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Matcha + Milk Debate · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast.
0:02
My name is Ryan, this is Mike Ho Zhongjun who also goes by Sam
0:06
and we're the Co founders of Sanko Matcha Products.
0:09
We launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey,
0:12
Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
0:15
And today we're going to talk about I don't know, it should be
0:20
about adding milk into Matcha, but it's really not about adding
0:24
milk into matcha. It's about a group of people
0:28
seeing that as such a taboo and using it as an excuse to bully
0:33
other people doing so, and a group of people really enjoying
0:38
it that are trying to use everything that they can buy and
0:42
do an Internet upgrade upon adding milk into their drinks.
0:47
Wow, that was quite the introduction.
0:50
So we titled that fine summary that Zhongjing just gave.
0:55
Does adding milk into matcha ruin it?
0:58
And I, in a lot of ways. So there's a perfect
1:01
encapsulation of a lot of this debate that's going on within
1:05
the matcha Internet sphere, especially in light of the
1:08
matcha shortage, which has really triggered a lot of
1:10
people's opinions when people don't have access to the matcha
1:13
that they want. Some of the practitioners that
1:15
have been around a long time are seemingly.
1:18
Horrified. Yeah, Yeah.
1:20
But, but I I think the ultimate reason is that they are,
1:23
they're, they're angry, not just horrified because of the usage,
1:28
the the increased demand of matcha is heading towards a
1:33
direction that they do not appreciate.
1:36
Yeah, I think that's the the the main issue.
1:38
Yeah, and it's threatening. And so we sourced a bunch of
1:41
opinions and we have some opinions of our own about the
1:45
debate of adding milk or your non Dairy Milk of choice to
1:49
matcha. There's the spectrum.
1:52
So on one end of the spectrum, let consumers do what they want.
1:56
On the other end of the spectrum, consumers are
1:58
destroying what makes a heritage and traditional product
2:03
incredibly unique by introducing new flavors and basically
2:06
treating it as an ingredient in a product versus just enjoying
2:11
it on its own. And so this is the spectrum, and
2:13
we sourced opinions of four different people.
2:16
We reached out to Mark from Oheka, Brian from Matsumacha,
2:19
Monique from Matcha Moments, and Cole from My Matcha Addiction to
2:23
get a really nice mix of opinions, people in different
2:27
cultures in different parts of the matcha business and focusing
2:31
on very different things and to have explore different angles.
2:35
But before diving into to their opinions, I think it's worth
2:39
pointing out that we have kind of moved from a world of an
2:42
abundancy mindset to a scarcity mindset.
2:45
The matcha shortage is real. It started happening last year,
2:49
in 2024. It's probably going to continue
2:51
to happen. So this is a problem.
2:53
This online discourse is important, and having a good
2:56
framework to put around this topic is important, in my
3:01
opinion, to explore these different perspectives and to
3:04
take what can be like, actually, in my opinion, classified as
3:07
kind of a dumb argument. Like no one has any control over
3:13
what people do with this product.
3:15
We don't live in like this perfect utopian world.
3:19
Everyone has their own agency and can make their own
3:22
decisions. All this judgement being tossed
3:24
around, this is kind of dumb, and this whole conversation is
3:28
just kind of dumb. But it's also kind of
3:30
interesting that it triggers so much in everyone, even the
3:34
people that think that this is kind of a dumb argument because
3:37
they're seeds of truth across this whole spectrum, right?
3:41
So I'll give a really interesting example from the
3:44
world of high end Chinese tea. So, you know, over the past two
3:49
or three decades, China has become incredibly wealthy with
3:53
the rise of new industries. And you have this new class of
3:58
newly rich people all over mainland China and in Hong Kong.
4:03
And people became very interested in traditional
4:06
Chinese crafts, one of which being tea.
4:09
And there's a type of fermented tea in Chinese tea culture
4:13
called poor. It gets better with age.
4:15
And some of the best poor that has ever been made considered by
4:19
most people is in the Communist era shortly following World War
4:23
2. So basically during World War 2,
4:25
there is very little tea cultivation.
4:27
All the tea fields were basically allowed to go wild and
4:31
natural, and you had almost no cultivation or intervention for
4:35
an extremely long period of time.
4:37
And during the Communist collectivized Agriculture
4:40
movement, there was a department called CNNP, which created three
4:44
different products, Hong Yin, Lu Yin and Hong Yin, Red Mark,
4:47
yellow Mark and Green mark. And these are considered some of
4:50
the best tea ever made, and they will never be made again.
4:53
Never again will the set of conditions ever be the same.
4:58
It is absolutely a scarce resource and these teas I don't
5:03
know starting about 10 years ago to present day reach
5:06
unfathomable prices. You can buy like a 357g cake of
5:14
tea. It's compressed tea or 300,000
5:19
U.S. dollars. That is insane, the prices, that
5:22
and some, I think some auction records have even been smashed.
5:26
Mixing that tea with milk to make a bubble tea, it was
5:30
unthinkable. So like, there's some real merit
5:34
to removing the supply of such a scarce resource and how that is
5:40
depriving other people of a incredibly important cultural
5:44
experience. Now, I think in the world of
5:46
matcha, it's way less extreme. I was listening to an interview
5:50
from John Mackey, who's the founder of Whole Foods.
5:53
Someone was asking him what he thought about food waste because
5:56
after he sold it to Amazon, but he's working on different
5:59
projects. People were asking on like what
6:01
what he's working on next, how much do you care about food
6:04
waste? And he gave such a hot take that
6:06
it like put me back in my chair. He says.
6:09
I don't think food waste is our number one problem.
6:12
The one thing that people don't realize about food is that food
6:15
is a renewable resource and we need to be focusing our efforts
6:20
on non renewable resources. Not that food waste is not
6:23
unimportant. It is absolutely important, but
6:26
food is a renewable resource. Matcha is a renewable resource.
6:30
Matcha is a perishable renewable resource.
6:34
No one's aging matcha for 50 years like they are with this
6:38
fermented Chinese poor. It won't be any good.
6:41
So matcha has to be consumed within the optimal window.
6:46
Otherwise, it is food waste because it's way past its prime.
6:51
So in a lot of ways, no matter how people are consuming and
6:55
enjoying matcha, it's good that their demand, it has outpaced
7:00
supply because it means you get less waste because drinking a
7:05
stale product, time and oxidation have done its work.
7:10
And that matcha is in a lot of ways dead.
7:13
So I think that's really important to think about as we
7:16
talk about this, that there's an impermanence to this debate.
7:21
The quote UN quote matcha gurlies on TikTok consuming
7:26
expensive precious macho with Oatley.
7:30
Who cares in what it we're recording this in February, in
7:35
two months is going to be a new harvest.
7:37
Boom. New matcha made that is now
7:39
literally in the past. Yeah, yeah, totally agree.
7:44
So like, you mostly think that this is a dumb argument and in a
7:48
lot of ways you're totally right because we click the reset
7:52
button all the time. Yep, it's a it's a really
7:57
temporal. I mean, like the only thing that
8:00
it really does is to increase the price of some of the better
8:05
matcha. And these people are angry
8:06
because they're now paying a premium.
8:08
And I think that's that's really, you know, the problem
8:13
here. And other than that, you can
8:15
still buy the matcha next year, just getting the line earlier
8:19
and maybe this time you buy more to have your own stockpile.
8:26
But other than that, it doesn't share the same status as poor
8:32
that you just talked about. Yeah, or truly scarce resources
8:37
from non renewable sources, things that are really what's
8:41
here is here and that's all that's.
8:43
Left. But I think this is really a
8:46
mentality that you have seen not just in matcha, but also in a
8:50
lot of other fields too. Like in coffee, people naturally
8:54
would regard latte as a inferior product.
8:58
Like you don't use your best coffee bean to make latte.
9:01
And in the world of wine, you know, adding Brandy into your
9:05
wine to make it a fortified wine is also considered to be an
9:08
inferior product historically. And, you know, like same theory
9:14
or mechanism applies to matcha here.
9:16
Like you are basically adding something that's not matcha into
9:22
matcha drink and thus turning it into something that you know,
9:26
people will find it not as pure I guess.
9:29
And that way is thus in theory. I don't necessarily agree with
9:34
this whole mechanism, but you know, you don't see this chain
9:39
of thought unique to matcha, but you see that elsewhere a lot.
9:43
Yeah, you absolutely do. And it's kind of this revolving
9:48
door of toxicity of people judging other people.
9:53
Like for new matcha consumers, it's actually kind of confusing.
9:55
It's like you walk into a bar and there's a giant fight going
9:58
on and like you don't know which side to stand on or what caused
10:03
the fight in the first place. Or you walk into a bar and you
10:06
order a matcha latte and you say oh wow this is delicious.
10:10
But all of a sudden, like so like all the people around you
10:13
start pointing their fingers to you and say you are wasting
10:16
matcha. I go, what did I just do?
10:19
I thought I just found a new delicious drink, but now I'm the
10:22
bad guy. Yeah, I'm ruining this defiling
10:25
Japanese culture. Really a form of, you know,
10:28
gaslighting amongst the consumer community.
10:33
It's, it's really bad. You know, it's really not just
10:36
about adding milk. It's really not about it's about
10:40
a group of more experienced consumers angry and trying to
10:44
bully some of the newcomers. Yeah.
10:47
And what we're really moving from are a bunch of early
10:49
adopters into the mainstream. And these two groups of people
10:54
care about very different things and they have very different,
10:58
they drink much of for different reasons, they spend money on it
11:01
for different reasons. Their practice is based on, for
11:04
completely different value system in which they make these
11:07
judgments and distinctions of quality and the way that they're
11:12
preparing it, and both of which are, you know, totally valid.
11:16
And actually, I, I, I think one of the biggest problems from the
11:19
entry consumer level of especially in the matcha culture
11:22
outside of Japan is the stupid term ceremonial grade that we've
11:27
recorded other podcasts on. And if you haven't listened to
11:30
those or if you don't have the full context, ceremonial grade
11:33
is a made-up grade. It is not a grade.
11:36
It is completely made-up classification anyone can call
11:39
anything ceremonial grade draws their own line in the sand of
11:43
what they consider ceremonial grade.
11:44
For some people it's first harvest, for other people it has
11:48
to be grown ground on an ishiyusu stone, for other people
11:51
like it's completely different things and can have different
11:55
levels of meaning. And a lot of people hate this
11:57
term so they started making up their own grades.
12:00
So now you have a sea of like completely arbitrary grades
12:05
floating around for most new consumers entering the matcha
12:08
space. You have this wonderful world
12:10
ceremonial grade and everyone on the Internet is telling you you
12:14
need to be buying high quality matcha and how do you find it?
12:17
You need to look for ceremonial grade.
12:19
That's what you do. And there's 10,000 articles
12:21
online that will tell you how to distinguish ceremonial grade
12:25
from non ceremonial grade. And they do like a dumb like
12:29
paper test and say oh this one's greener.
12:31
Which has all its own problems because matcha comes in
12:34
different cultivars can naturally be more or less green.
12:38
Color is actually a really bad metric unless you're controlling
12:42
for cultivar and everything else.
12:44
But the ceremonial grade has two dark sides.
12:47
The first dark side is that there's some implicit indication
12:52
that tea ceremony practitioners endorse it.
12:56
Somehow it has the weight of Japanese tea ceremony and the
12:59
institutions that serve it, like Urasenke and Amothasenke and all
13:02
the other schools somehow endorse this product, which is
13:07
absolutely not true. The other implicit indicator is
13:10
that it's high enough quality to be consumed on its own only with
13:14
water, because in tea ceremony they don't use milk.
13:17
There is no latte in Chana Yu, so it's saying that this is high
13:23
enough quality that you can consume it only with water.
13:26
Ironic thing is you have all of these vendors pushing ceremonial
13:31
grade on to consumers and having it be.
13:34
This is what you need for your latte.
13:36
Yeah, enjoy it however you want. Mix it with water, mix it with
13:40
milk. But if you really want the best
13:42
matcha latte experience, you need to be going after
13:45
ceremonial grade product. It's ironic actually, the number
13:49
of people pushing a ceremonial grade product to be consumed
13:54
with milk when the implicit indication of ceremonial grade
13:59
is that it's good enough to be consumed only with water.
14:02
And so the lack of regulation and these implicit indicators,
14:06
it's actually a great hypocrisy there.
14:08
There is a misalignment here in the use of this term.
14:12
That's doubly negative. Yeah.
14:13
And also probably intentional because the vendors wants to
14:17
sell. So this you know, very, you
14:20
know, you would say interestingly or sadly is that
14:23
you know, the majority of the increase of new matcha demands
14:27
comes from latte drinkers and you want to target that those
14:31
consumers the way you want to target that you know anyone
14:34
else. And you know, the way to do that
14:37
is to, you know, tell them that this is the best matcha.
14:40
And of course, you can use it for your matcha market.
14:44
I mean really, if you take a macro lens and look at growth of
14:47
new tea ceremony practitioners or even non tea ceremony
14:51
practitioners that know what an usucha or koicha is and one to
14:55
consume things only with water, you plot that growth chart next
15:00
to new latte drinkers. You understand where the
15:03
business opportunity lies. Yeah, I mean, the sad truth is
15:06
those people will probably don't like Usucha al Koicha.
15:10
Like if you force them to drink it, they probably wouldn't like
15:13
it. Or maybe not at first.
15:15
Do you need to build that consumer ladder to give them the
15:17
right series of exposures to appreciate something?
15:21
That's right. That's right.
15:22
Like lucicha and koicha honestly don't inherently taste good.
15:26
I would be skeptical that a lot of people would try it for the
15:30
first time and like default like it.
15:32
Still to the this days, Ryan, like I don't enjoy most of the
15:36
Lucicha like the the the level of Lucicha being delicious to me
15:42
requires a very, very high quality standard and that's just
15:47
not the case for most of the matcha nowadays.
15:50
That's an interesting point. You have a self reinforcing loop
15:53
with this mislabeled low quality ceremonial grade matcha being
15:59
pushed onto consumers is actually better with milk.
16:03
It's actually better with milk. It really is 1 + 1 = 3.
16:08
It's a self validating loop. It is dead obvious to anyone who
16:13
has any taste buds at all that it does taste better.
16:17
They're actually doing some flavor improvement.
16:20
And like if you don't have the context and if you've never had
16:24
what most other like more experienced consumers would
16:27
consider a higher quality product, a very umami rich
16:31
product or expressive in some interesting ways.
16:34
But you're they are right, it is better with milk.
16:39
Why don't we cycle to some of the interviews that we've been
16:42
trying? I think a really perfect segue
16:45
to coming off of this thread is with coming from coal and this
16:50
idea of deer addiction and natural upgrade cycle.
16:54
And on a very interesting point of view regarding on
16:58
advertisement like how do you market your matcha ass?
17:03
I think that's one very interesting point that Co made
17:06
do. You want to give us the excerpt?
17:08
Yeah, sure. So Paul gave a very long and
17:12
thoughtful answer to the question and I'm just going to
17:15
lift some interesting points from from his words.
17:18
So here is a interesting line. So brands are advertisers have
17:21
done an amazing job popularizing matcha in the US and other
17:26
countries throughout matcha latte.
17:28
It's a much more approachable way to drink matcha, essentially
17:32
replacing coffee in a latte format.
17:35
So it's familiar, it's comforting, and it's easy to
17:39
adapt to. But this is where things get
17:42
muddy. Now that people are hooked on
17:44
matcha lattes, they're trying to figure out what kind of matcha
17:49
to use. Naturally, when anyone buys
17:51
something, you know, something good, something that they want,
17:54
and they want to get the best, or at least the best they can
17:58
afford in that category. The tricky part with matcha is
18:02
that for lattes, you don't actually want the highest
18:06
quality matcha. Instead you want one that's a
18:09
stringent or a little bit bitter because those flavors stand up
18:13
to milk and sweetener better. So I don't think this is unique
18:18
to Matcha. It happens in all kinds of
18:20
aspects or space. Take gaming for example.
18:23
If you are shopping for a graphic card and no one wants
18:27
the lowest or the lower end options, even though it's
18:30
cheaper, Even if it's perfectly fine for the games you play.
18:35
Everyone wants the latest, greatest top of the line product
18:38
even if it's not necessary for what they need.
18:42
And with Matcha this gets more complicated because people often
18:46
see terms like stringent or bitter and they got shield away.
18:51
They assume those qualities are bad, and so they.
18:55
Gravitated. Towards more premium, higher
18:57
quality matcha. And that's not really what
19:00
they're designed for. So very interesting point that
19:05
Kohu made right here is that it's a, it's also a marketing
19:09
problem, yeah. Like, you know, for, for, for
19:12
these much, you know, instead of, I guess you know, instead of
19:16
calling them bitter or a stranger, maybe calling them as
19:19
full body or, you know, pungent or potent.
19:23
That might actually change a lot of people's point of view.
19:25
Yeah, and actually this is something I've been thinking a
19:28
lot about recently because you know, we're trying to source
19:30
tensha for a mill that we're prototyping now that can mill
19:34
matcha fresh to a very similar quality standard is a niche she
19:38
used to and for us it's a it. I'm torn because what personally
19:43
I'm interested in is what like I classify specialty matcha,
19:47
single origin single cultivar and teas that express some
19:52
unique process or some unique in flavor variations depending on
19:57
terroir and all sorts of other things.
19:59
Like cultivar. On the other hand, right?
20:02
The vast majority of consumptions in the form of a
20:04
latte. And like our business models to
20:07
go B to B with these metals and like you have to create matcha
20:10
for everyone and at everyone at all points in their consumer
20:13
journey. So how do we like, no one wants
20:16
a culinary grade product for a matcha latte.
20:19
That term has been so abused and stigmatized.
20:25
And you don't want that level of qualities I'm doing you need a
20:30
ceremonial grade. That's how you get this nice
20:32
bright green color, blah, blah, blah.
20:34
So it is kind of a marketing problem and calling the
20:39
implications behind culinary grade are just bad things that
20:43
people don't like. People don't want to hear bitter
20:46
and astringent, even if it's better.
20:48
And even if you look at things like espresso, roast and coffee
20:52
or coffee that's designed to be mixed with milk, none of those
20:55
roasters are writing bitter and astringent on the bag, even if
20:59
it's descriptive, right and accurate, right?
21:02
They're writing other flavor notes to trying people to
21:05
appreciate something. And it's something that the best
21:08
food and beverage companies do in other industries is that
21:11
there's a lot of focus on priming someone to notice
21:15
something that they'll like more.
21:17
If anyone's ever had the experience of tasting something
21:20
with a group and someone says, I taste this nice hazelnut note in
21:25
this thing and you're like, wow, I totally get that, but I didn't
21:28
get it. That is something that we would
21:31
call below the level of perception.
21:34
You didn't notice it, but it's above the level of preference
21:38
and the more things that you can call out that are below the
21:41
level of perception but above the level of preference, That's
21:45
what makes food subconsciously good, and moving that from the
21:50
subconscious to the active mind can totally prime someone to
21:54
like it more. Using terms like bitter and
21:56
astringent, while accurate, might already be someone's
22:00
expectations. Buying a culinary grade product
22:02
or buying an espresso roast that would go into something more
22:06
like milk. People expect coffee to be at
22:09
least some level of bitterness and sometimes astringency and
22:13
same thing with most matcha products, but it's not helping
22:16
people appreciate it more and finding those notes.
22:20
Now what's important is that if you get those notes wrong, it's
22:24
disingenuous. Now if someone does not get that
22:27
note or a large percentage of that note, you're kind of mis
22:30
sold to them. Yeah.
22:32
But I I think also there's a problem right here is that they
22:35
there is a very well established linkage between bitter and lower
22:41
quality, right? Like bitterness is true, it's a
22:45
reality. Like no matter how you call it
22:47
or how you frame it, it's it's bitter in consumers mouth, but
22:50
it doesn't necessarily mean it's lower quality.
22:53
Like, you know, for all of the higher quality matcha out there,
22:58
being called higher quality is really a legacy preference from
23:01
the Japanese market. All of these, you know, hyper
23:04
engineered, hyper fertilized, hyper pesticides, you know, high
23:09
quality matcha tastes super umami, super sweet.
23:13
But you know, there are a lot of those matcha nowadays being
23:17
farmed with more natural, you know, nest pesticides use the
23:21
more organic method. They are naturally more bitter,
23:25
but they are also very high quality.
23:27
Very complex. And very complex.
23:30
So you know, like those matcha, you know, being, you know, like
23:34
directly link with bitter thust lower quality.
23:38
I think it's really a missing opportunity right here.
23:40
Yeah, and it means different things to people in their
23:44
consumer journey. So for example, we tried an
23:47
incredibly high quality matcha blender in Tokyo called Tenju
23:51
and it was bitter. And honestly without that bitter
23:54
backbone, I don't think I would have enjoyed it.
23:56
It's like a Nabiolo or a Barolo wine.
23:59
Like there's there's certain profiles that need the
24:03
stabilizing mechanism. Yeah, it needs the structure to
24:06
bone to support the flavor profile the.
24:09
Problem is, is when you're only getting bones, which is like
24:12
some of the low quality quote UN quote ceremonial grade product
24:17
that really does taste better with milk because the milk is
24:21
adding the structure onto the bones, just in a very different
24:25
way. But you know, Kohl's answer is
24:27
really illuminating that it's really a marketing problem and
24:30
every the problem with this is everyone is doing their job.
24:33
When you read between the lines of what Kohl's writing, the
24:37
matcha companies are doing their job selling product, making
24:40
money, promoting a traditional Japanese product.
24:44
The consumers are doing their job, listening, learning to that
24:47
education and trying to value and spend more money on the
24:53
higher quality thing for the drink that they're preparing.
24:57
It actually makes perfect sense. It's a wonderful quote from
25:00
Charlie Munger, the famous investor, and he said, show me
25:04
the incentives and I'll show you the results.
25:06
Very wonderful phrase, but that's exactly what's going on
25:10
here. Everyone's doing their job.
25:13
They were following the natural path of incentives, so it's
25:17
interesting. Yeah, this is one very
25:19
interesting angle. Yeah, another angle that I found
25:23
very eye opening and something that I don't think a lot of
25:26
people spend enough time thinking about, especially in
25:29
the United States, is just the sheer cost of matcha.
25:32
So Monique for matcha Moments is based in the Philippines and she
25:36
wrote here in the Philippines, matcha is very expensive.
25:38
The 20 gram can often cost as much as a day's minimum wage.
25:43
So not that many people can afford it.
25:45
So when I first started drinking it, I treated it very carefully.
25:49
So it's interesting, we talk about scarcity and abundance in
25:52
terms of like net availability. But of course, net availability
25:56
totally depends on what you can and cannot afford.
25:59
And if you're talking about the average consumer in New York or
26:02
California, right, it's a very different set of circumstances,
26:06
the type of people that can afford to drink matcha than when
26:10
you go to a place like the Philippines or like Thailand,
26:13
like average wages are very different.
26:16
This is something that Jeb from MTCH also talked about on the
26:19
podcast that when you go into MTCH, when we're in Thailand and
26:23
we go to MTCH, before we go there, we typically eat lunch
26:28
because you can't drink a lot of much on an empty stomach.
26:31
We spent half the amount of our lunch that we do when we walk
26:37
into MTCH and like we're eating at like nicer like random
26:42
restaurants in the center of like like Sikkun Veet in Bangkok
26:47
in prime city location, right? Even for like a normal nice
26:52
delicious meal cost half of what a matcha does when you go into a
26:58
store. Yeah, this is this is also a
27:01
social, social economic issue. Yes, it's almost.
27:07
You can draw an analogy between this and, you know, the spice
27:10
trade back in the days. Some areas in the world people
27:14
are just naturally as more capacity to buy more matcha and
27:20
there's nothing you can do about it really in that case, which is
27:23
very sad. Yeah, wow.
27:25
It's very sad. It was a very interesting
27:27
perspective and how like respecting other consumers and
27:31
their ability to whether or not they can afford things.
27:34
It's kind of like a culture of affluence.
27:38
It's like, like throwing this in like other people's spaces where
27:42
I'm taking the $60.00 can that in any other context has a lot
27:47
of interesting, subtle and complex flavors and probably
27:51
covering up over those unknowingly.
27:54
You know, it's like a type of consumption vanity.
27:57
But, you know, it really, it's a really hard problem because, you
28:00
know, naturally people from wealthier countries, they want
28:03
to buy more matcha, you know, as a consumer.
28:06
And naturally, for people in Japan who are producing matcha,
28:10
they want to sell more matcha for a higher price.
28:13
So the only misaligned interest right here are people who cannot
28:18
afford more expensive matcha. I'm talking about the
28:21
authenticity debate that we recorded recently.
28:24
It's a real shame. Like innovations such as a ball
28:27
mill can take actually produce really high quality product.
28:31
And those elitists on the coast of the US and in other rich
28:35
countries calling that not Macha and not authentic when it's
28:39
like, let's say you're a lower to middle class person in the
28:42
Philippines or in Thailand. That's like literally all you
28:46
have economic access to. To call that not authentic is
28:50
just like horrible like it really is.
28:55
Yeah, yeah. But it it's produced by two very
28:58
different farmers doing very different things at very
29:01
different scales. And actually, we've met these
29:03
people. They're both very interested in
29:06
quality on one end. They're thinking about it much
29:08
more industrially, mass agriculture quality perspective.
29:12
But the number of times that they use the word quality is
29:15
insane. And they can invest in much more
29:17
expensive techniques like analytical lab testing, testing
29:21
the amino acid content on HPLC in a lab.
29:25
I mean, no small farmer is doing that or using an AI optical
29:29
sorter to sort out different material.
29:31
It's just using different set of technology, but they have the
29:34
scale to do it and it's driving quality up and it's driving
29:38
costs down South. To make this distinction is very
29:41
unfair if you look across the socioeconomic spectrum of
29:44
consumers. Really, back to my earlier
29:46
point, you know, it's really not just about adding milk or using
29:50
better matcha. It's it's consumer gaslighting.
29:53
It's one group of more experienced, wealthier consumer
29:57
bullying a different group. Yeah.
29:59
And in some ways it's a form of creating a form of social
30:04
distinction and economic distinction.
30:06
It's really elitism. It's.
30:08
Self labeling. So Monique is also an Ersenge
30:11
student and went into matcha and her matcha journey with that
30:14
lens. And she made a really
30:16
interesting point is that without a tea ceremony
30:19
background, lucicha can be considered a very foreign
30:22
concept. And she wrote, I was influenced
30:24
by Chana Yu and got used to drinking usacha.
30:27
That's how I've always preferred it.
30:28
Although I know many matcha consumers don't like that way of
30:32
consuming matcha because it's quote UN quote bitter.
30:35
And that, I mean, that's super interesting too.
30:38
Like sometimes people who are deep down the rabbit hole of
30:40
matcha kind of forget that usacha and koicha is kind of an
30:44
obscure thing and that the first time most people try it, they
30:48
probably are not going to enjoy it the same way that most people
30:52
don't enjoy like tea. Look at the number of people
30:56
that take two sugars and milk and tea across all contacts.
31:00
That's interesting. Actually, this is a really
31:02
interesting analogy to bubble tea.
31:04
So like Hong Kong style and Taiwanese style tea was looking.
31:09
Those were Asian consumers and Asian businesses looking to the
31:14
West in Western tea culture in Britain and England of this idea
31:19
of milk tea. And that pendulum swung back to
31:23
Hong Kong and Taiwan mostly, which at least that's where
31:26
these are like idea of like this bubble milk tea originated, kind
31:31
of did their own versions of it, hyper localized it.
31:35
And then that became super popular back in the States where
31:39
you have all of these like Gong Chas and Cocoa whatever, and
31:44
like newer brands like Tiger Sugar.
31:46
It's kind of a pendulum that swings back and forth of cross
31:49
cultural inspiration. Matcha latte and adding matcha
31:53
with milk is kind of exactly in line with this type of cross
31:58
cultural cross pollination of one culture.
32:02
And it's just people who are on the where the pendulum used to
32:05
be for these very traditional practitioners think there's an
32:09
issue with it. Yeah, I think there's a very
32:12
simple nature to all of this phenomenon is that they are
32:16
delicious. People like it very.
32:18
Simple, easy explanation, yeah. But which brings a very
32:22
interesting point that Mark from OE can make is that, you know,
32:26
adding milk to a single origin matcha makes it not single
32:30
origin anymore, which was totally legit, you know, like,
32:33
and I actually think that this is a very valid point and
32:36
doesn't necessarily contradict to our opinion earlier.
32:39
There are some matcha were made to be single origin and to be a
32:43
consumed that way and adding milk.
32:45
It's just, you know, you're missing the point.
32:47
It's like, you know, iPhone spending so much time and money
32:52
and so many engineers trying to make their phone thin and then
32:56
you slap a giant in the phone case on top of it like it's a
32:59
it's an interesting point and I think I'm agree with with Mark.
33:03
On that, yeah. Or it's like buying your
33:04
grandparents like a really high end iPhone and they only use it
33:08
to make calls. It's just like not quite what
33:11
all of the effort went into for its intended use case.
33:15
So the intentionality of products matter right here and
33:19
usage of product. Yeah, and something that Mark
33:22
wrote about Oika, let me find the line here.
33:25
Here it is. He says.
33:27
At Oika, we do not serve our single origin matcha with milk
33:30
or with sugar. So they make a distinction
33:33
between blends, which they can mix with some interesting flavor
33:36
concepts ranging from like Dubai pistachio to mango to cherries
33:42
to strawberries, right? Like it's really matcha as an
33:45
ingredient and not covering up the single origin, single
33:48
cultivar aspects, right? And I mean, that's specialty,
33:52
right? When you venture into the realm
33:53
of specialty is where you start enjoying the inherent variation
33:57
that can exist from the fact that it's an agricultural
33:59
product. Yeah.
34:01
I think also back to Cole's point earlier is that this is
34:04
really a marketing issue, right? Like specialty doesn't
34:06
necessarily means higher quality or higher quality doesn't
34:10
necessarily equals to specialty. You know, you can have perfectly
34:14
higher quality matcha that is not single origin and you can
34:19
use it however you want. And if a product was created to
34:23
be appreciated as it in its single origin form, then adding
34:27
milk. It's just really, you know,
34:28
destroying the point. Is it or is it not?
34:31
So this is where you get into not only intentions of the
34:34
producer, but the intentions and skill of the preparer.
34:37
You could make a very So I would say, let's use SU Ji San's
34:41
competition, Great Asahi at one third place at the National Tea
34:44
Competition as an example. That's a tea that's hand sorted
34:47
with chopsticks. Like Suji San has spent like his
34:51
entire life experience and his own hands making the best
34:56
product he could possibly ever try to make.
35:01
It is like the pinnacle of perfection, of continuous
35:04
improvement of generations of inherited knowledge.
35:08
And there's not very much of this stuff made.
35:10
Mixing that with milk, I don't think anyone is going to argue
35:15
you shouldn't be doing that. It is an incredibly scarce
35:18
resource. But then where's the line?
35:21
So I had a really interesting experience in Chiang Mai at
35:26
Chaseki with Tom. I guess it was about a year ago
35:30
now. And they have this super
35:32
interesting single cultivar Gelato series.
35:35
And if you would have asked me before I tried these products
35:39
what I would thought, think of mixing high quality Uji Hikari
35:44
with milk in the form of a Gelato, I might have said, yeah,
35:47
you might be destroying some things that make that product
35:50
really good. And then I tasted it the best.
35:53
It was a perspective changing moment for me in the savory
36:01
umaminus being not masked but haloed by the milk.
36:08
There was not a hint of bitterness and it was the most
36:12
umami expression of matcha I've ever had with milk and it was
36:18
shocking to me. It was was like I I have never
36:22
tasted a combination of flavors quite like that.
36:25
It's kind of like having high end Gokoro for the first time
36:28
and you get that like drop of mouth watering savoriness.
36:32
It was very similar to this flavor.
36:34
And I think it just comes down to scale.
36:37
I mean you could take like Michelin star restaurants taking
36:41
some of the finest ingredients ever made than crafting them
36:45
into something special versus just someone like taking slop
36:49
and plopping it onto your plate with very little care or
36:53
intentionality. Then I find actually very
36:55
similar matcha latte experiences at MTCH where people think that
37:01
you need bitterness in the stringency to stand up to milk
37:04
and then you can get make 1 + 1 = 3.
37:07
But some of these actually highly complex, highly umami,
37:10
considered highly specialty product can be transformed into
37:17
these very unique expressions. And I think it's very hard to do
37:20
and I think the average person cannot do that very easily and
37:25
it is a waste in most circumstances.
37:27
But when it's not, it is incredible and reaches sort of
37:32
the pinnacle of using matcha as an ingredient.
37:35
Yeah, but also on the other hand, right?
37:37
Like, imagine using the example you made earlier, sushi sounds,
37:43
you know, unprecedented production of that batch of
37:47
matcha exclusively to this incredible Gelato, and you have
37:52
the capital to buy the whole production year of that year,
37:55
and you turn that into Gelato entirely.
37:58
And I don't think that's also acceptable, even though it's a
38:02
wonderful sensory experience. So I think there is a very vague
38:06
line to be drawn right there. And that's the right root of the
38:10
conflict, right? That's what makes this
38:11
conversation, if not fascinating from a topic perspective,
38:16
fascinating from a sociological perspective, is that everyone
38:19
draws this line in a different place.
38:21
And you have a lot of people, you know it.
38:24
Matcha is a human endeavor, which makes it incredibly
38:27
fascinating. And you know, you have all these
38:29
hard line people saying that it makes matcha like way less
38:33
authentic. But a point that Mark makes
38:35
that's really fascinating and important to bring up here is
38:38
that most matcha farmers have their own agency and they don't
38:43
necessarily care. And as Mark puts it, and I'll
38:47
read off of what he said, it's not, this is not controversial
38:51
and it is common knowledge that Japanese tea industry will
38:54
continue to shrink. And it's it's going to be up to
38:57
the West to stabilize and grow the industry.
39:00
The farmers that are producing tea for 10 or 20 generations
39:04
intrinsically understand that different cultures have
39:07
different perspectives. And if these differences and
39:10
preferences mean that they continue producing matcha, I'm
39:14
sure most of them will be happy with it.
39:16
And that's coming directly from someone that works with tons of
39:21
like multi generational small producers and like talks
39:26
directly with them. Like again, the farmers, if you
39:29
go directly to the source, don't really care.
39:31
It's like some of all of these other people that get defensive
39:35
of usually other people's culture are the ones that are
39:39
being the loudest in this debate.
39:41
Yeah. And to a lot of the extent, you
39:45
know, there are a lot of farmers in Japan that don't have
39:48
agencies. Like how can they care?
39:51
Like their entire production is being procured by some larger
39:55
blend houses and then get sold to a larger retailer and that's
39:59
and then gets branded as, you know, all sorts of other things.
40:03
Like they cannot care if they don't have the urgency and they
40:06
don't know where their products end up going to.
40:08
And all they want is to sell more much for more matcha and
40:12
sell it for a higher price. And that's their ultimate
40:15
incentive. Yeah.
40:17
And you know, something that not enough people talk about is that
40:20
producers live on a spectrum too.
40:23
But you have people that are just like money motivated.
40:26
I'm sure like the very well capitalized winner really need
40:31
to be thought of as businesses, especially in very high volume
40:35
production areas like Kagoshima or Shizuoka, right?
40:40
That's not always tea people that are quote UN quote tea
40:44
people that are like really running the show and making the
40:47
decision like they are businesses.
40:49
And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have farmers that
40:53
make incredible sacrifices to create an incredibly high
40:56
quality product. So something that Brian from
40:59
Matsu Macho wrote is say you were to use high quality matcha
41:02
powder that is so subtly nuanced and it's super gentle,
41:07
luxuriously smooth, naturally sweet up from the high quality
41:11
tensha. Then using this type of matcha
41:14
powder in lattes is really bad and disrespectful.
41:17
I feel that it's disrespectful to the producers and the farmer
41:21
and it's also just a big waste of what is ultra rare matcha
41:25
powder. So I think the other spectrum is
41:28
of these farmers is not all matcha farm.
41:31
We can't classify the matcha production industry as one thing
41:36
either. And you have like these large
41:39
volume players making stuff for people.
41:42
And where it all gets muddied is kind of at the vendor level
41:46
where everyone's pretending to source the best product.
41:50
Not everyone can be sourcing the best product.
41:53
Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's really interesting
41:56
and you know, we know from primary experiences that when
41:59
you taste things the way they weren't meant to be intended,
42:02
you're not getting the most out of your tea.
42:05
It's so Brian also wrote. Cuz with these super high
42:07
quality, subtle and ultra smooth matcha, adding anything to it
42:11
will cause it to lose its flavor profile and will be a big waste.
42:15
Consuming this in large quantities for lattes and as as
42:19
a trend might result in matcha enthusiasts who use these matcha
42:24
powder for koicha and usucha to not have the opportunity to
42:27
drink them the way it's intended.
42:29
I totally agree. It's really vendor's fault to,
42:32
you know, done such a poor job educating their own consumers.
42:36
A lot of these buyers are largely innocent.
42:40
They just want to buy better stuff for their own consumption.
42:44
But you know, better is very contextual.
42:47
It more premium, higher quality Asahi single origin matcha might
42:53
actually taste, you know, worse in milk versus some, you know,
42:57
Ocumadori blend. It's it's really vendor's wall
43:00
to have done such a poor job informing their consumer what is
43:03
actually good in their usage context.
43:06
Yeah. And the problem is too is that
43:09
everyone assumes that, that a lot, I shouldn't say everyone, a
43:12
lot of people and a lot of marketing in matcha assume that
43:15
the consumer is stupid and they need to be told how to use
43:18
things. And there's a not really much of
43:20
a culture of experimentation and like this idea what we would
43:26
call in Chinese tea ceremonies, Kongfu or skill to make choices.
43:30
And actually, if you really go to the most niche, most
43:34
specialty, most rare high end matcha, I would argue from
43:39
experience now that it is a waste to use high, ultra high
43:45
quality matcha. As Usucha added that the best
43:49
flavor expressions that you can bring out of the tea is only in
43:54
the form of koicha. And now having tasted so many
43:57
teas as koicha and then watered down as usacha and comparing
44:02
those back-to-back, you don't get the full luxurious, smooth,
44:06
subtlety nuance as a usacha. You only get those flavor
44:11
expression as koicha, which really is the pinnacle of this
44:15
high quality thing. And also what's interesting,
44:17
interesting thing is that, you know, like those Koita, those
44:21
ultra high end matcha is, you know, are they delicious?
44:25
Yes, they are. Are they great?
44:28
Are they expensive? Yes, they are.
44:30
Do I want to drink them every day?
44:33
Probably not actually. It's so intense and so
44:36
memorable. And you know, frequently my
44:39
stomach doesn't also respond very well to such intensity.
44:43
But you know, like I think that's that's a natural solution
44:46
to this whole high end matcha scarcity problem.
44:49
Like if there there are teas that meant to be consumed in
44:52
such a way that you can appreciate it most with less
44:56
frequency. Yeah, there you go.
44:59
You don't need to drink the best matcha every day, and you can
45:02
experiment what works best, in which context, at the most
45:07
optimal price for you and what you can afford.
45:10
And that this culture of overconsumption is a problem at
45:14
this highly intentional side of things where there is a
45:17
scarcity, There is not really a scarcity of low quality, what
45:22
we'll call average, quote UN quote, ceremonial crate matcha.
45:27
Have you noticed that anyone sourcing tea from Kagoshima or
45:30
Shizuoka doesn't have a matcha shortage right now?
45:33
I mean, they can be single origins, yeah, but it's really
45:37
just different. Use and not to hate on those
45:39
regions, it's just where the really industrial mass
45:42
production lies. I mean, there's lots of great
45:44
producers there too, and maybe there's a shortage of the really
45:47
high end stuff, but like where you see this high use of
45:51
technology for mass yield, you know, you see it in in these
45:55
types of areas. I feel like we hate on Kagashima
45:57
and Cheese Woka too much, especially for two people that
46:00
have never physically been there all ourselves out.
46:03
But you know, like mass produced doesn't necessarily mean is just
46:07
like that. Be perfectly fine with your
46:10
daily usage. We've had a lot of those
46:11
products. Some of them actually taste
46:13
pretty good. Yeah.
46:14
Although I am very against charging 60 bucks for a can of
46:17
that stuff. Overpriced is the issue, but
46:21
that's also vendors fault. Yeah, pretty soon we're going to
46:28
be vendors too. Zhongjun, we, we need to be
46:30
careful here. We'll have very different
46:33
perspectives when we're on the other side of the table.
46:36
Yeah, we have bias too. Yeah, so such a complex topic
46:41
and there was quite a bit to unwrap.
46:43
So I think it's a perfect place to stop.
46:45
And to conclude, huge thank you to everyone about contribute to
46:49
this where we were sourcing perspectives.
46:52
So huge thank you to Monique, to Cole, to Mark, to Brian.
46:57
If it wasn't for this community that we have to source these
47:00
perspectives, we'd have be literally talking in an echo
47:03
chamber. It's just what I feel like a lot
47:05
of these people with very strong opinions on the Internet blaming
47:10
matcha girlies ruining matcha matcha girlies on TikTok
47:13
actually I think is the most commonly used, right?
47:17
But you know, it's probably the matcha girlies on TikTok that
47:20
are going to save the Japanese tea industry because that's
47:22
where all the growth is. And without growth, you don't
47:25
have any dynamism in an industry.
47:27
Let's go, girls. Let's go seriously all new magic
47:30
consumers. Everyone just needs to have more
47:32
respect for each other and to have a greater degree of
47:35
understanding and understanding this.
47:37
So anyway, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing
47:40
Friends. Or if you have some strong
47:43
opinion, please share to us. Yeah, please do share.
47:46
Love to, you know, source even more opinions and put it out in
47:49
the space and what we hope is a very thoughtful, considered set
47:53
of perspectives and we'll see you on the next one.
47:56
See you in the future.