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Korean Matcha (Malcha) · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:05
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
0:07
My name is Ryan and this is Michael Hozunjun who also goes
0:10
by Sam. Hello, hello And we're the Co
0:12
founders of Sanko Matcha products.
0:14
Yeah, We launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey,
0:16
matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
0:20
So in the past week, we've been traveling in Korea sourcing
0:23
matcha. And as we discussed in our last
0:25
episode, you know, globalized cultivation and manufacturing of
0:29
matcha is it's also like a very important part of this coming
0:32
globalization of matcha in different areas of the world.
0:36
Absolutely. I mean, if you do the math, if
0:38
you want there to be enough matcha in the world for these
0:42
people have the ability to try for the first time and
0:45
especially at a reasonable price point.
0:47
The amount of production that comes out of Japan around, you
0:51
know, 4 to 4 1/2 thousand tons I'm just isn't enough to meet
0:55
global demand, especially with the matcha shortage.
0:58
But even before the matcha shortage, places like South
1:00
Korea and like China have been very important to the matcha
1:04
economy, creating products that were not necessarily products of
1:08
origin or products of provenance.
1:11
Like a lot of places aren't specifically calling their thing
1:14
Korean matcha or Chinese matcha. But if you go to a bubble tea
1:17
store or if you get a matcha tiramisu or a matcha ice cream
1:21
and there's a non negligible chance that it's coming from one
1:25
of those places, kind of a much, much more commodity type matcha
1:28
product. And it's been very important.
1:31
But we've been hearing that the quality has gotten a lot better
1:35
in South Korea. And so we had the opportunity to
1:37
come here for an independent reason.
1:39
We were like, oh whoa, we're going to be here anyway.
1:42
Let's go see what we can find. Yeah, that's right.
1:44
So my dad was hosting this art exhibition of some of his new
1:49
artworks in Busan, so he invited us to come over to Korea.
1:54
For those of you that don't know, Sam comes from an art
1:57
family. Both his parents are artists and
2:00
his dad's also art professor, part of the Guangzhou Academy of
2:04
Fine Art. So Sam grew up within those
2:07
walls of this art community in China.
2:10
Yeah, Well, we certainly have different focuses.
2:14
I'm much more into tea than my parents.
2:16
But, you know, it's it's nice to be back.
2:18
I was in Korea nine years ago. That was the last time I was
2:23
here for tea. For tea.
2:24
Yeah, exactly. So back in the Penn State Tea
2:27
Institute, we host this Korean tea culture exhibition and we
2:31
invited three Korean tea experts into to visit Penn State and
2:36
host a week long lecture about Korean tea.
2:39
And they invited us back to Korea.
2:42
And I was leading a group of students traveling across Korea
2:46
from, you know, all of the tea producing areas, mainly
2:49
concentrating in GD sign, which is southern part of the Korean
2:53
Peninsula. And that's actually I think the
2:56
only concentrated tea production area on the continental Korean
3:01
part. The other part is Statue Island.
3:02
Yeah, well, there's both song too, but that wasn't set up in
3:05
until the Japanese occupation during colonial periods.
3:08
And that's actually where a lot of matcha comes from.
3:10
And actually it's a lot of Yabukita apparently is in
3:13
Bosung, but it's a very new, it's a, it's an artifact of
3:17
colonialism, which we'll talk a little bit about as well because
3:20
you can't bring that out of the the Korean history.
3:24
Actually, it's a pretty interesting negative side.
3:27
You know, in the Japanese Fine Arts and traditions and crafts,
3:32
we tend to like give so much respect to the producers and the
3:35
culture behind them, but we also cannot ignore that it was that
3:39
culture and those people and these traditions that were also
3:43
part of a really brutal imperial colonialist culture.
3:48
Yeah. I have, I'm half Korean and my
3:51
both of my grandparents, actually three out of my 4
3:53
grandparents were not native English speakers.
3:55
I'm half Korean, 1/4 Austrian and a quarter like
3:59
Pennsylvanian, Pennsylvania Quaker.
4:01
But I remember very young my Korean grandparents would come
4:05
to our home and they would stay for like a week and they'd
4:07
always cook breakfast for me before school.
4:09
So I'd go downstairs and they're very Christian like a lot of
4:12
Korean people are. So we had to pray before they
4:16
would cook breakfast. And, you know, as a 5 year old,
4:18
you're a little impatient. And then after the prayer, it
4:21
was not uncommon actually for them to talk about their
4:24
experience in Korea. And I have a very vivid memory
4:28
of them talking about how much they hated the Japanese and how
4:31
they buried people alive with you were a school child growing
4:36
up in Korea during the colonial imperious imperial era was
4:40
controlled by the Japanese. You weren't allowed to think in
4:44
Korea. So in the schools, everything
4:46
was taught in Japanese and you couldn't think in Korea.
4:49
And they buried people alive. They did some horrible practices
4:53
and they didn't treat the Chinese much better.
4:54
My very similar experience with me and my grandma.
4:59
She grew up in the Hunan province, which at the time was
5:03
also occupied by the Japanese and a very similar stories.
5:06
If you talk to anyone from that generation and they have very
5:09
different perception about Japan and Japanese culture, but the IT
5:13
actually a pretty important part for the legacy of tea in East
5:16
Asia to the only colonial colony that they treated relatively
5:20
nicely and was in Taiwan. And to this day, the Taiwanese,
5:24
Japanese respect for each other is still extremely strong.
5:28
But they said if anyone's ever heard of Sun Moon Lake in
5:31
Taiwan, the Japanese brought a Samaka tea from India to Sun
5:35
Moon Lake in Taiwan to create black tea for export.
5:39
So it's very similar type of colonial system that you saw the
5:43
Western superpowers in that similar era set up for forms of
5:47
economic extraction. And very interestingly, Sun Moon
5:50
Lake was abandoned for many, many, many years.
5:52
And it's one of the few places where you can find wild tea.
5:55
So the tea is basically back into the forest and it's it's
5:58
allowed to naturally propagate, but what we would call Zyrai in
6:01
Japanese tea or in Japanese matcha, leading to some really
6:05
interesting high quality tea coming out of that region as
6:08
well. But the Bosong, So the three
6:10
main ones are around Jyurisan, which includes places like
6:13
Hadong and Goode, which is where we were.
6:16
That tea culture took root the earliest.
6:19
There's some people that said, I think it was like 50 years after
6:22
CE after Christ is said to have brought tea seeds there.
6:26
But apparently that's much more of a myth if you talk to anyone
6:30
who studies this. Yeah, the the the traceable
6:35
recorded history of the tea cultivation in Korea was set to
6:39
be around 900, so close to Tang dynasty China.
6:43
So arguably the genetic similarities of Korean tea in
6:47
Chilisan area is more similar to Tang Dynasty tea or what people
6:52
would drink, you know, like kind of like a long time from being
6:55
the phoenix cake or the dragon dough, kind of like a powderized
6:59
tea soup at the time. And later evolved into the Sun
7:02
Dynasty Mocha, which is the predecessor of Japanese matcha.
7:06
Yeah, which was also supposedly consumed there during the Korean
7:10
equivalent period during the Song dynasty that we've learned.
7:13
But they did drink like this proto matcha mocha Song dynasty
7:17
style tea and then it was later largely not not consumed during
7:22
the Joseon dynasty which is the vast majority of recent Korean
7:26
tea history. Yeah, Korean tea history is
7:29
very, very strongly tied to Buddhism.
7:31
And as we know, you know, in modern days, Korean is largely a
7:35
Christian country. And before this period of time,
7:38
Korean was largely A Confucius country.
7:41
And from the court level, there were a lot of prosecutions
7:44
against the Buddhist monk. So a lot of these monks sought,
7:48
you know, shelter and went into the mountains along with them
7:53
were teas. So a lot of these teas in the
7:56
mountains are you can always almost always found like a
8:00
temple surrounding by all these interesting, you know, semi Zyri
8:04
tea fields. Mostly Zyri and apparently for
8:07
the vast majority of like to like last 6-7 hundred years.
8:11
It's not the type of tea cultivation that we would think
8:14
of. It's pretty.
8:16
There's a lot of historical facts that like Korea was not
8:20
really a tea growing, tea drinking tea appreciating
8:23
country for the majority of its history until modern days.
8:28
And we'll actually leave a link to a wonderful talk given by a
8:31
friend of ours who invited to Penn State many times a brother
8:34
Anthony of the TASE community like a profession.
8:37
He's a professor and he's famous for publishing a lot of
8:39
translations of ancient Korean poetry into English.
8:44
But he also wrote some fantastic books about tea.
8:47
And it's done a lot of effort researching on the different
8:50
topics and making sure like everything is proper references.
8:53
Because within Korean tea history in general, it's
8:56
actually a really interesting story.
8:57
It's not that different from Japan is that after World War 2,
9:01
the was a really strong political urge and push to
9:06
create a Korean national identity.
9:09
And a lot of these people that were pushing a very strong
9:12
Korean national identity were incredibly anti Japanese, very
9:17
understandably, because they were brutally oppressed during
9:20
the colonial period. So that's how the colonization
9:23
story comes full circle. And they leaned into a lot of
9:27
myths. And so within modern Korean tea
9:30
circles, there's a lot of variation, we'll say, within the
9:34
history, some of which might be more historically accurate than
9:38
others. But they really intentionally
9:41
tried to make it very Korean and lean into that identity to
9:46
separate themselves from anything related to Japan or
9:50
China for that matter, and create sort of their own
9:53
traditions. And some of which claim or try
9:56
to borrow some ideas from the past, making it seem like, you
10:01
know, these traditions were always happening.
10:03
Continuous culture. Yeah, but it's probably more
10:06
narrative than reality if you talk to anyone who studies this
10:09
seriously. So matcha, it's a very long way
10:12
of saying matcha does have really deep roots in Korea, but
10:17
in a nonlinear way, wasn't a continuous practice.
10:21
So supposedly during the Song dynasty equivalent ruling power
10:25
in Korea, they were drinking something very similar to the
10:28
Seoul Chinese in this proto matcha Mocha and that you hear
10:32
everyone talk about. But it wasn't until relatively
10:35
recently that they started to become a matcha producing
10:38
country. And a lot of that actually
10:39
didn't happen until the 1970s. So Jeju Island, which is one of
10:43
the most famous places for Korean tea production, didn't
10:46
start growing any tea until around the 1970s.
10:50
And they now they use exclusively Japanese cultivars.
10:53
And a lot of it was spearheaded by just one guy.
10:56
But in recent years as well, in the most historical part, where
10:59
T took root has taken root literally the longest in the
11:03
Hadong Jurisan area, where you have all of this tea growing
11:07
around these temples. And there's a pretty long
11:09
history of tea being there, allowing allowed to grow wild.
11:13
And this has been processed by monks on and off throughout the
11:16
centuries. But ten years ago, the
11:18
government, local government set up a tension processing
11:21
facility. It's actually the only one in
11:23
the entire area that we got to visit.
11:27
And we had a whole tour of this tension processing facility in
11:30
Haddon. I want to talk a little bit
11:32
about our experience there SIM. Yeah.
11:35
So how long is a very interesting place and we
11:38
actually got a very interesting taste of the tea cultivation and
11:43
manufacturing culture in the area.
11:45
So the connection, Master Khyom is a very reputable Korean tea
11:49
masters who lives in Gude. And through him we experienced
11:54
the very artisanal part of Korean tea drinking culture and
11:58
Korean tea ceremony, which is called Dade, the mannerism of
12:02
tea. And you know, he of course, you
12:07
know, he's just not focusing on the artisanal part of Korean
12:10
tea. He's actually went very well
12:12
connected with many of the more industrial side of Korean tea
12:17
growing and Korean tea making. And through him we got
12:20
introduced to some of the larger local tea manufacturing
12:25
companies and people. And you see this very
12:27
interesting you kind of comparison not so far away from
12:30
each other, rows and rows of very, you know, well managed
12:34
industrialized boutique gardens. And right next to them is this
12:39
wonderful, magnificent mountain of GD San scattered with wild
12:43
teas, you know, in different sides facades of the forest.
12:47
So that was very interesting and you know, and add the tea
12:52
facility, a huge facility by the way.
12:54
So we took a tour inside the venue and the first thing that
13:00
came to our notice is that most of the machines are Japanese
13:04
made and they are identical machines that we saw in places
13:08
like, you know, Yamai and Izumo and the scale and the factory
13:14
layout. So, you know, like he got
13:16
transferred into the factory, gets dumped into a conveyor
13:19
belt, and then it gets, you know, processed through
13:22
different, you know, you know, machineries to get refinement,
13:27
to get steam, to get cutting, to get roasted, and then finally to
13:33
be packed. It's almost identical to the
13:36
factory setups in in Japan, which is very interesting.
13:39
So there's definitely, definitely some Japanese
13:42
involvement into the setup of this facility.
13:45
And there's all this compartmentalization.
13:47
So you have like the like raw leaf, wet leaf receival and
13:51
that's like 1 section. And then the next one is the
13:54
steaming, the drying, the roasting, that's another
13:56
section. And then another section is all
13:59
around the milling. Very similar
14:00
compartmentalization tool. Yeah, very clean factory.
14:04
It's quite interesting. The only difference is the tea.
14:08
In the Hatong area they use local cultivar instead of, you
14:12
know, imported Japanese cultivar, mainly Yapukita in
14:15
Jeju Island. And in Bosong.
14:17
And in bosong, so that that's I think a very interesting part
14:22
of, you know, matcha making in, in in hatong or in, in bosong.
14:26
Arguably, it's a much more local product, pretty interesting if
14:30
you're using this local cultivar.
14:33
It's a much more powerful expression, I think, of the land
14:37
and the history. But just to provide some
14:39
context, all of this tea that's grown around these temples has
14:41
been there since the Tang Dynasty.
14:43
And there's some speculation, I think it's yet to be proven, but
14:46
there's a lot of speculation that that tea around those
14:49
temples in this area is more close genetically to the tea
14:54
that was being grown and processed in Tang Dynasty China
14:57
than any of the Chinese cultivars or wild tea that
15:02
exists today within modern China.
15:05
Because specifically because that area was not very
15:10
intentionally producing and cultivating tea.
15:14
It's a monks, we're on and off processing it, using it for
15:17
their own consumption as part of their meditation practices,
15:20
etcetera. But they weren't like selecting
15:23
very specific trees and deciding I like those flavor
15:26
characteristics. There was no culture took a root
15:29
of tea appreciation in the same way that we saw in China.
15:33
And that led to a lot of genetic drift.
15:36
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, like you look at
15:39
the wild teas growing in the mountains and you look at the,
15:42
you know, very well managed gardens, Rd. by Rd. down the
15:45
mountainside. You know, in the industrial
15:49
gardens, they're actually the same tea.
15:51
There's not a sense of cultivar in the team tea, tea growing,
15:56
tea agriculture in the Hardown area.
15:59
Like they don't talk about cultivar.
16:00
They said this is the local tea and everything is sea
16:03
propagated. Pretty incredible actually.
16:05
And actually, this trip gave me a real new whole sense of
16:07
appreciation for Korean tea, green tea, which is actually
16:11
always been my favorite. I hope that's not too
16:13
controversial, but of all of the countries that produce green
16:16
tea, tea specifically from Judy San and Hadong Goode has by far
16:21
been my favorite. It is so pure, especially all
16:25
the stuff that's hand picked because the artisanal produces,
16:28
there's about 100 artisanal families and that still produce
16:31
tea. It's all mountainside.
16:33
We also met with some of the artisanal producers.
16:36
They don't use any fertilizer. There's it like these plants are
16:39
also kind of part of the forest. They naturally seed propagated
16:43
on these hills. There's tons of canopy cover and
16:46
other vegetation, no pesticides, no fertilizer.
16:50
And the taste is just so nutty and sweet and pure and simple
16:56
and fragrant. It's a if you've never had this
16:59
type of Korean green tea, it's really worth a try.
17:03
If you reach out to us, we can give you some recommendations.
17:05
A lot of it is from farmers that are totally non commercial, like
17:10
our very good friend who hosts to us doesn't sell tea.
17:13
They're lucky he'll gift you some.
17:15
So there's a lot of that. But there are there are some
17:17
commercial operations that are still very small that kind of
17:20
allow us to have access in the rest of the world.
17:22
But it is unlike any type of green tea.
17:25
And if you juxtapose it with a lot of the tea that's being
17:29
produced in Japan, it is no comparison in terms of level of
17:34
how industrial these two types of operations are from both the
17:39
guarded management and the processing.
17:41
And you can really taste it in the cup.
17:44
Yeah, exactly. Tawa in Korea, it's much similar
17:47
to what we have seen in Yunnan. So that that it's not, you know,
17:54
it's, it's not a tea garden or not a tea.
17:58
It's not a vast. It's not a tea garden or you
18:02
know, you know, not, not a tea forest.
18:05
It's part of the forest. It is the forest and these teas
18:09
growing underneath the very, very thick canopy gets naturally
18:14
blocked away from a lot of sunlight.
18:16
So they have very slow growth. And it's actually have similar
18:21
effect to what Kalensha would do to, you know, Japanese tea, you
18:25
know, in garden management. So these tea naturally has this
18:29
very interesting, like sweet and like salinity and umami kind of
18:35
notes that is very unique to to, to, you know, green tea as a
18:40
category. You don't quite taste that in,
18:43
in, in Chinese green tea either. You can sometimes taste that in
18:46
some of the poor tea that also gets harvest in very, very deep
18:50
forest in the unit, but that's also very rare.
18:53
So very interesting you know and unique taste profile of Korean
18:57
tea in general if you can source some.
19:00
Very difficult to source, but it's definitely the preferences
19:03
in Korea are very different from the Japanese, which care a lot
19:07
about the expression of umami. It's not the case here.
19:11
It's much more balanced in, in my opinion.
19:13
And actually the the top tier Korean green teas, not much of A
19:17
green teas are kind of shade covered naturally by bamboo.
19:21
And then when the rain comes down, it goes down through the
19:23
bamboo leaves and on the bamboo and down into the tea.
19:27
And I think they call it something like bamboo Doo.
19:29
Is the translation green tea supposedly among that top
19:33
category? Yeah, arguably this is much more
19:36
clear expression of Taiwan. You still have larger scale
19:40
plantations in this area which provide the raw leaf for this
19:43
tension factory. So it's kind of like Korean zai
19:46
Rai vocal on Japanese processing equipment.
19:50
Yeah, yeah, it's a very interesting setup and we didn't
19:53
have the chance to taste the matcha coming out from the
19:57
factory, but we did end up being gifted some very nice tensha.
20:02
Yeah, so we got like, I don't know, 100 grams of tensha.
20:05
So we're going to melt up when we're back to China.
20:07
So our prototype meal is under the final step of development
20:12
and we will have the chance to mill some interesting materials
20:15
when we get back to Guangzhou. Yeah, absolutely.
20:17
This smell coming off that bag isn't readably unique now after
20:22
like smelling so much Tancha. It is really unique compared to
20:26
some of the Japanese product that we've smelled.
20:29
It is really like roasty, toasty.
20:31
And it has this, at least to my taste, this like butter cookie,
20:36
like a really high, like if anyone has had like a Walker's
20:39
butter cookie from the UK or any of the Brittany butter cookies
20:43
in France has this like butter cookie sweetness to it that is
20:48
really unique. Yeah, very creamy and the the
20:51
roasty, toasty notes reminds me a little bit of, you know, what
20:55
Yamai tea generally smells like and they.
20:57
Do use a very interesting piece of tea processing equipment.
21:01
So something we haven't talked about on this podcast yet, I
21:04
think, but we've talked about it in some offline conversations is
21:08
a very interesting producer in Nagasaki in Japan that's using
21:12
an experimental piece of equipment that it doesn't just
21:16
steam the the tea, the tensha it steams and which in Chinese tea
21:24
processing we would call shashing.
21:26
But this piece of machine combines the two shashing method
21:29
into one Tumblr, and the tea pass through the channel gets
21:34
pan fried and steamed at the same time, so it gets the
21:38
benefit of the two. Yeah, it's really good.
21:41
And that producer out of Nagasaki that has that is I
21:44
bought 230g packs of this and my girlfriend and I drank through
21:49
just one pack in one week. Did you save me some?
21:53
We did not. It was so good.
21:56
It was so good as usucha as a diluted Americano on ice.
22:01
No ice milk, no milk. It arguably it's less terroir
22:05
expressive because you're introducing all these roasty,
22:07
toasty nuts. But wow, I hope that this method
22:10
becomes more widespread. Has that very similar taste to
22:14
that. Like if anyone has had anything
22:16
from like Hoshi Hoshino say chop down in Yamai.
22:20
Very similar roasty toasty expression.
22:23
Very good, more process driven. Really takes the tea a long way.
22:27
Interesting. Well, anyways, they use their
22:29
equipment in this factory, which is very interesting.
22:33
Otherwise, everything else was like nearly identical to what
22:35
we'd seen in Japan. So this tension that we tasted,
22:38
if you look at it, it really needs to go through one or two
22:41
more rounds of shiage, stemming and deveining.
22:45
I think they do end up milling a lot of these stems.
22:47
And so we're going to have to do that manually.
22:50
And there's also quite a large degree of color variation.
22:54
If any Japanese tea person saw that this tension, they'd be
22:57
like, wow, there's, there's not enough color homogeneity, which,
23:01
you know, I am not super convinced that it's going to
23:06
make a huge it's obviously going to make a huge difference in the
23:08
color of the final matcha, but in the taste, it's unclear how
23:13
much a lack of color homogeneity matters for the vast majority of
23:18
like good matcha. Yeah, but it also depends,
23:21
right? Like cuz improper usage of the
23:25
steaming machine might led to different leaves or different
23:30
parts of the leaves being steamed or fried into different
23:33
degrees. So some of the leaves looks a
23:35
little bit yellower than the others, which might be the costs
23:40
of not very experienced in using these machines.
23:43
And some of them were actually black, like clearly burnt burnt.
23:46
So it might be a processing issue, we don't know.
23:48
But actually the price to quality rate, it might actually
23:52
be a good thing because I think a lot of this would get rejected
23:54
by the Japanese, but if it tastes good, who cares?
23:58
Yeah, that's true. If it's literally 1/3 the price,
24:02
we're not going to mention the price here, but just for our
24:05
industry friends that are listening, it's probably about
24:08
1/3 of the wholesale price of Second Harvest matcha coming out
24:13
of some random place in Kyoto Prefecture.
24:16
Or Kagoshima. Or or maybe like some of the,
24:19
the stuff coming out of Kagoshima that's second flush,
24:23
you know, it's maybe not 1/3 of that respect.
24:26
It's it's cheap and there might be a fantastic source of value
24:30
for people, especially B to B. It has a very interesting story.
24:34
It's very single origin. It's like these really local
24:38
plant genetics that have been here for a very, very, very long
24:42
time, deep historical precedent, way longer history actually from
24:47
a plant genetics perspective than any of the Zai Rai fields
24:51
that exist in Japan. Korea had tea introduced to it
24:55
in a way that it took root about 300 years earlier than a Sai
25:01
around these around these temples in this area.
25:04
But it's it's, it's, it has a really cool stick.
25:08
It's not a story about matcha from end to end, but it is a
25:12
story about tea from end to end and tea being constantly adapted
25:17
from something that Buddhist monks were using to now like
25:20
feeding this global matcha demand of of what people want.
25:25
These plants too are playing into that story, which is which
25:28
is pretty interesting using Japanese equipment like this.
25:31
What we tasted what we have this bag of tansha.
25:34
This is matcha like it like you cannot call this fake just
25:38
because it was grown in Korea. This is actually arguably much
25:41
better to war than the Super ridiculously fertilized places
25:46
that we see in Japan where they have to spray tons of
25:49
pesticides. Yeah, totally agree.
25:51
Yeah, for sure. And this is a story that will
25:54
continue to evolve and be told by many's in the future for the
25:58
hard owned G design area. And we also had the chance to
26:01
try some of the matcha coming from Jeju Island.
26:04
Brian, you want to share a little bit more about, you know,
26:06
this tea? Yeah.
26:07
So we we tried 2. So the one that we have in front
26:11
of us is from probably the most famous Jeju Island matcha
26:14
producer called Asalak. Excuse me if I mispronounce
26:17
that. You pronounce that right.
26:18
I think so I. Think so.
26:20
I have a horrible pronouncing, pronouncing, horrible
26:23
pronouncing things. It's from Jeju Island.
26:27
My name is the oldest macho producer in Jeju Island.
26:30
They were the first. And they're famous for volcanic
26:32
soil. So it's actually when they talk
26:34
about the the conditions for growing this tea in Jeju sounds
26:38
very similar to what you hear out of Kagoshima and this very
26:42
volcanic soil story. And, you know, it's not very
26:48
well milled, but the taste is pretty good.
26:51
Yeah. Very, very, very.
26:52
Unique. So supposedly so.
26:55
So it's, you know, different than, you know, tea coming out
26:59
from, you know, Hodong in Jeju Island.
27:02
Not only the equipments are Japanese, the cultivar is also
27:05
Japanese. It's Yabukita, but it doesn't
27:07
quite taste like the Yabukita that I had in Japan that was
27:11
coming out from Japan, doesn't have that very green vegetables
27:15
at all. Instead you are getting tons of
27:19
floral notes, some very interesting tropical of fruity
27:22
notes like some kind of like like green mango skin or like
27:27
lemon zest, lime zest. And the bitterness is not very
27:30
strong. The stringency is not very
27:32
strong. And I would say that it's
27:34
actually just about as good as average in more industrial style
27:40
Japanese matcha. I've had way worse.
27:42
Yeah, although you know, I I don't quite taste any umami from
27:47
this matcha. It's not umami driven at odd
27:49
actually. And the powder is also slightly
27:52
coarser than some of the tea that we have tried from Japan.
27:56
Yeah. So it might just literally be a
27:58
milling issue. I bet if this was fresh milled
28:00
and we put it to another round of D stemming deveining this can
28:04
be really really good. Yeah, it has a lot of
28:07
potentials. And probably priced much cheaper
28:09
than what's at it coming out of Japan given the craziness that's
28:13
happening in that market. It's just pretty, pretty cool.
28:15
Yeah, but from this trip we learned actually surprisingly
28:19
little about JoJo Island tea. So we're thinking about setting
28:23
another trip to go to JoJo Island and really learn what's
28:26
going on right there. Yeah, we need, we need to do
28:28
that for sure. So we'll probably do that within
28:31
like, I don't know, hopefully the next 6 to 8 months because
28:35
it's a really interesting very promising from everything that
28:38
we've tasted. And I've tasted this tea now
28:40
three different ways. We bought some because I really
28:43
wanted to prepare it while we were controlling all of the
28:45
variables, and so we did. Very standard lucichar recipe
28:49
just now. And that's what Sam was
28:51
describing, the taste. I also had this prepared by them
28:54
as a nice americano in one of their cafes, and I was shocked.
28:58
I was expecting something bitter and astringent and awful, but it
29:01
wasn't at all. It was the bitterness.
29:03
It was even less bitter than this and it was just really
29:06
pleasant, really nice Matcha Naracano.
29:08
It has still had a lot of fragrance, had some natural
29:11
sweetness, had a little bitterness of an astringency to
29:14
kind of round everything out and make it balance.
29:16
And then we also had this in a bin suit.
29:19
I mean that shaved ice format. There was a syrup and honestly,
29:23
as an ingredient in a sweet, wow, holy smokes it's good.
29:27
Yeah, this Korean tea or Korean matcha in general, I feel it's,
29:31
it's more tea like you can actually taste, you know, it
29:35
tastes more similar to green tea than to matcha as its own cat.
29:40
I I the way I would characterize what what you're saying is that
29:43
it's less umami. I think.
29:45
You have this weird umami distortion, Haiyan that really
29:49
only exists in Japan. And it's like remove that
29:52
distortion and do some rebalancing.
29:54
And that's more similar to what the flavor?
29:57
Yeah, that's a good way to summarizing it.
29:59
It's not umami at all. A little bit.
30:02
It's a little. Bit it's good, it's good.
30:04
I I like it actually. My suspicion is, although we
30:07
don't know this for sure, is that the fertilization practices
30:09
are much more reasonable in places like Jeju.
30:13
I think largely too because they want to cater towards an organic
30:16
market. We had another one at a
30:18
different cafe that was even better than this one.
30:20
It was much paler and the cafe is called BBD Dong.
30:24
Fantastic cafe. If you're ever in Busan, it's
30:27
way up on the hill and has a beautiful view.
30:30
And for about 10 bucks you can get this really nice Jeju
30:33
matcha. And then we also went to a very
30:35
random place that we walked into that had two Ishiusu, the make
30:40
of the Ishiusu or something like I'd never seen before.
30:42
They're not full size, but they're larger than the really
30:45
small hand ones, but they're smaller than the quote UN quote
30:48
1 foot 30 centimeter diameter well.
30:51
So I took a closer look to the plaque of the manufacturer.
30:57
Zhejiang. That's Chinese, yeah.
30:58
That's Chinese made issues, or at least the motor is Chinese
31:02
made. It's not designed to look nice
31:04
though, it's just a glass box and a motor.
31:06
Like you can see the motor and the manufacturing plates of the
31:10
motor on top. Actually delightfully scrappy.
31:13
But we asked them if they and they know all the matcha in the
31:15
house which I thought was really interesting.
31:17
So we ordered 1 and I asked them where their tea came from and
31:22
they said from Japan. But we tasted it and I'm like
31:25
99% sure that they are not using tensha and they're not doing any
31:31
de stemming or deveining. And there were really large
31:34
chunks of stuff. It was a very chalky texture.
31:38
Chalk, actually. Chalk might be finer these
31:41
pieces, yeah. Boulders.
31:44
Like these very fibrous pieces, probably very good for my gut, a
31:48
lot of fiber. But yeah, it was really.
31:51
Bad. Yeah, it was not.
31:52
Good. It tasted like fresh milled
31:54
extremely old Sancha that they bought very cheap that was not
31:59
milled very well. Yum.
32:01
So interesting spectrum that exists here in Korea and some
32:04
cafes do also serve Japanese matcha.
32:07
We also learned some very interesting gossip in Hadong
32:09
that they were telling us all of their export countries.
32:13
Japan was one of their export countries.
32:19
I. Wonder why they are?
32:21
They are part of this global, you know, matcha laundry scheme
32:25
that we have been seeing between Japan and China.
32:28
Highly doubt that that's being labeled as a Korean product.
32:33
One more candidate for UGT. By the way, we're doing we're
32:36
still deep deep deep in this UGT rabbit, but I'll share some
32:41
statistics is that watch, I'll show a personal anecdote.
32:45
It's basically impossible to source tea that's actually from
32:48
Uji grown 10 shot at the moment unless you have really long
32:52
standing established relationships with one of 35
32:55
farmers. That's how many farmers there
32:57
are, and they produce about 70 tons of tensha a year.
33:01
But you compare that to the amount of tensha that can be
33:04
legally sold as Ujimacha by the trademark definition, which is
33:09
tea coming from anywhere in Kyoto Prefecture, Nara, Shige or
33:14
MIE. So long as that the shiage
33:16
processing is done in anywhere in Kyoto Prefecture.
33:20
Uji itself contributes about 1 to 2% of the material that can
33:26
be legally labeled as Ujimacha, and it's quite irritating
33:31
actually. I'm not going to reveal who
33:33
we're sourcing from for many reasons, but one of them is so
33:38
that I can criticize where we're doing it for a bunch of people,
33:41
but we're trying to get all this information about like, you
33:44
know, what are your fertilizing practices, how long is it
33:46
shaded, how is it processed, etcetera, etcetera.
33:50
And the quote that we got did not come from Ujis from a
33:53
actually much less well known area in Kyoto Prefecture that
33:57
produces tensha. And they wrote on the invoice
34:00
Ujimacha, but in the e-mail detail they gave all the detail
34:04
actually what like sub region that it came from and and you
34:07
know, it's obvious why they're writing that.
34:10
Yeah, the concept of, you know, geolocations in Asia, I feel
34:16
like it's quite different, you know, than the Western
34:20
definition of what a geolabel should be for a product.
34:24
We saw the same thing in Korea too.
34:26
Like hard on tea. The whole GD sign tea producing
34:30
region actually covers places like Hadong Huage and Gude, but
34:35
everyone just called their tea huddle.
34:37
Yeah, even though, you know, tea can be from other regions in the
34:40
southern part of the mountain. It's like one name gets very
34:44
famous and it's just easier to bucket everything in.
34:47
That, yeah, exactly. And you saw that in in Yunnan as
34:50
well, you know, EU tea in Yunnan.
34:52
But you know, EU actually contains all the regions around
34:56
little town. The town was actually the
34:59
trading center of all of the tea coming from all the nearby areas
35:03
like Wang Gong, like Mahe. But actually to a very long
35:08
period of time. In Iwu, they don't actually
35:11
produce any tea. Everything was from the
35:14
surrounding region, but they just got compiled into one
35:17
location. I guess you see that too in
35:18
Fujian too. If you look at like Kungmu
35:20
Village, which is famous for producing Lapsang Tu Chong,
35:23
right? The vast majority of the Lapsang
35:25
Tu Chong in the world is not coming from Tangmu Village.
35:28
Yeah, it's a pretty interesting story.
35:30
Foreigners are not even allowed to enter Kungmu Village.
35:33
It's one of the few places in China that you not only you need
35:36
extremely special permission, but for.
35:38
Foreigners, you need you need a personal invitation coming from
35:42
a Tombo village residence to be able to go to the village.
35:48
So it's a very special opportunity for people, and we
35:50
have certain interesting stories even from Korean tea friends
35:54
who, like, sit right outside the village trying to get an
35:57
invitation to go inside. It's so famous.
36:00
For those of you that don't know, lapsing tutong was a type
36:03
of fully oxidized tea. So we call it black tea in
36:05
English, and in China or in Asia we call it red tea.
36:09
But the good stuff is Pinewood smoked.
36:12
So it's that very smoky black tea that is now known in the
36:16
West as lapsing Tutong. Yeah, and historically, this tea
36:20
was largely consumed by the European monarchs.
36:24
They were a very large portion of them, worse, specifically
36:28
commissioned by the monarchs back in Europe.
36:31
Now it's a tea that can be enjoyed by our commoners.
36:33
And produced outside of Tung MU Village as well.
36:36
But still, I mean people if you buy any random lapsing SU Chong,
36:39
people are going to mention the words Tong MU Village definitely
36:42
does not come from that area proper.
36:44
So I mean putting it into further context.
36:47
Interesting resonance with UGT. Yeah, it's actually makes the
36:51
UGT phenomenon a lot more forgivable.
36:54
And I think what happens is, is that a lot of us Westerners get
36:58
confused when we go in to start doing sourcing because
37:02
especially if you're not going directly to the source, if
37:04
you're buying from the middleman, which is what a lot
37:07
more people do, you get very confused about.
37:10
Like, is it UGT? Like, I'm being told it's UGI.
37:13
I'm being told it can be labeled as UGI cha from all of these
37:16
experts in this respect around a products.
37:20
Provenance in origin is nonexistent by a lot of these
37:24
tea circles. Not saying they don't respect
37:26
the tea, but they don't respect the teas provenance.
37:29
The idea of provenance in origin is much more old world
37:34
traditional, where the selling was happening, the blending was
37:37
happening, etcetera. Yeah.
37:39
It's also about perspective, right?
37:41
Because like, as a consumer like us, we care about that.
37:45
But you know, as a tea farmer or manufacturer or procure, you
37:50
know, they, they, this, these labels doesn't serve anything,
37:53
you know, interesting or valuable for them.
37:55
So it's by the end of the day, it's really what do you care
37:58
about? Right, Back to our old topic.
38:00
Yeah, and if you really care, you need to do a lot more
38:03
digging to really confirm. Is my tea coming from where we
38:07
think it's coming from? Because it's you have all of
38:10
these definitions. I mean, Ujicha is, legally
38:13
speaking, it's a trademark. It's not even AGI protected
38:17
status and which has very specific rules about like
38:20
process and provenance. But it's also an idea, right?
38:24
The idea of uji matcha in a consumers mind.
38:27
And you know, I would say that the Japanese in general have
38:30
done a very good job making people believe that when they're
38:33
drinking uji cha uji matcha that it is coming from uji.
38:38
But that's not true. And then you have all the
38:40
historical precedent, which is a really interesting, much more
38:43
complicated story than I ever imagined, which is what that
38:46
episode's going to be about. And it's also a style, a
38:49
processing style. It's a flavor.
38:51
And A flavor style like a. Blend flavor style really
38:55
complicated when you view this from different angles, like if
38:58
we put ourselves caring about different things, if we put
39:01
ourselves in the feeding farmer for the blender or historian or
39:05
someone from the past or from a consumer that's trying to learn
39:08
about it's a specialty product. You can define and hash judgment
39:12
on this practice of what I'll call miss objectively
39:15
mislabeling Ujicha. If from a purely provenance
39:19
perspective, you can pass different types of judgment.
39:22
It's like a really fascinating story.
39:24
Yeah, a lot of facades. But looping back around a Korean
39:29
matcha, It's actually incredibly new here.
39:32
The vast majority of Korean modern matcha production we were
39:36
asking some industry veterans here didn't really start
39:40
happening until around the 1990s and it growing in those three
39:45
main areas in Hadong in Bosong, former colonial era area set up
39:52
by the Japanese, mainly Japanese cultivars and then starting in
39:56
the 1970s in Jeju so. It's interesting.
39:59
It's interesting, I think that you know how do I frame this
40:03
Matcha is also getting. Very popular within Korea too,
40:07
like we've been seeing, you know, matcha being served in a
40:09
lot of these cafes in Korea. And as we have known and
40:16
personally experienced, we've been coming to Korea in the past
40:20
decade. Korea was largely a coffee
40:23
drinking country, yes. Very still is.
40:26
Still is in modern days. And I think, like, matcha is
40:30
really helping, you know, Korea to kind of form a homecoming of
40:35
tea again into the modern generation of, you know,
40:39
drinking beverages. It might actually just be matcha
40:42
that helps save the Korean tea industry by getting people
40:46
interested in tea in general and then discover that Korea itself
40:50
has this interesting long rich history of tea and actually have
40:55
a very interesting story. The first time I came to Korea,
40:58
our friend who basically spent a lot of time growing up around
41:01
Buddhist monasteries deep within the hills of the area around
41:05
Hadong and Jodi San, that mountain range, mountain area,
41:09
and he took me to a temple where he is a very good friend.
41:12
We got to visit the head monk and they have all this tea
41:15
growing around the temple that's been there for very, very, very
41:20
long time. This is one of the temples that
41:23
it's existed and has all this wild tea growing around it.
41:25
Like we mentioned before, that was brought in during the Tang
41:28
Dynasty. Yeah, he he brought me there
41:30
too. I believe that's Huangza, right?
41:32
Yes. Beautiful, beautiful temple and
41:34
very nice decultivation managed by the monks.
41:37
Well, sort of, sort of. So that's the interesting story.
41:40
Not managed, but the harvest. Like no, not anymore.
41:43
So when I went, I went, I think here's after you did.
41:45
I went in 2022 for the first time there with Hyoem and we
41:54
talked to the monk and I asked him do they pick and grow the
41:56
tea? And he said, not anymore.
41:59
Really. Why they all, they all love
42:01
coffee. There is very little interest
42:05
among the young monks to like process and pick and process
42:09
this tea. And it's interesting.
42:11
So we had a tea session with that with the head monk for
42:15
about an hour. And I believe we drank the tea
42:17
that our friend made. And then the next thing that we
42:21
drank is he Ord a very nice pour over.
42:24
He was telling me all about the origins of these beans and they
42:28
were roasted by some local guy growing them fresh and we were
42:33
drinking them out of Korean tea cups.
42:36
That's hilarious. Oh, here I am.
42:37
Roast coffees too. It's a very deep coffee culture
42:41
here. Yeah.
42:42
Oh wow. Very sad.
42:44
Yeah, it's a little sad. Anyways, back to your story.
42:47
Why? No, it's that's the story.
42:48
And but I mean, full circle is that just like in in Japan,
42:51
which is actually coffee is what's cool.
42:53
So it's the majority of young people want to drink and
42:55
consume. Having the pendulum swing back
42:58
to having people, you know, discover matcha in all of these
43:01
new and interesting formats here will get people interested in
43:05
tea and then realize that, oh, wow, Korea's been producing tea
43:09
for a long time. Oh, we have this really
43:11
interesting production that's going on in jeju or bosun and in
43:15
the hadong area and discover these wonderful products that
43:19
taste really different than anything else in the rest of the
43:22
world. It's exactly the same type of
43:24
phenomenon that can happen within Japanese tea as well.
43:26
Young people aren't interested in tea.
43:28
They're not interested in matcha or tea ceremony in general or
43:32
and look at sencha, gokiro, kabu, secha.
43:36
All of these things are in a weird form of structural
43:38
decline. Especially all these Japanese
43:40
farmers switch from like let's say sencha production to tencha
43:44
production to feed the global demand.
43:46
We have even less supply of loose leaf tea to feed Japanese
43:50
own culture. And it makes sense they're
43:52
responding to market demands. No one wants to buy the sencha.
43:56
Why are you making more sencha than anyone wants to drink?
43:59
But if people get into tea, meet some gateway and matcha is a
44:04
very easy gateway. And if Japanese people start
44:07
finding matcha cool, maybe they'll start finding Sancha
44:10
cool again or go KIRO cool again.
44:12
And then it's a much more interesting thriving market.
44:16
Like matcha is not a it is a large class of thing that
44:20
someone could be interested in, but people aren't static either.
44:24
And it actually can give a whole gift to these very traditional
44:28
arts and industries, some that we see.
44:30
It's helping the tea industry as a whole by the end of the day,
44:34
you know, like for any gardens that can find matcha, they can
44:37
form other teas. It's really depends on the
44:39
market dynamic. And, you know, it also
44:42
encourages farmers to, you know, continue to do farming practices
44:47
in all these areas. Both Japan and Korea are aging
44:51
populations. There are less and less people
44:53
wanted to do agriculture, especially so in in Japan,
44:58
right? Like it's not only a matcha
45:00
shortage that we are seeing right now.
45:01
There's a rice shortage, there's a vegetable shortage.
45:04
There are a lot of, you know, shortages that's happening in
45:08
these areas and, you know, making a farming practice cool,
45:12
making, you know, a farming practice profitable is really
45:16
the ultimate, I think, impetus for, you know, the next
45:19
generation to continued this wonderful practice.
45:22
And actually, people underestimate the importance of
45:25
governments and these types of effort.
45:27
If you want to read some really interesting literature and some
45:31
comparison within Japanese crops, you should read about the
45:35
rice shortage. Yeah, there there's a right now
45:38
a rice shortage in Japan and it's a little unprecedented, but
45:41
they've even loosened up the tariffs and restrictions of
45:44
bringing in American rice or Korean rice to help make up for
45:48
the deficit. But it's a really interesting
45:50
case of government controlled government control and
45:53
government policy and incentives that have led to the system
45:57
where they don't produce enough rice and the price has gone up a
46:00
lot. And if you really dig deep into
46:03
the way the government and the Ministry of Forestry and
46:06
Agriculture and all of these tea cooperatives look and the
46:11
cooperative system and who owns the tea processing facilities,
46:15
the government can actually really make or break these
46:19
industries. And actually even here in Korea,
46:21
the potential factory that we visited in Hadong is government
46:26
owned. It's.
46:27
Arguably more collectivized in in Korea.
46:32
Yeah, and it's with the explicit purpose of propping up the local
46:36
economy, having a place for for for tea farmers to sell their
46:41
tea and then get processed to bring local jobs for this
46:46
factory. And it's also a way of
46:48
preserving tea culture there, making sure that there's places
46:53
to sell all of this team. Yeah.
46:55
It's a wonderful and complex and interesting ecosystem that we
47:00
are seeing here. It's very.
47:01
Interesting, we just barely scratched the surface, so we're.
47:05
Definitely coming back absolutely next time to judge
47:08
you probably and then maybe later on the Boson to do more
47:11
learning to do some sourcing. We have the, we really think
47:15
that there's some excellent value to be found here and some
47:17
very interesting, compelling stories that consumers would
47:20
deeply resonate with around flavors that they like at a
47:25
price point. That's interesting.
47:26
And in the way that they're respecting the local customs and
47:30
terrains and practices and cultivars and styles that exist,
47:35
as well as some mimicry, which is obvious, which is, you know,
47:39
what's going on in Jeju Island and even what we're tasting, you
47:42
know, you can taste some local expression.
47:44
It does not exactly taste like anything we've had from the
47:47
Japanese. Product.
47:48
No, it does not, even though it's Yapukita.
47:50
Yeah, it's really a like eye opening moment for what Yapukita
47:55
can be. And it has unleashed its
47:57
potential apparently in Jeju Island, which is quite
48:00
fascinating. I wonder what's their shape,
48:03
Eating practice and fertilization practice over
48:05
there must be very different. And there's some really, you
48:08
know, as we as we wrap up this episode, I was reflecting with
48:11
Sam yesterday that there's some really deep resonances here of
48:15
what's going on even within East Asia tea culture and East Asian
48:19
matcha production. There's some really interesting
48:22
echoes of these very new ways of taking over a narrative within
48:28
the context of American Asianness.
48:32
So I within the last 10 years or so, there's been a wave of Asian
48:36
founded food and beverage brands in the United States by
48:40
Vietnamese immigrants, by Chinese immigrants.
48:43
And these are typically second generation people.
48:46
So people are fully culturally American, but you know, they
48:49
grew up where people were asking them, where are you from?
48:52
No, where are you really? From.
48:55
This is a really common trope and their complaint when they
48:58
started founding these businesses that it was actually
49:01
the whole industrial food system that had control over the
49:05
narrative of Asian food. Like there's this concept of the
49:09
ethnic aisle, and all the Chinese products had that
49:12
horrible bamboo font, or the Japanese products had this
49:16
horrible bamboo font. And you had, like, samurai
49:19
pictures on, like, Chinese noodle packaging.
49:23
Yeah. Or like Japanese cherry blossom
49:26
on Gray wall, it's. This weird lack of understanding
49:31
around defining what Asian Ness is like.
49:34
They could take back control over that narrative, especially
49:38
from a quality perspective. It's like Fly by Jing is a chili
49:42
oil chili crisp brand and their goal was to produce the highest
49:46
quality ingredients in Sichuan. Make it much more modern and
49:51
sell it to a modern audience within the US and try to break
49:55
out of these narratives that yeah, Chinese food can be
49:59
extremely high quality and very interesting and very versatile,
50:03
introducing people to a bunch of new flavors.
50:06
I mean, they're remarkably successful now.
50:08
And you had other Asian food brands like Amsam and there's
50:12
this all of these Asian founded brands that are trying to take
50:17
back control over the narrative of of what is essentially A
50:21
reductivist mindset. All Chinese food is this way,
50:24
All Asian food is this way. It's like, you know, Chinese
50:27
food is orange chicken and it to a much more nuanced
50:30
conversation. And I feel like a similar
50:32
transformation is going to happen within matcha because we
50:35
have this very reductionist idea of what matcha is and that it
50:38
has to be from Japan. It is Japanese.
50:41
Anything else is faked and it's a form of mimicry.
50:44
But that's a reductivist argument.
50:46
If you like, zoom out and draw through the multiple threads of
50:51
tea and tea influence both in East Asia and how tea spread
50:56
from China to Korea to Japan. But also how things were
50:59
changing in Japan. And all of the foreign
51:02
influences and pressure and the dynamics around nationalism have
51:06
created all of these stories. And the push to create Japanese
51:10
NIST and where tea was chosen as a cultural element in Japan to
51:15
embody Japanese Ness in the same way that modern Korean tea
51:18
ceremony dot it is also was used by nationalists, anti Japanese
51:23
nationalists to create a strong sense of Korean identity.
51:27
So you have to start separating up the myths, the agendas and
51:30
the incentives. And when you start doing that,
51:32
it gets to a much more interesting story where Korean
51:36
matcha can be a broader story of tea in general than just trying
51:42
to copy what's being done in Japan.
51:45
Yeah, exactly. It's very, it's a, it's a really
51:49
interesting reflection of what Korean what, what Korean tea is
51:54
and what Korean tea can be. It's taking control over the
51:57
narrative of authenticity. Yeah, Because ultimately it's an
52:00
authenticity argument that anything that isn't made in
52:05
Japan is not authentic. Yeah, it's quite an interesting
52:09
dynamic that we're seeing here in all these East Asian
52:12
countries that matcha as a vehicle really carries a lot of
52:16
things that beyond its own taste, culture and history.
52:20
Like think a true globalization future of matcha, but it
52:25
shouldn't be that, you know, like no one is talking about,
52:27
you know, how coffee is carrying Ethiopian culture or Yemen
52:31
culture. No one's talking about how Pinot
52:34
Grigio is carrying Italian culture.
52:37
Like I think, you know, in the future as we, you know, grow
52:42
altogether consumer wise and industry wise, a true healthy
52:46
future of matcha should be a vehicle to carry the local tawa
52:51
and the local flavor instead of you know.
52:53
Or both. Or, or or both.
52:56
But, you know, like, I think 1 should not be a blocker of the
53:01
other, you know, 1 cultural or identity identity argument
53:06
should not be a blocker of something that can be done
53:09
elsewhere that can be, you know, reflective of its own culture or
53:14
its own, you know, history. Yeah.
53:16
So that's a long way to saying that, you know, like we I think,
53:22
I think we should keep more open mind when we are seeing, you
53:27
know, Mata or mortar or Malta in Korean being, you know, grown,
53:33
being manufactured and being consumed coming outside of
53:36
Japan. Yeah, no, absolutely.
53:39
And it's interesting how tea has always been chosen as this
53:43
vehicle. Yeah, yeah.
53:44
And. Everyone, actually.
53:46
It's very interesting. And also, like, tea has always
53:49
been international. Yeah.
53:51
Like, from the very, very beginning, like even within
53:56
China, China was separated into different states.
53:59
Yunnan was its own state. It's not actually part of, you
54:02
know, the great China idea for a long time.
54:05
And it was international at that time.
54:08
And then, you know, or Mata was or mortar was being introduced
54:13
into the Korean Peninsula and then later into Japan.
54:17
That was international. And now we are seeing much of
54:21
being, you know, consumed all of the globe by different, you
54:25
know, countries and that's international.
54:27
And now we are seeing, you know, the way the making matcha in
54:31
Japan in modern days gets reintroduced into Korea and into
54:35
China and gets transformed into its own thing using, you know,
54:39
their own local cultivars. In China, they use long Jing.
54:42
In Korea they use, you know, local hadong tea.
54:45
And that's again international. The coolness factor, The
54:49
spotlight has just moved. Yeah, yeah.
54:51
It's really a continual evolution of what he can be, not
54:56
what he should be. That's a.
54:58
Great framework. In, you know, across all these
55:01
times. Yeah, absolutely.
55:03
And just needs, you know, refreshing take to get out of
55:07
the narratives that we all live and breathe in every day.
55:10
And that this is actually much more complicated than just a
55:12
Japanese story that the Japanese participated in themselves
55:16
during the imperial period. That's how a lot of the, the,
55:19
you know, some of these tea producing places got set up not
55:22
only in in Korea, but in places like Taiwan.
55:25
So it's much more complex history and not as pure as you
55:29
might think. And let's just appreciate the
55:32
diversity and, you know, differences instead of, you
55:36
know, arguing and debating over each other.
55:38
Absolutely, it's the subject of appreciation should be the key
55:43
and it doesn't need to carry along all this cultural baggage
55:46
to use a very loaded word. But it's to a Korean could be
55:50
very anti Japanese. Rightly so based on the
55:54
historical. Turmoil.
55:56
Turmoil, mistreatment, killing, torture, rape.
56:00
It's really nasty Japanese colonial history too.
56:04
And it's actually interesting to see how adopted a this, what is
56:08
perceived as a Japanese product in Korea.
56:10
It's really shown that a lot of time has passed, I think because
56:14
maybe this could not have taken root during like my grandparents
56:18
junctions or, you know, when they were like mid aged adults
56:22
in the 60s. Yeah.
56:23
Time can really smooth everything I feel like because,
56:27
you know, back in the Tang dynasty, the Chinese also did
56:30
something very horrible to the Koreans to multiple invasions
56:33
conducted by the Tang and the sway court.
56:35
But you know, by the end of the day, everyone still drinks tea
56:40
across different, you know, dynasties across different
56:43
areas, across different people. So maybe T is the answer.
56:47
Or maybe T is the answer. So anyway, thanks for listening
56:50
and we'll see you in the next one.
56:51
See you in the future.