Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / What is Authentic Matcha? Opinion

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What is Authentic Matcha? Opinion · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
All right, we're live. Hello, this is the Specialty
0:02
Match podcast. My name is Ryan.
0:04
This is my Coho Zunjun. Hello.
0:06
Hello. Who also goes by Sam so you
0:08
might hear both and we're the Co founders of Sanko Match
0:11
products. Yeah, we launched this podcast
0:14
to discuss our learning journey, Matcha, share startup stories
0:18
and interview experts. And today's episode is centered
0:20
around the opinion piece that we recently wrote.
0:23
This is a really sensitive topic that can get very philosophical
0:28
very fast. Today we're going to talk about
0:31
the very notion of authenticity and traditional.
0:35
This is really just an illusion, and not just in the context of
0:39
tea, but also in many other things across different
0:42
cultures. Yeah.
0:43
So it's this is a really hard concept to break down one
0:46
because it's so common and we'll be the first to say that we are
0:50
guilty of using this term sometimes and have in the past
0:54
and might accidentally use it in the future.
0:56
It's very common tea marketing term to call something
0:59
authentic, and many companies do that for good reason, right?
1:03
It's a really easy way to get someone to appreciate something
1:07
like the very notion of authenticity itself is that it
1:11
is true to itself, right? Like if you talk about having
1:16
like being authentic or having an authentic personality is you
1:20
know, you're not superficial or acting or whatever, right?
1:24
You're very true to yourself, whatever that means, and you
1:28
express it that way. Yeah, but the the only thing
1:32
that the people are missing or not thinking through clearly is
1:36
that the idea of self is not static.
1:39
It's, it's constantly changing, like it's not about things, but
1:44
you know, people too. Yesterday's you is not going to
1:48
be similar to today's you and it's not going to be similar to,
1:51
you know, tomorrow's you. It's when you are talking about
1:54
something that's authentical, you're essentially using a
1:59
static image as a reference point of a thing to define its
2:04
presence, or trying to define its future.
2:07
And that's really not a it's. It's not a ideal or not even a
2:12
realistic thing to do unless you absolutely kill something and
2:17
put it into a a glass box and put it into a museum, then it's
2:23
forever, you know, sealed. And then it's that it's no
2:26
longer a living culture or a living thing.
2:29
So. What do you think the intention
2:31
is on June? Let's examine both sides of this
2:35
and then let's dive into the piece that you wrote which talks
2:37
about matcha specifically. But when I'm asking for
2:42
authentic matcha from you as a consumer like what is my
2:47
intention? Where does that?
2:48
Come yeah, I think when people or for that matter, including
2:52
myself, demanding something that's authentic or traditional
2:57
is we we want something that has a culture and has a history and
3:04
has a story that can, you know, validate its existence right
3:10
now. So it's not something that it's
3:13
just made-up today. We want something that has been
3:18
in practice, has been used for a extended period of time so that
3:24
we we can develop this feeling of ourself in drawing such thing
3:30
feeling tangible to its past. And I think so many people are
3:34
afraid of getting a watered down experience in some way, right?
3:39
Like if you grew up in a small town in the States and you had a
3:42
Chinese restaurant and then all of a sudden you, you go to
3:45
university in a much bigger place and you realize, holy
3:48
crap, this I, I'm tasting things that this is nothing like I
3:53
know, and I realize that I've been kind of lied to.
3:55
This isn't Chinese food, this orange chicken general sauce,
4:00
right? Like Chinese food is something,
4:02
you know, entirely else. And then you go deeper down the
4:04
rabbit hole and realize, oh, there's Sichuan cuisine, which
4:07
is totally different than like dim sum from Canton, which might
4:11
be totally different than, you know, food from Lanzhou, you
4:15
know, in Western China. And you kind of go down that
4:18
box. But the intention of of asking
4:20
for authentic is to get at the real thing, mostly because
4:24
people want to change their perspective.
4:26
I think usually it's the best of intentions.
4:29
I want to expose myself to something that I don't know,
4:33
might not understand come from a different culture, a different
4:37
set of context. I mean, I think that's why,
4:41
like, people are so romanced by Japan.
4:44
It's such an interesting culture of the past and the perfection
4:48
and of all sorts of philosophical underpinnings that
4:51
you can feel not only in tea ceremony but in other things.
4:55
And they want to step foot in something that is perspective
4:58
shifting for them. Yeah, totally.
5:00
It's it's the story being told. It's the practice or the
5:05
imagination of such practice being done for many, many
5:10
generations that that people can get the feeling of some
5:15
credibility has been established and they are, you know, like
5:19
experiencing the real thing. But in reality, such existence,
5:25
such thing might have been changed for in a very drastic
5:30
way, like things that being that were being done in the past
5:34
might might be very different from, you know, today's
5:37
practices. And for that matter, you know,
5:40
if you really want something that is traditional, like should
5:45
you revert back to the practice in the past or should you
5:49
continue to doing the things that people are doing right now?
5:52
So for 10 matter actually, Ryan, we can use the example of orange
5:56
chicken. You you first time you try
6:00
orange chicken and you thought this, oh, this tastes, tastes
6:03
pretty good. It's sweet, it's soured.
6:06
It has the flavor of chicken that that you know that that's
6:10
kind of pretty interestingly intertwined with something that
6:13
you you wouldn't thought they would go together.
6:16
And that's probably the the first Chinese food, Chinese dish
6:20
that you would experience that was outside of China.
6:23
And then as you have more contacts of Chinese food, you
6:26
realize, oh, wow, this is not really things that people would
6:30
eat, you know, or what Chinese people would eat nowadays, but
6:36
very interestingly. So I myself, you know, I'm
6:39
Chinese and I grew up in China. I've never had orange chicken
6:43
before in China. And trying orange chicken in the
6:47
States was my first experience to this dish.
6:49
And I actually went down a rabbit hole, you know, trying to
6:53
figure out what exactly, you know, this dish comes from.
6:57
And very interestingly, this is a very traditional dish coming
7:02
from northern China. And it's similar to the
7:05
preparation of the dish called Gubaro in Manchuria.
7:08
So this is actually something that's quite traditional, but
7:11
people no longer eat it. They brought it to the US back
7:15
in time. And he felt out of favor in
7:17
modern day China. And for someone especially
7:20
coming from the South, we have never had this thing before for
7:25
my generation. So you see like this evolution
7:29
of truth, this evolution of tradition can be very
7:32
generational and can be very, it can almost be so once, once
7:39
tradition can be someone's present and can be someone's
7:44
illusion. But but you are talking about
7:47
different time frame, you're talking about different time
7:49
lapse. So very awesome.
7:52
Well, just just to pull on that thread a little bit, right?
7:56
Like when we say that authenticity is being true to
7:59
itself or oneself, right? That subject is a story, is a
8:04
narrative. And even saying like, is this
8:07
practice traditional to a Moto Sankay school of Chano Yu, which
8:11
is a tea ceremony school or or to sank a Chano Yu, Right.
8:15
Like even that question is interesting because it's kind of
8:19
actually a story of a interesting tangent.
8:22
I was listening to a podcast and a talk by someone who did a lot
8:26
of research and wrote a book about women in tea in the Meiji
8:31
in adult periods. And she was doing lots of she
8:34
she was giving this talk on this podcast and she was doing a lot
8:36
of research and she had a bunch of realizations trying to fact
8:41
find. And that it turns out that a lot
8:43
of the historical books about the Urasenke School of tea
8:48
ceremony were largely sponsored or somehow influenced by the
8:53
Iyamoto. So I mean, kind of makes sense.
8:56
The institution studying itself, you know, is going to be paying
8:59
and I don't know about soliciting, but at least
9:02
cooperating with people to to write, you know, the history and
9:06
cultural importance of various aspects of RASAIC.
9:08
And it turns out that from a historical lens, they're
9:11
actually not that objective at all.
9:13
And these tea ceremony schools are very, the documentation is
9:19
really a thing. It's really a Japanese thing in
9:21
general, where everything is really documented, even in
9:24
business, and they have records of different tea ceremony
9:27
gatherings, who was there, what's they served, what tea
9:30
ceremony utensils were used, all sorts of things like this that
9:34
go back all the way. And she tried to gain access to
9:38
these records from Urasenka and the Motasenka about this because
9:41
she's studying women in tea. And she wanted to know were they
9:44
guessed? Were they host?
9:45
Were they high class or low class women?
9:47
How did that change as Japan opened up in the Meiji period?
9:51
Her book is, by the way, is called Cultivating Femininity.
9:54
And I think you can buy it online.
9:56
And she no one gave her the records.
9:59
So there's literally they're not like even allowing her to be
10:03
able to to study this. And then you realize, holy crap,
10:07
like even the histories that have been documented across
10:11
these various cultures, if you're like want to have an
10:14
informed opinions, is this authentic to or a Senke like
10:18
maybe a certain gesture or a certain tea bowl or a certain
10:22
procedure or something, right. It's actually through a highly
10:25
biased distorted lens that was often very discriminatory and
10:29
whose principles when analyzed through modern value systems
10:34
might not be something that we're we're too happy with.
10:38
So really, all of these notions in T in general can be very
10:42
highly distorted. Yeah, you know, Channel U is
10:47
especially interesting because when we're talking about
10:49
tradition, we're talking about folk tradition.
10:52
But for Channel U is a institution tradition.
10:56
It's it's especially, I wouldn't say distorted, but it's
11:02
definitely regulated or restricted. 1 analogy that I can
11:06
think of is the Catholic Church right there is this notion of
11:12
Pope infallibility ex cathedra. I think that's the Latin phrase,
11:16
which essentially means, you know, it's it's people would
11:21
often interpret it as the Pope is never wrong.
11:24
But that's not true for for the Catholics Church's intention.
11:30
That means that there is one essential truth, A1 essential
11:36
true narrative. And that narrative will always
11:40
coming out from the Pope. And that's the most validated
11:44
narrative that is, you know, in the documents.
11:47
So I think Channel U is very similar right, to that
11:50
institution which one's narrative is always controlled
11:54
by, you know, the Yamoto. And it will be practice and it
11:58
will be taught to the followers. Very, very good comparison and
12:04
I'm glad to hear the high school Catholic school education is
12:09
paying off. But actually, it reminds me of a
12:12
really good quote by Yuval no Harari, the author and historian
12:16
that wrote Sapiens and Homodeus and Nexus, his latest book.
12:19
He's a professor of history. There's this wonderful line that
12:24
goes something like this. It's that everyone in the world
12:27
believes that religion is a story made-up by other humans
12:32
except their own. And it's a really good example
12:35
that they're, you know, even for, you know, these things,
12:38
they, they're all stories. The reference point is kind of a
12:41
story when you're asking is something authentic.
12:44
So it's it's hard not to get lost in the authenticity trap
12:49
and not understanding the full degrees of bias that can go into
12:54
that answer as you're on your T journey that you might not know
12:58
because you might not have the context.
12:59
And anyone who's really asking about authenticity is in an
13:04
asymmetric knowledge position. But you're asking if something
13:07
is authentic. The person who's answering you
13:10
should in theory have more knowledge than you to be able to
13:14
answer that question. But you know, among experts,
13:16
right? I I bet people who have been
13:18
studying matcha for for decades or growing it for decades, like
13:22
the people who are really advanced or who have tons of
13:26
context are not sitting around asking about authenticity.
13:30
Because usually it's they're active participants in the
13:32
change and changes of the living art that is creating much,
13:36
growing much, preparing much, blending much and these types of
13:41
things. Yeah, it's it's very
13:45
interesting. Like, let's loop back to matcha
13:49
as the center of today's discussion for matcha.
13:53
So when people are asking about something that's authentic or
13:57
traditional, usually they want something that's that's older,
14:02
that has a history that has been practiced for hundreds of
14:05
thousands of years. But for that matter, matcha is
14:09
actually the opposite. When you are asking something or
14:13
in channel. In the context of channel use
14:15
something that's authentic. You are actually going to get
14:20
the most updated version tradition.
14:26
That's so true. Yeah, because, you know, where
14:31
do you draw the line? You know, like if you really
14:34
want to go back, you are going to go back to Song dynasty
14:37
water. And that's China very origin of,
14:42
you know, matcha, which is Chinese powder tea.
14:46
And that culture is very much that you're seeing some revival
14:52
revivalist movement today happening across China for Sung
14:56
dynasty, Moja, ever since Ming Dynasty, the the first emperor
15:01
of Ming dynasty, Julian Zhang or Emperor Hong Wu actually issued
15:06
a law and the production of powder tea in the 14th century.
15:12
And ever since that, the culture of mortar ceased to exist.
15:17
And it's a very much a dead art. So if you want to loop back to
15:22
that tradition, you are not going to find anything that's
15:26
living or breathing. And yeah.
15:28
And then, you know, luckily, you know, Mortar was transported to
15:32
Japan and studied by and loved by the Japanese at the time.
15:37
But, you know, even for that matter, you know, the matcha
15:40
that we had back in the times of Senuli Q is not Senuli Q is not
15:46
going to be very similar to the matcha that we drink today.
15:49
In fact, it's it was probably very, very different.
15:54
And in the opinion piece we talk about several different aspect
15:57
of why the tea at the time was very different from today's
16:00
matcha. We saw vast innovations in tea
16:05
farming, tea, the gardening and a lot of the practice that we
16:09
are seeing today like shade grown matcha, shading your
16:12
matcha Bush. Shading your tea Bush is
16:15
actually a fairly recent innovation compared to how long
16:19
tea has been introduced into Japan.
16:21
Yeah. I mean, people would probably
16:23
use that as an example of what they mean by authentic matcha.
16:27
But, you know, today's traditions were yesterday's
16:31
innovations, and it's just a weird question of where you draw
16:35
that line. Yeah, very true.
16:37
And even for today, because like, even for the practice
16:41
itself historically as being done with very specific
16:46
materials, like when talking about home sushi, you know, it's
16:49
a rice straw is all of all of these bamboo ries that people
16:53
would, you know, scattered and form a coverage on top of the
16:57
tea Bush. But nowadays we're seeing
17:00
Kanesha or cheesecloth, you know, this synthetic plastic
17:04
cloth being used everywhere in Japan.
17:06
And it was used in some of the most, you know, oldest tea
17:10
garden in Wuji. And people have no problem with
17:13
it. And in fact, you know, a lot of
17:15
these tea farmers had told us that, you know, the difference
17:21
of using completely home zoo shading versus synthetic
17:25
clothes. And their impact on the flavor
17:27
of tea is very, very marginal. And the cheesecloth actually
17:31
provides better sun coverage than traditional home zoo
17:35
shading. And even the term that everyone
17:38
uses, synthetic cloth, is actually ridiculous when you
17:41
really think about it. I mean, let's look at like, I
17:44
don't know something umbrellas, they also cover you.
17:47
Let's go back 150 years. Umbrellas existed.
17:49
They're probably made out of, I don't know, canvas and wood.
17:52
Now that they're made out of plastic, do we call them
17:55
synthetic umbrellas? It's just this ridiculous, like
17:58
standard that's. Very true.
18:01
You know like something that's what we consider very
18:04
traditional is it's also synthetic, right.
18:06
Paper is synthetic. These are clothes are also
18:09
synthetic. It's just different synthesizing
18:12
method that we are using today versus yesterday.
18:16
It's an unfair standard and often used to make often used to
18:19
differentiate between, you know, I guess higher labor methods and
18:23
non higher labor methods. You have this wonderful line.
18:26
I mean, we see tea marketing all the time and we try to follow as
18:30
many people as we can and constantly look at matcha
18:33
positioning. And I'd say over half, you know,
18:37
often use the word authenticity. You know, whenever we have these
18:41
rants in our, you know, internal discussions and you have a great
18:45
line, we're talking about authenticity or heritage matcha
18:48
or all of these different words that people use.
18:50
You're like, OK, that's great, but from which era Do you want
18:54
it from The modern era? Do you want it from the Meiji
18:58
era? The ADO era?
19:00
There really is no such thing as authentic matcha because the
19:04
reference point is so ambiguous. Yeah.
19:09
And even you want to follow a Channel U interpretation of, you
19:16
know, something that's authentic or, or something that's
19:19
traditional, then you will run into the question of which
19:23
schools of China you you want to follow.
19:26
There are hundreds of active schools of China you exist
19:30
today. They all have various different
19:32
level of heritage. So which schools do you follow?
19:37
Which interpretation do you want to believe?
19:41
Yeah, well, I mean, let's make this very relevant, right?
19:44
Someone's getting into matcha. They want to learn how to whisk.
19:47
A natural question. How do they whisk in Japan?
19:49
How do I whisk matcha authentically, Right?
19:52
And let's just pick the two major schools.
19:54
You have a Moto Sankay or a Sankay, right?
19:58
Those, if you have two different instructors, are going to teach
20:00
you how to whisk completely differently.
20:02
If I show up to an Emoto Sankay class whisking the way I whisk
20:06
at home, I'm going to be told Dame, Dame, Dame, Dame.
20:11
Yeah, that's so true. But but you're not doing it
20:15
wrong, right? I'm totally doing it wrong.
20:18
I'm getting yelled at. I have gotten yelled at.
20:21
Yeah, but you are doing it wrong in Omoda Senke's guideline.
20:25
So, so, so, So I guess the question here that we need to
20:28
ask is what outcome do you want to achieve?
20:31
Do you want to be the perfect Omoda Senke student or you want
20:36
to make a very delicious bowl of matcha that you like?
20:40
Like because for Omoda Senke, the gold is not produced a very
20:45
thick foam. In fact, they don't want a lot
20:48
of foam for for the matcha, it's about the elegance of how you
20:53
move your hand. It's about the elegance of how
20:56
the whisk glide through the the soup of matcha.
20:59
And before someone that drinks matcha today, a lot of them
21:03
really like the very thick foam coming from the matcha.
21:07
But if you whisk with the correct emoticine cake gesture,
21:11
you are not going to get that outcome.
21:13
So for that matter, you know, like, what's your goal?
21:16
What's your purpose of whisking matcha?
21:17
You want to make something that you like, or do you want to
21:21
follow a certain tradition? Yeah, correct.
21:24
But you know, like, but, but here you really need to make a
21:27
decision of, you know, like what?
21:29
What exactly do you want? Yeah, I was watching this
21:33
reaction video of an Urasenke student, I think she did, Midori
21:37
Akai. And for those of you who don't
21:39
know what that is, it's kind of like a residency program for or
21:44
Asank students that can go to headquarters in Kyoto and and
21:48
study live and learn there for a certain period of time.
21:51
And she was judging TikTok and Instagram reels of people
21:56
preparing matcha and basically correcting, oh, this is right,
22:00
this is wrong. Pretty like entertaining video
22:03
to watch, but it was so black and white like this is wrong,
22:07
this is right. And what's a much more useful
22:11
framework for anyone who knows anything about tea, teaching
22:16
people who don't know as much about tea.
22:17
It's an interesting position, right?
22:19
Because most, most people are not that deep into tea or into
22:22
matcha or anything like that. And so the moment you know a
22:25
little bit, you're automatically know way more than 95% of the
22:29
population. So it turns out the people who
22:32
have this passion often get put into being a position of an
22:36
educator or giving recommendations and things like
22:39
that. So it's so important that
22:41
there's a culture online and offline of really understanding
22:46
intentions, especially behind the question of authenticity and
22:50
break it down exactly the way that you just did.
22:53
Like, what am I actually asking when I'm asking?
22:56
How do I whisk matcha authentically versus saying, oh,
22:59
and emoto senke, you don't use your wrist.
23:02
There's no wrist movement. All of the lateral movement
23:04
needs to come from your elbow. I mean, that's that's true, for
23:07
example, right? Like, but you know, what does
23:10
that matter to someone who's not studying tea ceremony?
23:13
It's rules for the sake of rules.
23:15
And it's so black and white and it's such a unfriendly way to be
23:20
introduced to tea and tamacha. And I think one of the reasons
23:25
why is that another type of tea ceremony like Chinese tea
23:29
ceremony for example, it's a very bottoms up approach.
23:32
There's many practitioners out there, there's relatively few
23:36
schools and it's this organic living, breathing thing of
23:40
normal people doing their living their life, having their tea
23:43
practice, promoting their tea practice, forming communities,
23:46
blah, blah, blah. But in Japanese tea, very much
23:49
like Japanese society, it's very hierarchical and very top down
23:52
in position with these large institutions, these schools,
23:56
which on top of that, in a very traditional top down society
24:00
that have created this new or influencing this, this new
24:07
culture of consuming tea outside of a ceremonial context.
24:11
As more non Japanese and more foreigners are getting into this
24:16
as a thing that they like and want to enjoy.
24:18
Right. You naturally go to where all
24:20
the practitioners are who've been doing it for hundreds of
24:23
years. You know, we want to learn from
24:25
you. And it, it's creating I, I, I
24:28
think this is 1 aspect of Chano Yu that doesn't map well onto
24:33
the modern. And I think that's sort of where
24:36
our reactions come from and why we want to see matcha much more
24:39
as a specialty product where it's much more bottoms up.
24:42
Understanding why you like something, not being told that,
24:46
you know, this blend is what we use here in a Moto senke.
24:49
That's, you know the Iamoto said.
24:51
This is our Koi Cha blend you should all buy.
24:54
Yeah. I mean like it's we we
24:57
essentially we really want to see matcha.
24:59
It's more relevant to matcha the self instead of all these, you
25:03
know, traditions or, you know, institutionalized practice
25:07
centering, centering around it. Because you know, when you're
25:11
talking about, you know, like this matcha plan for this, that
25:15
that this Yamoto endorsed, you are not really quoting this
25:19
matcha. You are quoting the Yamoto.
25:22
The the credibility comes from the Yamoto, not from the matcha
25:25
itself. And we see that in the world of
25:28
channel you. We also see that in some words
25:31
of Chinese tea ceremony too. And in Chinese tea ceremony, I
25:34
think it's it's the most ridiculous.
25:36
You see a lot of these, you know, so-called tradition, but
25:40
it was really modern invention, you know, like pointing up your
25:44
pinkies when you pour tea and certain ways.
25:48
The Phoenix Tale. The Phoenix tell and the where
25:50
to point your tea pouts spout towards like if you're pointing
25:54
towards the door, that means the guest relief and these like
25:58
really weird, strange quote UN quote.
26:01
Tradition is not really traditional.
26:03
And if you really want to experience something that is
26:07
like tradition, instead, you should probably go to places
26:10
like Chowjo where they do not have such rules.
26:14
But the culture of drinking tea is just infused in every aspect
26:19
of people's life from day-to-day, people drinking tea,
26:22
people enjoying tea all the time in all kinds of contexts.
26:26
The tradition, quote UN quote tradition.
26:28
I'm just going to use the, the word tradition for the sake of
26:33
coherent narrative. But the the tradition in Tao
26:36
Zhou, it's about tea itself. It's about the dental tea that
26:40
they drink and if the tea is flavorful, if it suits their
26:44
preference, if they would like it and if they, you know, are
26:47
prepared well. So that's the tradition that
26:50
people would follow in child. And it's about, it's about tea,
26:54
not about, you know, certain rules or certain gesture or
26:58
certain, you know, ways of how this tea needs to be treated in
27:02
the very structural way. If we zoom out a little bit and
27:05
talk sort of about, about the elephant in the room, about why
27:08
so many companies promote traditional matcha or having a
27:12
traditional or authentic practice, an authentic matcha,
27:16
right? And the reason is kind of
27:19
obvious, right? There's, it's a reaction to
27:21
industrialized agriculture. There's a lot of bad actors that
27:25
are taking product that maybe wasn't shade grown or maybe it's
27:30
from the fourth harvest or maybe it's from China or maybe it was
27:34
ground on not an Ishiyusu stone mill.
27:37
And there's various levels of where people draw the line and a
27:40
very industrial product and promoting it as much.
27:44
And right, you know, there are these producers that are going
27:47
through the hard work of creating a really highly unique
27:50
product using much slower, less efficient methods that have been
27:56
done for a longer time than using a self driving harvesting
28:00
machine or an AI computer vision optical sorting machine.
28:06
So it's understandable why it happens.
28:08
But you know, even these same vendors, let's say you have
28:11
Hanzu shaded Asahi cultivar, Tazumi hand picked teeth, their
28:16
favorite example, largely because we love that kind of tea
28:19
so much and saying, OK, this, no one's going to argue that this
28:23
is authentic, but you know, it's not true, right?
28:26
Like 100 years ago, almost everything was zyri or seed
28:29
propagated. So you had much more genetic and
28:31
plant to plant diversity versus just all Asahi plants, which is
28:36
a which is a cultivar, right? That cultivars are a modern
28:39
invention. If you go back far enough, Hong
28:42
Zu was also an innovation, so it's a too reductive of
28:47
framework probably for someone that has gone down the rabbit
28:52
hole that far in matcha. Yeah.
28:55
And it's interesting that you brought up all of these modern
28:58
inventions of, you know, manufacturing matcha like it's
29:05
it's very how do I put this? So the the reason why we can
29:09
today sit down and talk about matcha and talk about matcha
29:13
with you and I and with someone from Japan, someone from Europe,
29:19
someone from the Philippines or other Southeast Asian countries
29:24
or anyone you know in this world that had the experience of
29:29
drinking Mata. It was unthinkable back in the
29:34
days like for for us like that can just get how access to
29:38
matcha. It would be crazy in the context
29:42
of, you know, people hundreds of years ago.
29:44
Like matcha at a time was such a expensive and luxury product.
29:50
The very reason why the first emperor of Ming Dynasty banned
29:54
powder tea production is because it's so labor intensive.
30:00
It was very interesting story about the emperor himself.
30:02
He was actually a peasant that from a uprising to fight against
30:09
the Yuan dynasty Mongols and eventually claimed the throne of
30:13
of China at the end. But he really understand, you
30:17
know how labor intensive powder green tea production was back in
30:22
the days. That's why he eventually issued
30:25
that band to make powder green tea production illegal.
30:29
And that's the same story for Japanese matcha.
30:32
It was really labor intensive and for those people that were
30:37
involved in the production of matcha, they didn't have the
30:40
luxury to enjoy their own creation.
30:43
It was all reserved for the elites.
30:45
Thanks to modern invention like a people like you and I can
30:49
enjoy matcha from day-to-day and it's still a little bit
30:53
expensive, but not that expensive.
30:55
You can buy it from your local supermarket, but it's a higher
30:58
price tag compared to your tea like Lipton.
31:01
But still it's it's a common product nowadays.
31:05
Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree.
31:08
And that's probably not very traditional, but it still tastes
31:14
good. It's important to ask kudu
31:16
heritage or tradition or authentic practices serve.
31:21
Yeah. Like the Japanese tea industry
31:24
has an aging population, but people are retiring, There are
31:27
not very many succession plans. And if it's just easier to use a
31:31
cheesecloth to shade your garden versus Hanzu shading, it kind of
31:36
makes sense, right? If it's going to produce a
31:39
relatively similar tea and it's almost the wrong framework or
31:42
potentially the wrong focus unless it's really improving the
31:46
product in some way. That is, you know, very highly
31:49
tangible. And, and I kind of have an
31:50
interesting example here. So very kindly, Johnny Macha had
31:54
sent us some of Suji's son's competition, Great Asahi.
31:58
And I know what they do in the production of this, which is
32:01
something Mark from Olika has talked about.
32:03
Suji San and his family and the people that work there literally
32:07
go around with chopsticks picking out leaves to make
32:11
competition. Great tea, absolutely hand
32:14
sorted slowly by people who have been doing this for a very long
32:18
time and know what they're doing.
32:19
And you know, when you and I were in Uji Songjun, we went to
32:22
a little tea museum and we saw old pictures, old photographs,
32:27
very old photographs, probably over 100 year old of tea
32:30
production. And it's just, I can't take a
32:32
room of these people sorting tensha with chopsticks to, you
32:37
know, sort out stems or various colors or or whatever.
32:40
And it's a very traditional technique.
32:42
It's an authentic method of sorting things.
32:45
Now, if Suji San were to buy a computer vision AI optical
32:50
sorter, which exists, including in the tea industry, but in
32:53
other industries where you, you know, you take this tea, you put
32:57
it on the conveyor belt, you have it fall off into something
33:00
else and you create this waterfall of tea.
33:04
There's a camera behind it that's constantly monitoring it
33:07
and there's all these little air jets, this little grade of air
33:10
jets behind it. And if it notices, oh, this is a
33:12
brown leaf little jet of air will shoot out and knock it out
33:16
of the stream and it gets sorted out.
33:18
If he were to buy one of those, he would probably be able to
33:21
produce much more of that competition grade tea, which is
33:26
let's let's assume objectively higher quality.
33:28
I get to taste it. It was indeed incredible.
33:31
We're going to have some podcasts about about competition
33:33
grade tea in a bit. If you use that, that's no
33:36
longer a heritage method. Would we then say it's not
33:40
authentic? So it's at what point are you
33:42
allowed to use a better tool in terms of quality?
33:46
And why do you get, like minus points on authenticity?
33:51
It's a very unfair standard to judge people by, especially
33:56
farmers who are making a living doing these things.
34:00
Yeah. I guess you know, the one
34:02
criteria that I can think about of judging any invention is the
34:07
intention of this invention. Is it intended to replace a more
34:13
laborious method, but with, you know, similar or even better
34:17
outcome? If that's the case, then I would
34:19
say that's a good invention. But, you know, if it's, you
34:24
know, trying to produce more tea to make more money, but the with
34:28
the damage of the tea or the environment, like, you know,
34:32
certain pesticides or certain synthetic fertilizers, then I
34:37
would say that's a bad invention.
34:39
That's a great point. Quality and quantity
34:41
considerations. And what are the secondary and
34:44
tertiary outcomes? I mean, using an AI optical
34:48
sorting tool, right? Doesn't have that many negative
34:51
externalities other than saving a whole lot of Labor that can
34:55
probably be spent doing better things of higher value elsewhere
34:59
when sorting things with chopsticks manually.
35:03
Or just, or just, you know, such labor probably doesn't exist
35:08
anymore. Japan is such an ageing
35:10
population. Yeah, it's very rare.
35:13
And I mean, it's not very glorified either.
35:16
You and I were in Chow Zhou visiting a tea friend, and she
35:20
has quite the personality. And we were at this tea shop.
35:22
It's owned by a friend of hers. And there's someone very young,
35:26
he looks like a teenager who kind of runs around and helps
35:29
and very much is obviously his first job.
35:32
He's kind of learning the ropes. He, you know, refills people's
35:34
water and brings people charcoal to add to their fire.
35:38
And when he doesn't have anything to do, he has this very
35:41
large tray of tea that he has to sort by size and to pick out
35:45
stems. We were walking by him and she
35:48
was laughing at him saying, oh, it must be so boring.
35:52
Like, these are not glorified tasks.
35:54
Like, I mean, his time would probably be much better spent
35:57
studying, practicing his technique, learning about tea
36:01
history, or if you're a farmer, doing the 10,000 other things
36:05
that you need to do. So like the notion of the
36:09
elements that go into a narrative that people would call
36:15
authentic, you need to ask who does that serve?
36:19
Who does it serve that your hand sorting competition grade T with
36:24
chopsticks when there are other better tools out there?
36:28
Unless the AI optical sorter is objectively worse, then you can
36:33
have a convincing argument. But like, it's probably not.
36:37
Especially if you run through the material several times,
36:40
you'll probably catch most things.
36:43
Well, Ryan, I guess for that matter, you are not essentially
36:47
buying a a tea product, you're buying a luxury product.
36:52
Yeah, you're buying an Hermes bag that had to be made over the
36:55
course of one month by 1 artisan for, you know, a bazillion hours
37:00
and the two decades of skill. Yeah, you're buying someone's
37:03
life, essentially. Buying someone elses time, yeah.
37:07
That's why it's so expensive. In the name of authenticity,
37:11
it's an unfair standard especially it's an unfair
37:14
standard not to Suji San necessarily, and we're just
37:18
using him as an example. It's an unfair standard to
37:21
everyone else who does not have the time, bandwidth or capacity
37:25
to make the investments to compete in competitions and to
37:28
sort out things by hand. And who knows what sacrifice,
37:32
real human sacrifices, are made in doing these types of efforts.
37:36
Yeah, well, you know, like we, we are not saying that, you
37:39
know, Suji sans tea is bad or wrong.
37:43
I mean it, it's perfectly great tea, but I think the side that
37:48
we want to criticize is to coin such T as more authentic than
37:53
the others. It's perfectly, you know, OK
37:58
that it's a more expensive T It's you know, absolutely it's
38:04
you know, it is someone's life course of achieving such
38:08
perfection in sorting and making tea.
38:11
It is very good tea to begin with and it deserves a higher
38:15
price. That's totally, I think that's
38:17
totally legit. But the existence of these
38:21
luxury products doesn't invalidate some other teas
38:25
that's using some some of the more modern, you know,
38:28
production method. Those teas are they are still
38:32
really good tea, but you know, instead of, you know, hand
38:35
sorted, they probably got machine sorted or instead of
38:39
using totally Hangzhou shaded method, they probably did a
38:42
hybrid of Hangzhou and Kanan Shah.
38:45
But, you know, these are, you know, people that have been
38:47
making and growing tea also for a very long time, and they
38:51
follow the intention of trying to make good tea.
38:53
And I would say, you know, that's that's also perfectly
38:58
authentic and perfectly traditional.
39:01
And it's such a spectrum, you said it's such an interesting
39:03
thing, something being more authentic than other.
39:06
It's beyond just what is authentic.
39:08
There is this perceived notion of relative degrees of
39:12
authenticity where it is very unclear where both endpoints are
39:17
the most authentic and the least authentic.
39:21
And it's not fair for who gets to set what the standards are.
39:25
What does it mean to save, preserve, practice, whatever
39:29
methods, authentic matcha, traditional matcha, right?
39:33
Like at some point you're making certain value judgments that are
39:37
going to help some people and harm others.
39:40
Yeah, very true. Authenticity is not a gradient.
39:44
Who gets to have the power to define what authenticity is?
39:50
Yeah. So it's really a horrible
39:52
question. We understand the intention of
39:55
someone with less knowledge or context asking for an authentic
39:59
experience that makes sense. So that's like pooling, you're
40:03
pooling information as a consumer or out of the industry.
40:06
I I want this thing versus pushing an authentic product
40:11
onto a consumer and is using that as a value proposition has
40:15
a lot of complicated externalities.
40:19
Who gets to define what is authentic?
40:21
The spectrum of authenticity? The authentic to what?
40:25
Like what's the unit to the ceremony?
40:28
To the farmers, to what time period?
40:30
And it's never really defined. Yeah, yeah.
40:34
Very true, very true. I guess for us what we can start
40:37
doing is just stop using the word authentic or traditional.
40:41
There's a whole movement behind this.
40:44
It's very hard to stop using these words.
40:47
It's convenient at best. It's also very difficult to find
40:53
a replacement of these words. Like what do we use instead?
40:57
Or is there a word or some words that can be used to replace
41:01
these? Would they be the next version
41:04
of reduction framing? Very likely so, but I would.
41:08
Say that a humanist approach is the way to do this.
41:10
So there's two great, wonderful modern examples.
41:14
Perhaps some of our audience have heard of these companies
41:16
before. Omsung, which was recently
41:18
acquired, was started by two Vietnamese immigrants.
41:21
I think they're both millennials.
41:22
They're both relatively young. They're about our age, maybe a
41:25
little bit older, and they create or created elevated
41:31
version of instant noodles with various flavourings and
41:35
seasonings. And then they launched their
41:37
product with the sauce packet. So you could make sisig like the
41:40
Filipino dish, sisig at home with relatively few ingredients.
41:44
So you don't have to buy the whole pantry of stuff that you
41:47
would need to make that dish or lob, which is a Thai dish with
41:51
minced meat and toasted rice. And they had they had a mala one
41:55
for a mala dish. And what they did is they very
41:59
are purposely anti authentic, especially because in the
42:02
context of Asian food in America, it's highly reductive.
42:07
And who gets to define what authenticity is?
42:09
It's kind of a trap and an unfair double standard for a lot
42:12
of those businesses Because, you know, there's someone going in
42:17
there who's Chinese to a Chinese restaurant claiming to be
42:20
authentic might say, this is not how my mom made this, right?
42:23
But like, you know, it's a variation within these things.
42:27
It's a really unfair standard. And they stopped using the word
42:29
authenticity. And they wrote a really good
42:31
article I'll link in the show notes that's worth reading.
42:35
But they take a very human centric approach.
42:37
Every one of their products was designed by a chef, right?
42:41
So the Mala one came from someone who runs this wonderful
42:45
restaurant in New York called Mala Project.
42:48
She was the one who crafted the product.
42:50
Her name's Amelia. So it was, you know, Amelia's
42:53
mala mix, right? And they also the founders of
42:56
Fish Cheeks, which is also a really great Thai restaurant in
43:00
New York, made the one for Lab, which is the mincemeat dish with
43:06
toasted rice. And it was a very human centric
43:09
approach. And the same thing could be
43:10
easily done in tea where, you know, it's so and so's blank.
43:15
And I think like a lot of the specialty macho companies are
43:19
are like that. This is blank, blank something.
43:22
It's very human centered. The verse is just saying this is
43:26
authentic matcha. It's from Japan type of
43:28
positioning. Yeah, yeah.
43:30
A good example is Fly by Jing, which is a chili crisp.
43:34
If anyone knows, like Lao Gen. Ma, like the chili oil chili
43:37
crunch. Fly by Jing is a very successful
43:40
clean label elevated Chinese CPG product made by a Chinese woman
43:45
who grew up in Europe and then moved back to the States and
43:48
launched this thing and was just fed up with like the way Asian
43:53
food and Asian CPG products, Consumer Packaged Goods like
43:57
thing you'd buy at the grocery store were framed.
44:00
And she went through this whole rebranding recently, ish like
44:05
four or five years ago. And the tagline is personal, not
44:11
traditional, meaning please do not hold me up to whatever
44:15
standard you have in your mind about what is traditional.
44:19
This is a product of me and where I come from and the
44:23
flavors that I know and the innovation that I wanted to see
44:28
in. This product, she probably just
44:31
got so tired of the endless comparison with the Lao Gama and
44:36
her product. What's innovative and it is a
44:39
living tradition and she by like her origins, her parents is from
44:45
Sichuan, right? Like it it like she has just the
44:49
same right to innovate on this living tradition as anyone else.
44:54
And you know, when innovation goes further than people than
44:57
traditionalists are comfortable then?
45:01
I think by the end of the day, it's just a good product and
45:04
tastes good. And it's true to her own
45:08
preference of creating such product.
45:10
And I think that's, that's it. That's all you need.
45:14
It's it's a genuine product out of the creator's love of such
45:21
thing. I think that's that's the most
45:25
authentic feeling and essence authenticity itself.
45:29
It is the most authentic thing if it's true to herself.
45:33
So I guess narrowing the aperture of the subjective
45:37
authenticity is a much better framework, which means you
45:40
almost don't even need to use the word.
45:44
So it's it's interesting. There's, there's, there's all
45:48
these hardball people who are just so like, frustrating, you
45:53
know, in this very traditional industry that is matcha.
45:57
And this is both morbid and very true.
46:00
There's a quote attributed to Max Planck of the scientist
46:03
saying that science progresses one funeral at a time.
46:09
It's I guess, the baseline slowest rate of change.
46:12
And we certainly hope that it can progress faster than this.
46:16
And we hope that new generations of T companies, T vendors, T
46:20
practitioners can open up their mind a little bit about how we
46:24
define what is authentic and the externalities that that has that
46:29
that reductive framework has. Yeah, totally.
46:32
I mean, it's, it's very easy for someone to get very defensive
46:37
of, you know, and take a stand of something and calling in, you
46:41
know, the most authentic. Frequently it's their first
46:44
exposure to such thing and that's that that's really hard,
46:49
right? Like because essentially you are
46:50
taking a snapshot. It's probably very authentic at
46:54
the time and it's probably still very authentic to nowadays, but
46:57
it's one version of a authentic thing at a time.
47:01
It's a snapshot. It's a image of of that thing at
47:05
the time. You know, like you see a lot of
47:07
people outside of Japan getting very defensive of certain things
47:11
in matcha that has to be that way.
47:13
But when you actually go to Japan, people are very like
47:18
innovative. They are they're very easygoing
47:21
on all kinds of change changes that are happening nowadays.
47:25
You know, like you're seeing people from Holy Shichimeng and
47:28
making new blends for matcha latte.
47:31
Like they are perfectly fine with people mixing matcha with
47:34
milk and they are, you know, happy that, you know, it tastes
47:37
good and they're happy that, you know, their products being
47:40
enjoyed in different version outside of Japan.
47:43
People, you know, in Japan not, you know, making matcha on the
47:47
ground. Frequently we'll get very
47:49
defensive of how matcha needs to be, quote UN quote, properly
47:53
used or properly prepared. And that, you know, proppered
47:57
procedure is really a snapshot of Matcha's very rich, evolving
48:03
and very much a life culture. I guess people get uncomfortable
48:07
when there's this level of ambiguity in vagueness with such
48:11
a term. Yeah, yeah, ambiguity.
48:14
Deeply, a deep discomfort. Yeah, feeling insecured, but
48:19
that's the reality. That's the reality.
48:21
Matcha is not in someone's control.
48:25
It's a living thing that can be enjoyed by everyone.
48:29
And it's no longer depending on the context of channel you.
48:33
It's very much free now. Django Unchained.
48:39
Yeah, I mean, it is actually really radical how recent all of
48:43
these histories were, especially the I'm currently in a rabbit
48:48
hole down looking at Shanayu history both in the modern era
48:52
and before. And you know, it's interesting.
48:54
There are no women practitioners that were in any level of power
48:57
in like the auto period. In the Meiji period, I had
49:00
started to open up a lot more. And then like, they began,
49:04
Japanese government basically decided that this should be like
49:07
finishing school for young girls.
49:09
It was taught as part of the curriculum for a lot of people
49:12
about 100 years ago, all of which were young girls.
49:15
And then which is why even today, the vast majority of
49:18
China Yu practitioners are women in Japan.
49:21
You know, these the system and who it serves is like constantly
49:26
changing of who makes up these people.
49:28
And now we have the Internet, we have people on every corner of
49:32
the world, world learning and enjoying matcha, some in a
49:36
traditional context, some in an Internet context of which, you
49:40
know, it should be really thought of as a new and
49:42
different type of community. And this was bound to happen,
49:46
that you have people on the edges that are promoting
49:48
innovation. You have people looking
49:50
backwards trying to preserve and promote tradition.
49:53
And it's, you know, hit these various clashing moments where,
49:57
you know, commercial interests mixed with people who don't have
50:02
as much context and which is us in certain areas, right?
50:05
You know, we don't know all aspects of TEA by any stretch of
50:10
the imagination. And this conservative approach
50:14
and the safe approach of wanting to have the real thing is very
50:19
understandable until you start really double clicking and
50:23
looking at the externalities of this question.
50:26
I think it ultimately comes down to the vibe that people can be
50:30
sometimes very uncomfortable with ambiguity and people want
50:32
certainty. They want, yeah, this is an
50:35
authentic product. Boom, box checked.
50:37
I'm done thinking about this. Yeah, very true.
50:40
I guess the thread for this episode is that you know it's
50:43
almost the wrong question. What is authentic matcha?
50:46
And the deeper you go down this rabbit hole, the more you
50:50
realize that it is as ludicrous as a question as what is
50:54
authentic Chinese food. It's just the question why.
50:57
You can work backwards in the intention of why someone's
51:01
asking it and what various answers could mean with various
51:05
levels of what we call resolution or certainty, Right?
51:09
Because the subject of authenticity can change even
51:11
when it comes to matcha. It's just the wrong framework I
51:14
think. And yeah, it's essentially a
51:18
wrong word to use because, you know, for when we're talking
51:22
about something that's a living culture that's constantly
51:25
changing, you know, you, there's no, there isn't a ground truth
51:30
that people can keep just referencing back because the,
51:33
the ground truth is it's, it's constantly changing.
51:36
Yeah, constantly changing. It's interesting because you're
51:39
right when you tend to tea ceremony, because Iyamoto's can
51:43
make changes, you know, once a generation in their lifetime,
51:47
right? You're literally getting the
51:48
most up to date version. You're getting Windows.
51:52
I don't know what the current version of Windows is versus
51:54
Windows 95. Something like that.
51:58
Yeah, it's I mean even even you know, like even channel U is not
52:03
anti change. Like they, they, they, they
52:06
change all the time too. Like every generation of yeah,
52:09
Moto is allowed to make one change, but they are changing.
52:12
And, you know, like it's trying to fixate a practice onto
52:18
something that's not going to change a unchangeable ideal.
52:23
It's just really crazy to think about.
52:26
There's a really interesting, I don't know what to call it,
52:29
maybe a meme or infographic that was floating through the coffee
52:32
world recently, the specialty coffee world.
52:35
And it was a map divided between the northern hemisphere and the
52:38
Southern hemisphere. And the Southern hemisphere is
52:40
where the vast majority of coffee is grown.
52:42
The Northern hemisphere is where the vast majority of coffee is
52:46
consumed, and the top half, the Northern Hemisphere, it said.
52:51
The place where it is perfectly OK for technology to be used in
52:56
the name of coffee quality. And below it in the Southern
53:00
hemisphere, the place where technology is not welcome at
53:04
all. And in fact, the slower and
53:06
longer it takes, the better. And this ridiculous double
53:11
standard, it's hard to sometimes escape the trap of trying to
53:16
differentiate a highly industrial product from a non
53:20
industrial product from an industrial product by putting on
53:23
this lens of slow and not efficient and heritage and
53:27
authentic with having you know it.
53:29
It's an unfair standard for the people who are actually doing it
53:33
and we should be encouraging the use of better tools and new
53:37
technology in the name of matcha quality.
53:41
Yeah, yeah. I think the intention is what
53:44
truly matter. The intention is what matters.
53:47
Yeah. 100%. Making better matcha, drinking
53:50
better matcha, right? I think that's the future and
53:53
that's. What we want, it's a perfect
53:57
note to end on. So this is still a wide open
54:00
topic for the way that we see it.
54:01
We would love to source other perspectives on this.
54:04
And so if you have a strong perspective on this, please do
54:07
reach out and we'd love to hear from you.
54:08
We'd love to learn from you. Yeah.
54:11
So if you've enjoyed this podcast, please consider sharing
54:14
friend and give us five stars on whatever platform you're
54:17
listening to it on and we'll see you in the next one.
54:20
Yeah, or if you have any thoughts, feel free to reach out
54:23
to us. We don't have a authentic
54:25
narrative, so all ideas are constantly changing too.
54:28
Absolutely all. Right, see you in the next
54:31
episode. See you.