
• 50:28
  is some expectations that are set, but it's there really is no
• 50:34
  right answer. I mean, even we're contradicting
• 50:36
  each other and. Even from the industry
• 50:40
  perspective, I mean like that there is a consensus largely for
• 50:45
  Matra right now at the moment actually if you are Team Japan,
• 50:50
  there is some sort of consensus, but that's still fluid and it's
• 50:54
  historically being fluid for the Japanese.
• 50:56
  So it's really we're talking about a snapshot of a piece of
• 50:59
  history or tradition that it's not really a long tradition,
• 51:04
  we're talking about like within 200 years.
• 51:07
  And even if you really zoom in, you know, Ian from You Know Me,
• 51:12
  the really large e-commerce for artisanal Japanese tea, he was
• 51:16
  one of our first guests. And you know, one of the things
• 51:18
  that he said in his episode is that even the modern definition
• 51:22
  for what can pass as matcha would have never been considered
• 51:25
  matcha. You know, 203040 years ago,
• 51:29
  right? Like the idea of a weed milled
• 51:32
  matcha, right? Like that would have probably
• 51:33
  been locked out of the room in the 1960s, right?
• 51:37
  Or the 1970s. There we go.
• 51:40
  All of these auto harvesters or, you know, all of all of this new
• 51:45
  modernization and industrialization would have
• 51:48
  never been considered matcha. I think it has a different name
• 51:51
  than Japanese or something close to matcha but not right like
• 51:56
  some leaders. Commoners powder tea.
• 51:59
  Like I want my true matcha to be harvest and processed by my 300
• 52:04
  servants. That's true, matcha.
• 52:06
  Or even like things that are like directly covered, like even
• 52:09
  like this disagreement with this in Japan, even with unliving
• 52:13
  memory about what you know, it can be considered, you know,
• 52:16
  true tea or real matcha. You know, used to be that you
• 52:20
  know, if it didn't from come from Tokeno Uji Macho was fake
• 52:24
  matcha. And then that switch, this
• 52:26
  Honcha idea switched from from Togano to to Uji, and that was
• 52:31
  considered the real tea and everything coming up outside of
• 52:34
  Uji was fake matcha. Fake tea, right.
• 52:38
  It's, there is there's no fluid definition for this.
• 52:42
  So I mean, is matcha a format? I yes and no.
• 52:46
  It, it depends on who you consider to be the higher
• 52:49
  authority. Like it's a Japanese history.
• 52:53
  Which people in Japan or do you stand with consumers?
• 52:56
  Do you stand with businesses? Do you stand with the legal
• 52:58
  definition? Do you stand with the the the
• 53:01
  the etymology and the semantics of the word matcha and where it
• 53:06
  came from, and even from this argument?
• 53:08
  Right. Depending on how far back you go
• 53:10
  in history, the definition is fluid.
• 53:12
  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's an idea. It's collective consensus or
• 53:17
  imagination or imagination of consensus.
• 53:20
  There's really no consensus, actually.
• 53:23
  So here's a question for you, Zhangjun.
• 53:25
  Is this a stupid question? Is this a pointless question to
• 53:29
  ask? Yeah, very stupid, very
• 53:32
  pointless. But you know, like, I think it's
• 53:37
  also the fundamental driven cost of how tea culture moves forward
• 53:42
  that that people keep asking themselves or asking other
• 53:45
  people very similar questions in history and how people keeps
• 53:49
  seeking for innovations or clarity or, you know, culture
• 53:55
  protections. And I think that's, that's,
• 53:58
  that's that's how key culture has been in the past few
• 54:03
  thousand years. And I think there's no way or I,
• 54:06
  I don't think this shouldn't be changed.
• 54:08
  If something has a really, really strict definition that is
• 54:14
  so codified and it's unchangeable, like we're looking
• 54:18
  at that culture, we're looking at something that's behind a
• 54:23
  glass displayed in the museum. A true living culture is messy,
• 54:27
  is chaotic, and I think it's it's, it's beautiful.
• 54:31
  Well, you see a great example of this in France and wine culture.
• 54:35
  There's this whole wine movement here called Vin de France or
• 54:38
  French wine, and it's producers who do not follow the rules of
• 54:44
  their local Appalachian because they're rebellious and they just
• 54:48
  label like the only thing that they're allowed to label on
• 54:51
  their wine. They can't say it's falls
• 54:54
  within, you know, the specific Appalachian that they have.
• 54:58
  So they just call it French wine.
• 54:59
  That's the only thing that they're allowed to label because
• 55:01
  they don't want to follow the rules or they want to do more
• 55:04
  innovative things that those governing boards don't allow.
• 55:08
  And then it does get trapped in these cages.
• 55:10
  And now when you certain, you know, see these AOCSDOCSDOPS are
• 55:15
  all these across Europe, these various protected regions, it
• 55:18
  actually is just like this weird rubber stamp of approval and
• 55:22
  it's never excellent. It can, I shouldn't say never,
• 55:25
  it can be excellent, but typically it's elevating the
• 55:29
  worst products status upwards. If you're really great, you
• 55:35
  don't want to be associated with sort of this average case and
• 55:38
  that falls within this protective status to form, you
• 55:42
  know, to distinguish your own product, right.
• 55:44
  So, you know, protectionism also has its downsides exactly as you
• 55:48
  said. But you know, to go back to the
• 55:49
  question, is this a worthless or useless question to ask for a
• 55:54
  stupid question? Actually to continue your
• 55:57
  argument about this Vinta France, I think it's happening
• 56:00
  to ujita like people like if you're really into Mata, you
• 56:04
  don't want anything that's actually just labeled as wujita
• 56:08
  anymore. Like it's actually an indicator
• 56:10
  of poor quality or like a fishy maneuver.
• 56:13
  Like if you actually want uji ujita cha from uchi, like you
• 56:18
  would want to see like tea from Goku or tea from Shirakawa, you
• 56:22
  don't want anything that's just labeled as wujita anymore.
• 56:25
  True, very true. We're starting.
• 56:27
  To see that that's how protection leads to fishy
• 56:31
  maneuver, because there's economic incentives and now the
• 56:35
  protection is bastardized. Yeah, you get the blurry
• 56:38
  definition of what Wuji chalk and be, which is 9998% not from
• 56:44
  Wuji. And, you know, there's a lot of
• 56:47
  misinformation about that too. A lot of people say it has to be
• 56:49
  finished in Fuji, but it's not true.
• 56:51
  It has to be finished anywhere within the boundaries of Kyoto
• 56:54
  Prefecture, which is a much larger, much larger surface
• 56:58
  area, I might say, than the small town of Uji.
• 57:02
  So it's it's a different kind of worms that we won't open.
• 57:05
  But actually, I, I do think this is a pointless and stupid
• 57:08
  question, just like this whole episode.
• 57:10
  I will contradict myself. And I think it's incredibly
• 57:13
  important because it unveils what people care about across
• 57:17
  the industry, what brands care about, what consumers care
• 57:21
  about, what farmers care about, what producers care about, what
• 57:25
  educators care about. And it exposes what people are
• 57:29
  prioritizing in the hills that they're quote UN quote willing
• 57:32
  to die on. And understanding the their
• 57:36
  perspectives and their strong opinions tells us so much about
• 57:41
  all of the players within the system.
• 57:44
  And it shows us so much the incentives that people have for
• 57:48
  promoting certain narratives over others.
• 57:52
  We can learn so much about this culture, the broader matcha, the
• 57:57
  broader tea culture that exists now and how it's changing.
• 58:02
  You know, even since we've started this podcast and you
• 58:04
  know, I think this podcast is about two years old, the, the
• 58:08
  stigma on Chinese matcha itself has started to really
• 58:11
  fundamentally change, right? There's a lot more open minded
• 58:14
  people, even if you go to places like Reddit, a lot more open
• 58:17
  minded about the concept of of Chinese quote UN quote matcha
• 58:21
  and that it can actually have a good product despite its well
• 58:25
  earned reputation historically. So it's it's, it's tells us so
• 58:30
  much about the people. And you know, that's what's most
• 58:33
  interesting about, you know, specialty matching movement is
• 58:36
  all of this culture to be unpacked.
• 58:38
  And it is a fantastic lens to unpack these clashing and
• 58:42
  contradicting messy culture formation.
• 58:45
  And there's no such thing as culture formation unless it's
• 58:48
  messy, because humans are messy. And this is a wonderful
• 58:51
  collision of different cultures interacting, new cultures
• 58:55
  forming, innovation, moving things forward and people trying
• 58:59
  to anchor themselves in tradition.
• 59:01
  And it's a great lens to slap on to all of.
• 59:04
  This can I agree more. Human culture is messy and if
• 59:08
  you want a homogenized uniformic culture that anyone that has
• 59:15
  trying to execute throughout the history of human times, we are
• 59:20
  looking at some sort of authoritarian regiment and they
• 59:26
  got overthrown every single time at the end.
• 59:28
  Yeah, And I think something that's worth bringing up too,
• 59:32
  there's always more to unpack. This episode's getting very
• 59:35
  long. But you know, part of the, and
• 59:37
  we've recorded a lot of podcast episodes on this.
• 59:39
  But I think part of the reason why this is such a contentious
• 59:42
  debate is the Japanese government and has done such a
• 59:45
  good job and both today and over time intertwining Japanese Ness
• 59:51
  with tea ceremony and therefore with matcha.
• 59:55
  And how tea ceremony has been chosen as like the cultural
• 1:00:00
  representation of Japan because it encompasses architecture,
• 1:00:04
  flower arrangements, kimono, tatami, cast iron works like
• 1:00:10
  tetsubans and like kamas like ceremi making ceramics, kaiseki
• 1:00:15
  cuisine. It is such a wonderful
• 1:00:18
  distillation of what can be considered Japanese, this
• 1:00:22
  informing the Japanese identity. Then now that this is getting
• 1:00:26
  uncoupled and that matcha is becoming a category that some
• 1:00:29
  random teenager in New York City wants to buy blank street coffee
• 1:00:33
  or that somewhere, you know, it's so outside of its original
• 1:00:37
  context that it leads to. This is why it's such a hot
• 1:00:41
  debate. And people, rightly so, I think,
• 1:00:43
  get very offended because of the very close association with
• 1:00:48
  matcha tea ceremony, tea culture, with the very identity
• 1:00:52
  of Japanese people, Japanese Japanese nation, which makes it
• 1:00:57
  a really interesting case study of globalization and new culture
• 1:01:01
  formation and of Japan itself and the way that culture gets
• 1:01:06
  formed and spread. And the good wives and wise
• 1:01:09
  mother policy within Japan that happened after the Meiji
• 1:01:13
  Restoration, after Japan opened its doors and became a much
• 1:01:18
  bigger player on the global stage, was this concept around
• 1:01:22
  having creating a Japanese nation.
• 1:01:26
  And part of good wives and wise mother policy was to having all,
• 1:01:30
  you know, female students at these girls schools practice tea
• 1:01:34
  ceremony, live and breathe and become more Japanese and spread
• 1:01:37
  it to their children, right? So it's so baked into the idea
• 1:01:42
  of what's being Japan for generations.
• 1:01:45
  And I think people very rightly get offended when someone like a
• 1:01:49
  Chinese company fakes and makes counterfeit Maruku Kalyama and
• 1:01:53
  products and is fakely labeling that and trying to pass that off
• 1:01:58
  as not only Ujimatcha, but Maruku Kalyama.
• 1:02:01
  And it's violating. It crosses this sort of cultural
• 1:02:06
  intimacy barrier of the way people see their own identity.
• 1:02:11
  So I can also really heavily sympathize with the Japanese
• 1:02:16
  versions of this argument. So it's it's so complicated.
• 1:02:20
  On the other hand, right, you can totally understand people in
• 1:02:24
  China who have no reverence for Japan for very good reasons for
• 1:02:28
  historical regions who just don't give a crap.
• 1:02:32
  They grew up with their grandparents hating Japanese.
• 1:02:34
  There's a horrible memory of all the atrocities that the Japanese
• 1:02:38
  did in China and you can think of this as some form of
• 1:02:41
  retribution. I think you were looking Sam at
• 1:02:43
  some online Chinese forums about all of this debate within the
• 1:02:47
  Chinese Internet. And there's some there's some
• 1:02:51
  arguments that those people can make that well, this is nothing
• 1:02:54
  compared to what the Japanese did to us.
• 1:02:56
  But now we're still in an endless look backwards.
• 1:02:59
  So it's. Well, I mean that that really
• 1:03:02
  transcends the discussion about the tea itself, right?
• 1:03:05
  There's nationalism, there's nationalisms mixing, there's
• 1:03:11
  illegal fights being missing. I mean, like that whole module
• 1:03:15
  Koyama and counterfeit. It's it's really illegal by any
• 1:03:19
  definition, not not even like a relocalizing a culture in China.
• 1:03:24
  It's it's that that's just illegal.
• 1:03:26
  And and the accusation, the accusation between two people
• 1:03:32
  from the two countries to each other.
• 1:03:34
  I think it's also transcends the idea of the key culture realm
• 1:03:40
  that's more, you know, about the unresolved historical trauma
• 1:03:45
  between the two nations. And that's, it's a, it's an
• 1:03:49
  interesting, it's an interesting discussion.
• 1:03:53
  But for that discussion, I don't think there's any third parties
• 1:03:56
  that can stepped in and make any claims.
• 1:03:59
  That's very much not a discussion related to TEA.
• 1:04:02
  Yeah. That makes this endlessly
• 1:04:04
  fascinating. Yeah.
• 1:04:06
  And which you know, it will be very interesting if people in
• 1:04:10
  China do starting to adopt the idea of using Moja to describe
• 1:04:15
  their own powder tea in the future.
• 1:04:18
  I would argue that there there will be a lot of incentives for
• 1:04:21
  people to try to push for that narrative and trying to compete
• 1:04:26
  with Mata in the international stage and that that might be a
• 1:04:31
  very interesting dynamic that that might bring everybody in in
• 1:04:35
  the future. There's so much layers of so
• 1:04:39
  many layers of the complexity here.
• 1:04:41
  Wow, such a hot mess. It's a big hot mess.
• 1:04:45
  She really can debate both sides of this because like, even like,
• 1:04:48
  you can argue, but who is responsible for making matcha
• 1:04:51
  this national beverage or international beverage?
• 1:04:54
  And it's like on nearly every cafe menu in most countries, you
• 1:04:59
  know, it's the Japanese, it's Japanese culture, its interest
• 1:05:02
  in everything Japanese related. It's Japan who gave this product
• 1:05:09
  its international stage. And the Japanese pushed for this
• 1:05:14
  internationalization. They were were scared of it
• 1:05:18
  being not consumed by people by by people outside of Japan
• 1:05:23
  enough. And you know, the domestic
• 1:05:26
  consumption has been decreasing so drastically in all those
• 1:05:29
  years, back in the days they were like the higher to push
• 1:05:33
  this globalize globalization, like the the Uji government was
• 1:05:37
  incentivize was incentivizing people to to to sell their
• 1:05:42
  product globally. They themselves push for this
• 1:05:45
  internationalization. They themselves trying to lift
• 1:05:49
  matcha out from this cultural context.
• 1:05:54
  You know, the Wuji government was incentivizing people to add
• 1:05:58
  matcha into like confectionaries as an ingredient.
• 1:06:01
  We read it together from a document together, right?
• 1:06:04
  Yeah, there's a lot of unintended consequences of
• 1:06:07
  creating this market, which is saving the Japanese tea
• 1:06:11
  industry. Like you hear especially someone
• 1:06:13
  like Mark from Oheka talk about how the West is saving the
• 1:06:18
  Japanese industry, Japanese matcha, because it's created a
• 1:06:21
  new market, because Japan is a demographically declining
• 1:06:26
  country and the market is shrinking and shrinking and
• 1:06:28
  shrinking. And, you know, without these new
• 1:06:29
  markets, there's no one to sell the T2.
• 1:06:32
  And now it's like now it's everyone got what they wished
• 1:06:35
  for. And now there's a lot of
• 1:06:36
  interesting unintended consequences that are happening.
• 1:06:39
  Yeah, yeah. And and exactly what you say,
• 1:06:43
  Ryan, like it's so intertwined with the Japanese Ness to the
• 1:06:48
  Japanese that I think it's it's it's what this whole heart
• 1:06:53
  feelings that's coming from for the Japanese.
• 1:06:56
  And if you are being as as the Koreans or the Chinese right
• 1:07:00
  like however you want to call this product as long as it
• 1:07:03
  sells. Yeah, but also the Chinese like
• 1:07:06
  the the idea of the Chinese culture, Chinese nation and
• 1:07:10
  Chinese people has not been so elaborately intertwined with
• 1:07:15
  Mocha. It's not intertwined at all,
• 1:07:18
  right? That's like it's the Chinese
• 1:07:20
  have nothing to sacrifice or to lose by not protecting that part
• 1:07:24
  of their culture, right? Like the Japanese don't try to
• 1:07:27
  protect that part of the culture.
• 1:07:29
  It's their very identity. They have something to lose.
• 1:07:32
  They quote, UN quote have like skin in this game.
• 1:07:35
  It's it's, it's who they are because it's what it part of
• 1:07:38
  what it's means to be Japanese is all of these cultural
• 1:07:42
  associations. Yeah, but that.
• 1:07:45
  And the purse of of tea ceremony being chosen as this cultural
• 1:07:50
  element. Yeah but that that intertwined
• 1:07:53
  Ness or incorporation has only happened for like 200 ish years.
• 1:07:57
  Like it's not that long of a history for them.
• 1:08:00
  Like the Japanese people has exist for thousands of years.
• 1:08:03
  Matcha has not been their identity for many, many years in
• 1:08:07
  the history. It's only happened fairly
• 1:08:09
  recently. Yeah, but all those people are
• 1:08:12
  dead. Like you know who who had other
• 1:08:14
  things? And, and, and I would call it a
• 1:08:18
  little bit hypercritical in the sense that people don't even
• 1:08:21
  drink matcha nowadays in Japan. Or and they don't know anything
• 1:08:26
  about it. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:28
  So yeah, well, no hard feelings, guys.
• 1:08:32
  You don't even want it. That's funny for the average
• 1:08:34
  consumer. Do you know what's interesting,
• 1:08:36
  Sam, is that a lot of the Western matcha brands or people
• 1:08:39
  outside of Japan, even like non Japanese matcha people, matcha
• 1:08:45
  brand owners. I, I don't want to call it
• 1:08:47
  guilt, but I think the best word is maybe obligation.
• 1:08:50
  They have this obligation to honor tradition.
• 1:08:53
  And like I think like nearly every matcha company on earth
• 1:08:56
  would agree with some some statement like we honor
• 1:09:00
  tradition, but are trying to move macho forward into the
• 1:09:03
  future. This is like 1 foot in the past.
• 1:09:06
  One foot in the future is like a very common sentiment in this
• 1:09:10
  industry. But there's this guilt or
• 1:09:11
  obligation or this necessity to honor this tradition, which I
• 1:09:16
  think is it's interesting to examine, like why?
• 1:09:19
  Why does that have to be the case?
• 1:09:22
  That the significance really just lies on the gesture or the
• 1:09:28
  idea itself. It's the idea of I'm protecting
• 1:09:32
  or honoring the tradition. It's the idea of what what
• 1:09:35
  matcha is, and it's really not really about the tradition
• 1:09:40
  itself or the tea itself. Frequently the tradition is
• 1:09:44
  constantly changing and the product is constantly changing.
• 1:09:47
  Like there's really isn't a old, old tradition there to be, to be
• 1:09:53
  honored or protected. It's a living culture.
• 1:09:56
  And what does it even mean? Yeah, yeah, exactly it really.
• 1:10:01
  It's the idea. It's the imaginary, you know,
• 1:10:05
  honorific gesture that people perform.
• 1:10:08
  Wow. It's a performance, right?
• 1:10:10
  It's a performance. It's just like Chano you.
• 1:10:13
  It's a performance. It's a theater, it's a stage.
• 1:10:16
  It's a demonstration of intentionality.
• 1:10:20
  And so never about the product itself.
• 1:10:22
  Yeah, that's true. I really, it's a theater both
• 1:10:25
  for oneself and to prove to the rest of the world that you're
• 1:10:28
  not appropriating this thing and benefiting off of someone else's
• 1:10:33
  culture without, you know, recognizing where it comes from.
• 1:10:39
  Interesting. Like modern cultural artifact
• 1:10:41
  that's so necessary. I think it's important and it's
• 1:10:46
  good in some cases, but the form and the function are separated.
• 1:10:51
  Like the form is this performance performative thing.
• 1:10:54
  Everyone says they protect, they honor Japanese culture and then,
• 1:10:58
  OK, what's the function like? What are you actually doing
• 1:11:03
  right? Are we protecting culture?
• 1:11:05
  Are we using a Chasen to whisk mancha by hand?
• 1:11:09
  Is that, is that honoring culture?
• 1:11:11
  Is it honoring culture by just talking about the producer?
• 1:11:14
  Is it honoring culture by talking about the history?
• 1:11:17
  Where does that history stop and start?
• 1:11:19
  Which version of the history, the Ersenke Foundation approved
• 1:11:23
  history or history that comes from other sources?
• 1:11:27
  All history is biased. And you know, unfortunately T
• 1:11:30
  history has become the Ersanka approved T history, which is
• 1:11:34
  very different than what if you look at primary documents that
• 1:11:37
  have been researched and investigated by the other T
• 1:11:40
  scholars And then like, what about it are we honoring?
• 1:11:43
  Are we honoring the fact that Japanese tea ceremony
• 1:11:47
  institutions are sexist and misogynistic, largely speaking?
• 1:11:51
  Maybe not explicitly, but definitely implicitly,
• 1:11:55
  especially by modern definitions, right?
• 1:11:58
  Do we want to honor those institutions?
• 1:12:00
  So those institutions change? How did they change?
• 1:12:02
  Who should the change makers be? Who drives the conversation
• 1:12:06
  forward? Who has the authority to drive
• 1:12:09
  these conversation forward? Right?
• 1:12:11
  Like it's where does Japanese tea culture start and stop?
• 1:12:15
  It's. It's so.
• 1:12:16
  Messy. Even the sexism or misogynistic
• 1:12:20
  culture that we are accusing the Japanese society, that's also
• 1:12:25
  like fairly recently compared to the long history of Japan.
• 1:12:29
  Like Japan used to have female court members, female emperor
• 1:12:34
  and Empress, and very like educated female scholars, like
• 1:12:38
  the author for the Tale of Genji, you know, she's a female
• 1:12:42
  author. And that's arguably like the,
• 1:12:45
  you know, literature that people want to study Japanese culture
• 1:12:49
  like that, that was, you know, like a few 100 years ago.
• 1:12:54
  At the time, Japan was not like as sexist or misogynistic as
• 1:12:59
  when nowadays is. So even that is fluid.
• 1:13:02
  It's it's culture that that that has changed.
• 1:13:05
  Yeah, I think people are really trying to search for meaning and
• 1:13:08
  add legitimacy to whatever they're doing, whether or not
• 1:13:11
  you're a brand owner of a matcha brand in another country or a
• 1:13:14
  consumer, right? Like it's about building meaning
• 1:13:18
  and justifying an existence, practicing something that is
• 1:13:22
  bigger and greater than yourself.
• 1:13:24
  Like I'm sure that was Zuka matcha farmer that commented on
• 1:13:28
  Jules Real saying that matcha must.
• 1:13:30
  It's like champagne can only be made in Japan.
• 1:13:33
  She sees himself as part of some legacy, some something greater
• 1:13:37
  than him or herself, right? Probably in a way.
• 1:13:41
  And and that's where that perspective is coming from.
• 1:13:44
  It's a form of identity. It's a form of how you want to
• 1:13:47
  see yourself and the type of perspectives that you take in
• 1:13:50
  which really make this not a pointless question because it
• 1:13:54
  really defines who we are. The way we define these things,
• 1:13:57
  right? If, if we came out with a matcha
• 1:13:59
  brand tomorrow and called something Chinese, matcha versus
• 1:14:01
  Chinese Mucha, right reflects our values and our identity in
• 1:14:06
  the way and our intentions depending on whether or not we
• 1:14:10
  use the term mulcha versus matcha right.
• 1:14:13
  And it can be, yes, yes. We will, we will come up with
• 1:14:17
  our own definition and add into this chaos, Ryan, that's going
• 1:14:21
  to happen. Right.
• 1:14:22
  Like there's money involved, there's ease of communication
• 1:14:25
  involved, there's how much you care about consumers.
• 1:14:28
  It's your willingness to do education.
• 1:14:30
  It's how you legitimize that term and tie it back to history,
• 1:14:35
  and also how you square that and reconcile it with moderate
• 1:14:38
  history and how you reconcile it the way all of these other
• 1:14:42
  things it's it's so complicated. If is macho just a format or is
• 1:14:47
  this other thing so complicated? And interesting and exciting.
• 1:14:51
  And so pointless and so just looking backwards, but it also
• 1:14:55
  defines who we are now and what our values are.
• 1:14:58
  Yeah, I mean it's pointless if you want to seek answer, but
• 1:15:02
  it's. So.
• 1:15:03
  Meaningful if you want to seek a answer or answers from different
• 1:15:08
  parties. And I, I guess the call to
• 1:15:10
  action for this episode are to see people that have alter
• 1:15:14
  alternative perspectives as yourself on this matter and
• 1:15:17
  listen with open ears. Maybe you don't agree with them,
• 1:15:21
  but at least you can learn a little bit more about them and
• 1:15:25
  what they care about and be open minded to the idea that they are
• 1:15:29
  part of this broader matcha culture, including yourself, and
• 1:15:33
  that we should be more inclusive versus more exclusive and look
• 1:15:37
  outward, not inward, and look forward and backward as these
• 1:15:41
  things evolve. If we talk about being that just
• 1:15:44
  very constructive, right? It's important to understand who
• 1:15:46
  we are, where we came from. It's important to understand the
• 1:15:49
  motivations of everyone that's participating in the current,
• 1:15:53
  what I'll call macho or current tea culture.
• 1:15:56
  And then we need to think about, OK, what do we want moving
• 1:15:59
  forward? And people are going to want
• 1:16:00
  different things. And I think that's a beautiful
• 1:16:02
  thing, but I think I'm more inclusive.
• 1:16:04
  Exclusive future is better than a more exclusive future.
• 1:16:08
  I agree, but also I think people should do pick a side, pick a
• 1:16:13
  discourse, pick a answer that you think you believe in and and
• 1:16:17
  enforced it or, you know, like and disagree with yourself in
• 1:16:21
  the future if you end up learning something new and
• 1:16:25
  change to different sides, different perspective.
• 1:16:28
  And I think that's totally fine, yeah.
• 1:16:31
  Totally fine. I mean, what if what if, you
• 1:16:33
  know, we're in a world 10 years from now and you know, we work
• 1:16:36
  with a Chinese tea farmer and we're producing just incredibly
• 1:16:42
  artisanal hand picked longing 43 cultivar shaded for 40 days with
• 1:16:49
  the last week of shading being triple layered blah, blah, blah.
• 1:16:52
  All of these things and produced just the most interesting
• 1:16:55
  product. And we it was like the pinnacles
• 1:16:59
  of what matcha could be. And we take it to this farmer in
• 1:17:03
  Wazooka and say, taste this, we've made this for you.
• 1:17:06
  Would you like to try it? Takes a sip and says, oh, I see.
• 1:17:10
  Like this is delicious. Where is this matcha from?
• 1:17:13
  It's from mainland China. Yeah.
• 1:17:15
  Or even not shaded, but oxidized, that there's so many,
• 1:17:19
  like unique practices that you can do with this format of tea
• 1:17:23
  that is not by the definition of tensha, but, you know, like it's
• 1:17:29
  powder tea by the end of the day.
• 1:17:30
  And you do need to pick a name to call.
• 1:17:32
  It depends on who you're siding with or who you agree with the
• 1:17:37
  most. Yeah.
• 1:17:38
  But even if these people that have these well defined
• 1:17:43
  perspectives and opinions taste a product like a really well
• 1:17:47
  milled Gokaro that has very similar characteristics, sensory
• 1:17:51
  characteristics to matcha and they taste it and say where is
• 1:17:53
  this matcha from? Then you realize that it's all
• 1:17:56
  just a bunch of projections that we're putting on this poor
• 1:17:58
  plant, and it says way more about us than it does about the
• 1:18:01
  actual product. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:03
  I mean like if you do care about the bio biology of the plant you
• 1:18:07
  should not shade it at all. Literally suffocating this poor
• 1:18:14
  vegetation. It's yeah, so many different
• 1:18:18
  perspectives you can view this with if you are really Ecomaniac
• 1:18:23
  and think about the poor plant itself and just the
• 1:18:26
  ridiculousness of this whole debate.
• 1:18:28
  And you know, the debate that we're having is such a much more
• 1:18:32
  reflection of us than of the product because we've both
• 1:18:35
  tasted and I'm sure there'll be more in the future.
• 1:18:37
  A lot of products that don't come from Tensha that taste very
• 1:18:41
  similar and would be indistinguishable from matcha it
• 1:18:44
  outside of any label context can whether or not you call it, you
• 1:18:48
  know, you know, whatever you want that most people would have
• 1:18:51
  no idea it doesn't fall under and letting the product speak
• 1:18:54
  for itself. It's something we haven't talked
• 1:18:57
  about and I don't want to go too deeply because it's already
• 1:18:59
  running super long. Is the product itself right?
• 1:19:02
  If you're super product focus, right, where does it stop and
• 1:19:05
  start? And to put it in the camp of the
• 1:19:08
  people that only care about the taste, right?
• 1:19:10
  Like if you only care about taste, right, and just enjoy the
• 1:19:14
  matcha, then you really shouldn't care about these
• 1:19:17
  labels, right? Because we can milk Bogota and
• 1:19:20
  have it tastes very similar to matcha.
• 1:19:22
  We can milk some Gokoro. And a lot of the samples that
• 1:19:26
  we've tasted from that really are not that distinguishable in
• 1:19:30
  terms of like the sensory experience of tasting that
• 1:19:32
  matcha or tasting that milled gokoro matcha milled gokoro
• 1:19:36
  powder or product that comes from outside of Japan.
• 1:19:39
  If you really just enjoy the tea, why do these labels even
• 1:19:42
  matter? Yeah, but but even even with the
• 1:19:46
  product itself, there's so many different perspectives that you
• 1:19:50
  can care about. Like if you care about the
• 1:19:52
  health perspective, you really shouldn't be drinking any
• 1:19:55
  conventionally farmed tea. If you care about the farming or
• 1:20:00
  the health of the plant perspective, you really should
• 1:20:04
  not be should be drinking. You know all these organic
• 1:20:08
  product which takes a sacrifice of the taste.
• 1:20:11
  It would certainly not be as tasty as the conventionally
• 1:20:15
  farmed tea. So even the product side has
• 1:20:19
  different shades of them or different parties that you can
• 1:20:22
  side with. Indeed.
• 1:20:24
  Completely. That's super interesting.
• 1:20:27
  Yeah. And even the house, you know,
• 1:20:30
  unshaded teas actually can have higher catechin contents and
• 1:20:34
  they taste worse, but they are technically more healthy if
• 1:20:37
  you're just looking at antioxidant levels.
• 1:20:39
  So yeah, really, pick aside, I mean, like people perceive tea
• 1:20:43
  really back in the days as a medicine, it probably tastes
• 1:20:46
  pretty bad back in the days too, yeah.
• 1:20:48
  Well, actually the earliest records of tea in Japan, people
• 1:20:51
  revered the fact that it was bitter because they thought of
• 1:20:54
  it as medicine. And actually one of the earliest
• 1:20:57
  use cases and endorsement for drinking tea in Japan was as a
• 1:21:00
  hangover cure. It's it's not at all the
• 1:21:06
  cultural associations or why it's revered nowadays.
• 1:21:10
  Quite the opposite. A more mindful beverage also
• 1:21:13
  too. I mean, if you'll use matcha to
• 1:21:15
  center yourself every morning, right?
• 1:21:17
  And it's part of your daily ritual, why in the world could
• 1:21:20
  that not be with Gokharo matcha, right?
• 1:21:23
  Like if that is what you care about and the reason that you
• 1:21:26
  engage in this practice to have your matcha moment everyday
• 1:21:29
  your, your moment of bliss, which I think is a miracle.
• 1:21:32
  Actually, the matcha industry and tea industry in general that
• 1:21:36
  has convinced the entire world that this mess of a preparation
• 1:21:40
  for a beverage is a moment in time.
• 1:21:44
  I think that's great, but I actually, there's nothing Zen
• 1:21:48
  about opening this can quickly opening it as quickly as I can
• 1:21:51
  from the refrigerator so that not much air comes out perfectly
• 1:21:54
  weighing in, you know, 2 grams into my bowl, making sure I
• 1:21:58
  Preheat the ball, but then I need to dry the ball and then I
• 1:22:00
  need to sift it and then I need to clean the dry powder off of
• 1:22:04
  all of these implements. And then I need to make sure my
• 1:22:06
  water temperature is perfect. My bamboo chassen is hydrated
• 1:22:10
  and you don't do this whisking for three seconds and then I
• 1:22:13
  have to do and then you got to clean up everything.
• 1:22:15
  But it's T Ware. So you know, T Ware, you have to
• 1:22:18
  be more careful with the dishware.
• 1:22:21
  It's like if you look at all the other steps that people don't
• 1:22:26
  record when they take their, their, their their video for
• 1:22:30
  Instagram of their moment of Zen, right?
• 1:22:32
  There's nothing Zen about it. I think that people love that.
• 1:22:36
  But a minor miracle of matcha marketing.
• 1:22:40
  Yeah, a refrigerator. That's certainly part of Zen
• 1:22:43
  Buddhism, Very important utensils.
• 1:22:48
  Anyway, all right, this conversation is probably way too
• 1:22:51
  long. So to capstone, this Sungjun is
• 1:22:54
  matcha just a format now? I think it's an idea.
• 1:22:56
  It's a fantasy. Yeah, and it's different in
• 1:22:59
  everyone's mind. Everyone has different
• 1:23:01
  projections. Yep, Yep, and I think it's
• 1:23:03
  great. Let us know what you think if
• 1:23:05
  you agree with us, disagree with us, what you thought of some of
• 1:23:08
  these threads. If you have alternative opinion
• 1:23:10
  or super strong opinion, want to come on?
• 1:23:12
  We we'd love to learn about how you see this differently than
• 1:23:15
  us. And clearly we don't exactly
• 1:23:18
  take a side. We're pretty open minded.
• 1:23:20
  And if you're a longtime listener, you have realized that
• 1:23:23
  our opinions have changed on this very question depending on,
• 1:23:26
  you know, what you're framing about what you're talking about
• 1:23:29
  and kind of what the goals of what you're talking about are.
• 1:23:32
  And you arrive at very different conclusions.
• 1:23:34
  So a mess of a question. Thank you for bearing with us on
• 1:23:37
  this very long recording and we hope you enjoyed it and we'll
• 1:23:41
  see you on the next one. Hopefully a shorter episode.
• 1:23:44
  Indeed. All right.
• 1:23:46
  Thanks.