Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Matcha Retail in Uji and Kyoto

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Matcha Retail in Uji and Kyoto · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
0:02
My name is Ryan. This is Michael Hozongjun.
0:04
Hello. Hello Konijiwa.
0:06
And we're the Co founders of Sanko Match products.
0:09
Yeah. So we launched this podcast to
0:11
discuss our learning journey, Matcha, share star stories and
0:14
interview experts. And today we are having our very
0:18
first episode record in Kyoto, Japan.
0:21
Yeah, we're in Japan. So we're trying to record a
0:24
couple of these throughout our trips and we're sourcing by
0:27
trying to meet farmers, trying to understand more about the
0:31
traditions and the way these products are marketed and sold
0:34
domestically. And also talk to farmers and see
0:37
like what is it like from the people that are on the ground
0:40
and try to get the perspective from the outside in and from the
0:44
inside out. And something that we're
0:45
realizing we were just talking about this last night is that
0:49
matcha. And learning about matcha is
0:53
less about finding the truth and more about finding perspective
0:58
like you find people. Even the people we have talked
1:01
to so far this trip just have radically different ideas about
1:07
perspective and things that we were expecting to get pushed
1:10
back on saying, Oh no, not traditional, we don't want to do
1:13
it this way. They're actually everyone's very
1:16
open minded to it in places that we didn't expect.
1:18
Yeah, like truth is almost a illusion.
1:22
Like there's no such thing as truth.
1:25
There is there are things that people do and people believe in
1:30
those things that they do, but you know, like they they might
1:34
actually contradicting to each other.
1:36
What exactly is the best matcha? Or what is real matcha?
1:40
What is real matcha? Or authentic or traditional and
1:43
like even like the the shading mechanisms.
1:47
We were at one of the museums in Uji and these shading canopies,
1:52
right, they were an innovation 400 years ago.
1:56
At some point, what we consider traditional now was innovative.
2:01
And you can say the same thing about industrial Ishiusus or the
2:04
granite stone mills that make matcha.
2:06
Used to be that everyone milled their own matcha at home.
2:10
The product that you bought 150 years ago was Tensha and then
2:15
you milled it at home. And really it was just for the
2:18
elite people who had the time, the luxury, the taste that
2:21
cultivated their preferences and had the hardware to physically
2:26
create this matcha. So even saying that these new
2:30
industrial motorized these uses that mill matcha, that is an
2:34
innovation that, you know, a lot of the times when you're from
2:38
the outside looking in, you know, it's seen as this must
2:43
have without it, it's not really true matcha.
2:46
And it does produce a higher quality product than a lot of
2:49
the smaller hand mill dish uses for sure.
2:52
And I believe that a lot of the producers that if they did do it
2:54
by hand, they actually mill it twice and because there's just
2:58
not enough time in the grind phase.
3:00
So it's it's so interesting searching for these different
3:04
perspectives. And not to mention about like
3:06
the endless pursuit of moniness in the current date matcha,
3:11
that's actually very modern. Like people back in the days, as
3:16
we, you know, talked to farmers that were actually working in
3:19
Wuji, they don't really like they, they don't fertilize their
3:22
matcha to the NTH degree as we are seeing nowadays.
3:26
And there were no such thing as they call it hinge room.
3:30
So the the cultivars, everything was stylized back in the days.
3:35
Or seed propagated. Yeah, seed propagated of matcha.
3:39
And you know, like it's all of these that we are perceiving as
3:43
a status quo or norm nowadays is really not that traditional.
3:49
Yeah. And we taste some of the matcha
3:52
that were produced in a more organic, more natural.
3:57
I think it's better to almost call it a garden.
3:59
Yeah, garden method. It's very good, very tasty.
4:03
Yeah, and they're not crazy umami bombs, right?
4:06
Like it seems like the Japanese mass market preference might
4:09
even be different than the Japanese specialty preference,
4:13
which is much more complex and less 1 dimensional.
4:17
It's some of these just straight fertilized umami bombs that, you
4:21
know we've all had. Well, like you really see that
4:25
kind of quality differentiation and it's actually reflected by
4:30
the price in retail stores. You don't necessarily see that
4:35
in, you know, in Wuji or in, you know, farmers doing the farmers
4:39
conversation. They don't necessarily
4:40
categorize their He's quality in terms of, you know, yeah, in
4:45
terms of how the retail stores are doing.
4:47
Yeah. But I mean, if you do go to Uji
4:50
as a tourist, you will see that, right?
4:52
Yeah. You see all of these retail,
4:54
retail. Stores in the Wuji Main Street,
4:56
of course. Yeah.
4:57
You really have to go underneath the surface to make some of
4:59
these discoveries. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
5:02
So today we wanted to talk about what it's like to be a retail
5:06
customer in Japan, in Kyoto, in Uji.
5:09
When you go to these very traditional matcha houses,
5:12
blending houses, traditional matcha brands, what it's like
5:15
trying to understand what products they have to offer and
5:19
what the range of flavor profiles are.
5:21
So we have some experiences and that we would like to share and
5:24
then some sort of reflections on what our observations are so far
5:28
and some of the different perspectives that we've heard.
5:30
So we are going to talk about a few specific brand names here,
5:34
and we're actually going to talk about some tasting notes that we
5:37
did, but by no means should anyone.
5:39
Please don't take away that this is like a review episode.
5:43
We're revealing matcha. We're going to try our best to
5:46
remove our subjective judgment. We will share our subjective
5:51
opinion about our preferences and whether or not we liked it,
5:55
but by no means is it a judgment, and it's very much a
5:57
reflection of our own taste. Yeah, I cannot be totally
6:01
contradicting to your own preference, and we're definitely
6:04
going to save you from some very loud sipping noise ASMR. Yes, we
6:10
we already tasted it. We took the notes.
6:13
So without further ado, we went to one of the coolest retail
6:17
experiences you can have for matcha when you come as a
6:21
tourist to Kyoto. And I will not attempt to
6:25
butcher the name. I'm horrible with names.
6:27
I'm horrible with pronunciation. And by the way, I very little or
6:31
limited Japanese language skills.
6:32
Sam has a decent amount. So between his Japanese and the
6:37
people that we're trying to purchase from and their English,
6:39
some communication does happen. But I'm sure it's a very
6:42
different experience shopping at these places if you're fluent in
6:47
Japanese. But Sam, do you want to talk
6:48
about the experience of walking into the 1st place that we went
6:52
to? Yeah, let's go 1 by 1.
6:54
The first one is Leo, and the name means Willow and
6:59
Sacriflower Garden. It's a very nice retail store
7:03
sitting in the middle of Kyoto City.
7:06
And as you walk in, the whole store is laid out with the giant
7:11
tatami map sitting in the center.
7:14
And you were sitting right next to the tatami.
7:17
And they will come by and greet you with a very ice cold Yoko.
7:24
And as you sipping the girl tea, they presented you with a menu
7:28
and they expect you to choose from it.
7:31
And this is a. If we can taste the matcha, we
7:34
ask what are these matcha tastes like and the answer is no, you
7:39
cannot taste the matcha. And the answer is going from
7:42
left to right. The left is most bitter, the
7:46
right is. Most sweet and this is like if
7:49
you've ever been to a Japanese restaurant, it's like this very
7:53
long menu on this elongated printed sheet of paper and it
7:58
looks like they're about 25 different choices as it goes
8:04
across the paper sending in price.
8:07
And there's very little we have it in front of us right now.
8:09
So Sam with with your language skills, can you sort of
8:13
breakdown what you're seeing on that top row?
8:15
Yeah. So the entire menu is breakdown
8:18
into two largely 2 categories. So the top row is Macha and the
8:25
bottom row is Goklo, Sancha and Bancha and all the other
8:29
miscellaneous team. And for the top Rd. you have all
8:33
of these poetic names. Something something shit or
8:37
something something Mukashi with a endorsement sometimes by some
8:42
Yamoto's of certain schools. So Iamoto's are like the
8:46
headmaster, the head of that institution, like the Iamoto
8:50
Vamoto Sankei endorses this product.
8:52
It's a blend for them. Or what?
8:54
A Sankei or some of the I think some temples too.
8:57
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there will be a nice little
9:01
note saying that you know if this tea is suitable, more
9:04
suitable for usucha or koicha. And then you have the price
9:08
underneath. This tea retail in Japan is much
9:12
more affordable than what you'll find online in the States or in
9:14
Europe. Yeah, and this is like one of
9:17
the oldest and more like most reputable tea garden in Japan in
9:23
Wuji. So our tea blend house, I think
9:25
it's not all their tea, it's. Yeah, that's right.
9:27
Some of their teas will have a note saying that this is
9:31
straight from their own garden, and some others do not have that
9:35
note. So I would say it probably
9:37
implies that they would, you know, procure tea from other
9:40
gardens too. And just to further
9:42
contextualize this place, I know that Kettles Matcha Milk Club
9:46
will sometimes buy Tenshaw from this producer, considered to be
9:50
a very famous blend house and they'll mill it fresh.
9:53
My my impression of this house goes way back.
9:57
Does it, yeah, to 2017 that's. Right with the cloques.
10:02
Yeah, with cloques and sense. So doing the Cha Kabuki event
10:07
with the cloques in in New York, one of the game tea is Luo.
10:14
There is Kambayashi. Yeah, so I remember that very
10:18
vividly. You.
10:19
Have a great memory all the matcha.
10:21
So we asked about all of these blends these these 25 blends
10:26
like what's the difference? Why is the most one more
10:30
expensive and why is the cheapest 1 the least expensive?
10:35
We asked what the cultivars were.
10:37
We asked how fresh it was milled or like if they have a guarantee
10:42
like is this how old is the oldest one on this list?
10:46
Like how old like when do you no longer willing to sell it?
10:50
They said they told us three months.
10:52
So everything is supposedly milled within a three month
10:55
window. It's a lot of inventory to hold.
10:58
But although I mean, with all these endorsements, they
11:01
probably have a lot of local buyers, right, for all of these
11:05
Iamoto's, right, They're using a lot of tea and then the all of
11:08
these institutions are, but supposedly it's all milled
11:11
within three months and but nothing was refrigerated.
11:15
Surprisingly, when we got the tea itself, at least it was not
11:19
cold. Yeah, or at least the can wasn't
11:21
cold. I don't know if they transferred
11:23
it to order and it was in the refrigerator, but it's unclear
11:27
if it's cold storage within those three months.
11:29
Yeah, very unclear. And most of the tea actually, I
11:32
think that's the only tea house or tea store that we went to
11:36
that doesn't have a refrigerator.
11:39
All of their machos just sitting on on the counter.
11:42
Yeah, that's true. And for all the other stores
11:45
that we in they, they always have a little like glass
11:49
refrigerator that people just store their matcha in it and you
11:53
can see through. This is something that is
11:56
important to note. I I went to the store about two
12:00
years ago and I bought a lot of matcha that it was kind of
12:03
consuming over the next couple of months when I came home.
12:06
This store uses paper packaging so it's a standard tin where
12:11
there's like 1 thing that slides down to close the tin, but they
12:15
put a piece of paper around it so it's an unsealed tent.
12:19
It's not modern packaging technology which is both a very
12:23
romantic. But by the time I opened it I
12:26
bought a lot of tea. So maybe a month or two after I
12:29
came home I opened it and compared it to some of the
12:33
modern packaged tea in these perfectly sealed containers.
12:37
And I bet some of them are nitrogen flushed too, to remove
12:40
the oxygen. The quality degraded very
12:42
quickly. Like, this is clearly a local
12:45
institution. You're meant to buy locally and
12:47
consume quickly. And this is not modern packaging
12:50
technology. If you come here and you buy
12:52
something, don't camp on it. It is not sealed.
12:55
It's not really properly sealed. And it's not a criticism.
12:58
It's just you have to modify your behavior to the way that
13:02
this is intended to be, the way I'm presuming it's intended to
13:06
be consumed. Also good to see that a lot of
13:10
these tea houses are adapting to new technology.
13:13
That's true, Yeah. Even some of the most
13:15
traditional houses that are using the nitrogen flushing
13:18
perfect sealed can. Yeah, really preserves the
13:21
product in a radically better way to make it more accessible
13:25
for all of us. Yeah.
13:26
I mean, back in the day, I bet you know, with the before this
13:30
technology existed by the time this can got to you and before
13:34
modern air freight travel wouldn't have been as good.
13:37
Yeah. When when Macho was debuted
13:39
good, you know, in the early days, the Paris, you know, Expos
13:43
or when in the early days it came to New York, it was this
13:46
packaging technology, even if it was great tea it's.
13:50
It's not good anymore. It's not as good anymore.
13:53
It tastes like seawater, the tea.
13:55
So I don't know, like when people talk about Japan, like
13:58
especially traditional industry in Japan, like people like to
14:03
almost romanticize like the traditional way.
14:05
Like traditional is always better, but we sometimes forget
14:09
that this is also a land of technology.
14:12
People, Very true. People are very innovative and
14:15
very technology driven here in Japan too.
14:19
So you know, like there's nothing wrong about it.
14:21
I think it's a good practice that your matcha can sit much
14:25
longer and fresher in the fridge.
14:27
Absolutely. You know, some institutions you
14:29
just have to modify your own behavior that this to you not
14:33
matter modern packaging technology, it's just a
14:36
continuation of the way it's been done, which is a beautiful
14:40
experience to have. But maybe don't buy in bulk here
14:43
for later unless you're going to transfer it to different
14:45
packaging. Bring a nitrogen flush machine
14:48
with you. Decided to pick your here.
14:52
They weren't able to answer a lot of our questions around what
14:54
was most expensive or least expensive.
14:57
We got no information about the cultivar we actually did from
15:01
other houses, so they're holding very secretive information on to
15:06
that. And there's very little
15:08
information we can get from the name Zhongjun.
15:11
Can you like list out a few of these names just to add a little
15:13
color of like what a consumer has to work with when they go
15:17
through these 25 different matchas?
15:19
I see you have from the cheapest, which is one of the
15:23
matcha we end up buying and tasting.
15:25
It's koku Mukashi literally means extreme nostalgia.
15:31
OK, very nostalgia goes way back.
15:34
You have much N Shiloh, so pine white and you have mountain peak
15:39
white, you have little Rd. White, you have Cloud on the
15:47
river, White and you have Hatsumukashi, which every single
15:53
houses that we have been to almost all featured is.
15:56
Hatsumukashi. But as we learn, it doesn't
16:00
really mean anything. It can be sold for like 500 six
16:04
¥100 per can or like 40 ¥4000 per camp.
16:09
Actually, let's put a pin in that.
16:11
That's super interesting to note is we keep seeing hatsu mukashi
16:15
everywhere and we became very curious.
16:18
So we started looking around different vendors online while
16:20
we were here in Japan for EPOTO, for example, I think it locally
16:26
it's ¥600 and they kind of recommend that it's like
16:29
confectionery grade or latte grade, very cheap, 600 yens like
16:33
$4.00, very cheap. And then and other vendors, it's
16:37
like usacha or koicha, thick tea grade, where it's very much
16:41
intended to be consumed on its own.
16:43
So imagine you're someone and you're just getting into matcha
16:47
and you're looking around online and you try again.
16:50
Oh, I like this Hatsune mukashi. I really like this blend.
16:53
And then you try a different house.
16:55
What we're learning is that it's a completely different product.
17:00
And actually, the poetic name doesn't mean anything brand to
17:04
brand to brand. You actually need to know blank
17:09
person or blank companies. Hatsumukashi, that part of the
17:13
name is indeed meaning. I mean, it might have some
17:16
poetic meaning specific to that house, but it has no meaning
17:19
between vendors. So what really you need to know
17:22
both parts. Blank person or blank things?
17:27
Poetic name. Yeah.
17:28
And well, like we have learned, you know, a perspective from one
17:34
of the Weed House store telling us that, you know, like mukashi
17:38
is usually good for koi cha and shiro is usually good for.
17:43
Kusu cha. So put it in other words,
17:45
Mukashi is usually higher quality because you can drink it
17:49
more concentrated and shiro is you according to this person.
17:53
It's usually lower quality. And can be suitable for more
17:57
dilute. Scenarios, but it's not always
18:00
true. So like in in duo and for
18:03
example Boku Mukashi is the lowest tier of their matcha
18:07
category, their matcha scheme. So and you actually have two
18:11
mukashi named matcha in the very lower, lower end here of this.
18:17
And in our tasting, we just tasted a bunch of matcha that
18:20
we're going to talk about in a second.
18:21
That was the only one we didn't attempt to make into koicha
18:26
oticha. The thin D was enough.
18:27
We were not going to try that 4X concentrated.
18:30
Very, very interesting. We also our stomachs.
18:34
We also learned from 111 of the farmers that we end up visiting
18:39
is that a lot of these are just, you know, they're basically a
18:42
retail, a marketing strategy. Oh yeah, farmers don't care
18:46
about these names. They do not.
18:48
This is a layer much further downstream.
18:52
This is fiction, actually, Yeah. Like when you talk about like
18:56
these brand fictions, these brand stories, like it is
19:00
fiction on a per house basis. You can think of them as
19:03
different cinematic universes, right?
19:06
One company can be Harry Potter, another company can be Star
19:09
Wars, another company can be Tolkien.
19:13
And the words between them are not transposable.
19:16
Yeah, it's it's almost like parallel, parallel universe
19:20
hats. Mukashi doesn't mean it's
19:22
Hatsumukashi is not Hatsumukashi is not Hatsumukashi.
19:26
They all live in different life with different price tag.
19:29
Yes, very interesting, very confusing.
19:32
Very confusing. So as clueless consumers for
19:36
this particular house and what all of these mean other than
19:40
saying endorsed by a whatever or this temple, that temple, we
19:45
said, OK, this will be a cool experiment.
19:47
Let's buy the cheapest 1 and let's buy the most expensive one
19:51
on the spectrum and compare them.
19:54
So that's what we did and we just tasted them.
19:56
So the first thing that we taste is Goku Mukashi.
20:00
And we paid ¥864.00, so about 6 bucks.
20:04
For 40. Grams or 30 grams?
20:08
I think it's 30. I'll double check.
20:09
Right, let's see, 36 grams. OK, interesting.
20:15
Not standard grammage. I guess so 36 grams OK.
20:19
And we either were cheated 4G or 40 gram can or given an extra
20:25
66. Excuse me?
20:26
It's a mandatory tax for the matcha got, but it's noted that
20:32
it's suitable for USUTA and that's all the information we
20:35
have. What's a beautiful color?
20:37
Honestly, if you saw this in a store or in any retail shop or
20:41
at someones home, you would like think wow, this person has some
20:45
very good matcha and this is a fine example of color being
20:48
actually a very bad indicator. The color was amazing.
20:51
It foamed up amazing. We got an amazing microphone.
20:55
The appearance is deceiving. The appearance was incredible,
20:59
like really, truly incredible. And so when people talk about
21:02
beautiful color matcha, it really is just for the eyes,
21:05
especially in this case. Well I mean like appearance from
21:08
matcha is a very important criteria in matcha grading and
21:13
matcha competition. Very true, but by by no means
21:15
this one did not disappoint on color.
21:17
I mean if you compare this was way better than a lot of the
21:21
random ceremonial matcha powder. Like if you go to Whole Foods
21:24
and buy like a random ceremonial matcha powder, this is probably
21:27
better. Than that, I mean, it's indeed a
21:30
fresh product that's almost guaranteed.
21:34
Yes, yeah, it's true. Fresh, very fresh, very local
21:37
product. And by the way, we prepared this
21:38
as Usucha. We used the standard recipe of
21:41
2G to 60 milliliters of water. The water was 75°C and we used
21:49
local or not. We bought a locally, some water,
21:53
some spring water. At the 711, it's mineral water
21:57
from Fuji Mountain, actually very nice, the label.
22:00
So what are your tastes, Ryan? So our tasting notes was that it
22:04
was definitely sharp and had some bitterness and structure,
22:07
but probably in a way that it would be very nice in a milk
22:10
context or a dessert context. If you wanted really high
22:13
quality matcha for like a matcha tiramisu or something.
22:16
It has the pungency and intensity to cut through
22:19
something so I I wouldn't necessarily say it was a bad
22:22
thing and it was a fine usage otherwise.
22:25
There were some nori notes, but the more we talk about nori
22:28
notes, especially across this set, like not all nori is the
22:32
same. This was the slightly more
22:34
marine fishy nori than like the more pure delicious.
22:38
Or or I would say not all umami is the same like this is.
22:42
Well, even with, even with Nori, no.
22:44
I think there's flavor variation in.
22:46
There. Yeah, that's true.
22:47
That's true. But this one is like very Nori.
22:49
Cheap, cheaper nori. Seaweed.
22:52
Sea salt. Sorry, I don't like this tea.
22:56
This is a very bitter. It was pungent.
22:59
It was very one-dimensional, very powdery, very green, very
23:03
little umami. I thought, very little money,
23:05
but I got the nori smell. Kind of like if you go to a
23:08
random grocery store and get, if you're making sushi at home and
23:14
you're just buying nori or nori that's used in a kimbop, green
23:18
kimbop without the sesame oil, kind of similar quality smell.
23:22
And this is not a bad thing. It's a little marine.
23:24
There was no after taste and it was indeed very powdery and kind
23:28
of at a weird mouth feel. The powder texture is definitely
23:32
coarser than the other that we have drink to that so.
23:37
But honestly from our preferences it was not that bad.
23:40
From from where we are in our consumer journey, it is head and
23:45
shoulders better than a lot of the other stuff that mysterious
23:49
self graded ceremonial grade or super ultra premium ceremonial
23:55
grade, which you'll find in other places for literally five
23:58
to six times the price. So nothing to complain about
24:02
here. All right, the most expensive.
24:04
Would you like to introduce that tea?
24:06
Yeah, so this one also it's it has a very poetic thing.
24:13
It means like the mukashi of the top of the textile, whatever
24:20
that means. I mean, I'm literally reading
24:22
the kanji. Like you could have a slightly
24:24
different meaning in Japanese. But it's not endorsed by any of
24:29
the Yamoto. But it does have A tag saying
24:32
that it's very premium, premium grade product and it's suitable
24:39
for koicha. And it also has a special tag
24:43
saying that it's from their Home Guard.
24:45
So very interesting. And it has a price tag of
24:49
¥30,780.00. So what's the gram?
24:53
40 grams, even 40g and so it's what about 2829 U.S. dollars
24:59
depending on the exchange rate. This one visually looked very
25:04
similar. I actually thought it was
25:06
slightly less green. But the foam is definitely
25:10
finer. Way and more there was.
25:13
It foamed much faster and the foam was kind of more fine.
25:16
And as we dumped the matcha from the canning to the bold, we
25:20
discovered much more clumps. Much clumpier.
25:23
So our suspicion is that it was milled finer or maybe milled
25:27
more slowly. So therefore it was milled more
25:29
finely, at least when you're talking about an ishiyusu and
25:33
you know, smaller particles have stronger cohesive horses and
25:36
they're more likely to clump. Whereas the first one was a
25:39
little more dry sand definitely, you know, you could feel some
25:43
particles, it felt slightly, maybe it was, you know, they
25:47
were really speeding up that issue.
25:48
So but it this one felt much more silky.
25:53
And tastes silkier in mouth too, so.
25:56
Yeah, absolutely. So it was very sweet.
25:59
It had this very localized sweetness.
26:02
For anyone who has the reference, there's a candy in
26:05
the state. It's called a smarty.
26:07
It's basically a crushed up sugar cube of powdered sugar.
26:12
And I think there's some acid. It's either citric acid or maybe
26:15
it's tartaric acid, but it's very localized.
26:17
But it gives us very localized sweetness, kind of like a monk
26:21
fruit local. Like you really feel it in one
26:23
part of your mouth. So this one had a very similar
26:26
vibe going on where it just got these very local pockets on your
26:30
tongue of sweetness and. It's also not only like like a
26:35
synthetic sweetness, it's it's mixed with this very like fresh,
26:41
very lively, like icky, like people in Japan.
26:44
Will say. Okay, it's like almost like the
26:46
smell for me. It's like the smell of sweetness
26:50
from like the fresh cut grass or.
26:53
Okay. Fresh cut long, so it's not
26:58
necessarily A+ for me, but that's the reference that I get.
27:01
Weirdly enough, I didn't like this sweetness either.
27:04
It was very off putting to me. It did have umami, which was a
27:08
completely separate tasting note to the sweetness that we were
27:11
referring to. A creamy.
27:13
I got an edamame note. Zhongjin, you mentioned soy
27:16
milk. I think it was a pretty similar
27:18
note we're. Talking about it's a nutty rich
27:21
kind of flavor, Yeah. And the umami for me is not more
27:25
like it's, it doesn't have that kind of like aquatic, you know,
27:29
oceanic kind of flavor. Absolutely.
27:32
Yeah, it's very just like a pure, like savory umami kind of
27:37
feeling. We found it much more complex.
27:40
They did have some bitterness and you got a light white flower
27:43
aroma, which I, I didn't write down in my notes, but in
27:46
retrospect I, I could definitely see that.
27:48
So that was it as usicha. And then it was very
27:51
interesting. We made it into a koicha and had
27:54
a completely different experience.
27:55
Sweetness really intensified. And the umami really intensified
28:00
and all of a sudden out of nowhere, for I got a Nori note,
28:04
but not the fishy marini nori note.
28:07
I got like a like when you come to Japan and you have onigiri
28:11
with the really high quality seaweed, when you take that
28:14
first bite, I get this pure nori taste that's not not like
28:19
directly linked to this fishies like lower quality seaweed, but
28:23
this pure, I don't have a better word than like high quality
28:27
nori. Yeah, I, I actually, I have a
28:30
very different feeling about that Poicha in terms of its
28:34
mumminess. I I think it's for me it tastes
28:37
like a very thick misos, like it's the mumminess from miso.
28:42
This is so weird. I actually haven't.
28:44
I didn't share this with you during the tasting, but I wrote
28:46
it in my notes. It had slight, almost cheesy
28:51
chef or goat cheese, fresh goat cheese savoriness with a little
28:57
bit of funk. It wasn't like as funky or
28:59
barnyardy as like some chef or goat cheese can be, but there
29:03
was this fresh goat cheese, savory, creamy something, but
29:09
with the aroma of it, too, that I tasted in this.
29:12
Yeah, yeah. Very interesting, I actually
29:14
like the koicha more. Me too.
29:16
For the first usucha is definitely not this preference,
29:20
and for this one as a usucha I would say it's neutral, but for
29:26
koicha I actually like it. One thing that I noted was that
29:29
the complexity didn't change. So the intensity changed between
29:33
the usucha and the koicha, but the complexity was just
29:36
different. They were completely different
29:39
profiles in a way that I can describe as nonlinear.
29:43
It's not like by making it koicha's four times more
29:45
concentrated, but it didn't concentrate the flavor four
29:48
times. It was more intense, but it
29:51
expressed completely different flavors.
29:53
All right, so we tasted one more that we want to share and we
29:56
hope that this tasting isn't too boring.
29:59
Please let us know in the comments or reach out directly
30:01
if if you like or dislike this. Anyway, so we got a
30:05
recommendation from Cole from my Matcha Addiction who recently
30:09
travelled to Japan to try a tea called Tenju.
30:13
And so Sam, do you want to introduce this tea a little bit?
30:16
And so this is from one of the foremost blends blending houses
30:21
that everyone knows, one of the largest, I think they do about
30:24
$50 million a year in revenue from what we've been able to
30:28
research online. Yeah, so the the tea house is
30:32
called Madoku Koyaman and from all the kanji that I'm able to
30:38
read from the little tag. Of this tea specifically.
30:40
Of this tea specifically, it's very highly praised and awarded
30:45
tea by the Bureau of Agriculture and Aquatic produced and it
30:51
specifically noted that it has a very unique flavor of vodka
30:56
that's written in this text. Usually people don't like write
31:00
that as one of the description. Very rare.
31:04
Very rare. To actually see that.
31:06
In our experience at least. Oyka means like the the
31:09
fragrance coming from. The shade shading for.
31:13
Almost all of the matcha, they are all shaded one way or
31:17
another, But this one, as humble as Japanese people can be, they
31:22
actually had the, you know, the, the intention or the, the
31:26
willingness to actually write that down on the piece of paper.
31:29
I think they're like very proud to see being, you know, very
31:34
oyka. So I'm very looking forward to
31:36
date to taste this tea. This was the second most
31:39
expensive matcha I've ever purchased.
31:43
I think the most was from Mark from the company Olica in New
31:47
Jersey who mills matcha fresh in Lawrenceville, which is a
31:50
fantastic EG Hikaru. But this is the second most
31:53
expensive and this is the most expensive tea that you can
31:56
purchase. I think that's non competition
31:58
Great. They might have competitions
31:59
that are way more expensive, but it's the most expensive normal,
32:03
normal, quote UN quote tea that they sell.
32:06
It was, did I write down the price?
32:08
No, it was around fifty U.S. dollars, just under 7000.
32:14
Yen, did you learn about the cultivar of this tea?
32:18
No, no information. No information.
32:21
So this is a mystery black box blend most likely.
32:25
Maybe it's single cultivar, maybe it's not.
32:27
I don't know what the harvest was.
32:29
So in the spirit of these blinding houses, we will just
32:34
enjoy it, yeah. Let's just enjoy it.
32:36
Very interestingly that a lot of these people don't tell you you
32:40
know what exactly goes into these camps, although some tea
32:44
houses did end up telling us. We were in Uji with Kombayashi I
32:48
think. But no, no, no, Horiishi, two
32:49
men. That's true, they told us, the
32:51
cultivars. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:52
And one of their very poetically described Macha was actually a
32:57
single cultivar. But not always.
32:59
Only for this year. It's not always single cultivar,
33:02
which is very interesting. I said this year, this is just
33:05
Sayan Midori, but sometimes it's a blend.
33:07
And then we actually got to meet the head blender there and the
33:10
team master that they had who came down very briefly.
33:13
So that was really cool to get to meet the artist, the master
33:17
himself, and who puts makes these decisions and puts these
33:20
blends together. Yeah, that was very cool.
33:22
Anyways, let's describe the tea, I guess.
33:26
Yeah, so this was by far one of the most unique Machos I have
33:31
ever had in my life. And Cole made a similar
33:33
observation when he reviewed this tea.
33:36
We both got the same note at the same time from the smell.
33:39
Yeah, it's just straight up olive oil.
33:43
Incredibly high quality olive. Oil.
33:45
Yeah, like the very like tingly, almost spicy kind of a smell and
33:51
taste very, very good. It was so subtle, so soft.
33:56
When it entered the mouth, it entered the mouth like water.
33:59
It kind of just gently and gracefully came in and melt
34:05
away. And then it blossomed and
34:06
developed. And something Cole mentioned,
34:08
and we totally agree with, it is effervescent.
34:11
It almost pops. You get this sparkly, tingly
34:15
sensation. And I've never heard about this
34:18
in Japanese tea, but they actually talk about it quite a
34:20
lot in Chinese tea and Thai Taiwanese tea.
34:24
And so I know for the highest tea producing region in Taiwan
34:28
is a mountain called Range called Daiyuling.
34:31
And in Daiyuling, one of the ways that you can taste the
34:34
altitude when you're really deep in the weeds of high mountain
34:38
Taiwanese oolong is it starts to develop an effervescence, deep
34:43
minerality, but also a deep effervescence.
34:45
It wasn't an umami bomb, which was surprising to us.
34:50
So this Olica smell, it's almost spicy, high quality olive oil.
34:55
Oily, rich, very like, very wholesome.
34:59
Very and integrated. It wasn't the separate component
35:03
flavor, it was very integrated into the profile.
35:06
And I don't know if anyone's ever had that reference of all
35:09
of these new olive oil lattes, the oliettos.
35:12
I think you can find them at Starbucks around the world.
35:14
I had one when it was released in Milan.
35:16
I just happened to be there at the time and got to try it and
35:19
it worked so well. So sort of the same way that
35:23
olive oil interacts with fat. If anyone's ever had an olive
35:26
oil Gelato or an olive oil ice cream, or even put, there's a
35:30
tradition of putting. I think that's an Austrian
35:33
thing. You put pumpkin seed oil on ice
35:35
cream. This fat plant fat mixed with
35:41
ice cream or cream has this very distinct textural sensation and
35:45
it's very similar to what's going on in this teeth.
35:48
Yeah. And I think that sensation
35:49
really magnifies after we turned that into a koicha, yes.
35:53
So that was all of it. Is Usicha and in koicha
35:57
completely nonlinear again, Nori note magnified swears 10 times.
36:03
It was so beautifully pronounced.
36:05
And it's not the seaweed sea that like you hear like someone
36:09
in in the US or in Europe talk about.
36:12
It was this high quality seaweed note.
36:15
It wasn't marine fishy. Weird.
36:17
It had this purity to it. And so very, very beautiful.
36:22
It's like almost like kind of like you will get from some very
36:27
high quality of fresh oyster. Yes.
36:30
Beautiful like light salinity, but it's also very intense at
36:35
the same. Time oyster is a great note,
36:37
like a great oyster. Interesting.
36:40
I totally get that. The effervescence completely
36:44
also magnified, I wouldn't say 10 times, but it was more
36:47
sparkly. It kind of popped.
36:49
There was some bitterness to this.
36:52
Not bad, but I think I would have enjoyed it less without
36:56
that bitterness. Yeah, it needed to be supported
36:59
by something. Yeah, it's almost like, you
37:01
know, in Italian wine you need that bitterness.
37:03
To those. Tannins.
37:04
Yeah, the structure offer a skeleton of the flavorful.
37:08
Absolutely. Without it, it would have been
37:10
overwhelming, I think and it had a beautiful long after taste.
37:15
And I would say 1 and Mark from Oleka has talked about this a
37:18
lot, that after taste is one of the most difficult things to
37:21
achieve. And that is something we've
37:23
noticed in this little experiment that we've done is
37:26
that the after taste and price are highly correlated, at least
37:31
a pleasant after taste, I should say.
37:33
The cheapest 1 did have an after taste.
37:34
Well, actually it has very bitter and then just fell off.
37:38
But something very interesting so far is that, you know, we
37:41
only revealed 3T today, but you know, we have tried other matcha
37:46
too in this journey and some of the highest price, highest
37:50
quality matcha, they do not necessarily taste that umami.
37:56
It's like the lower end product that are really the umami bomb,
38:01
Yeah. Or like just pure burst of
38:03
mumminess straight up into your face.
38:06
Pungent. Or a lot of these like more
38:09
expensive mainstream blends from these large blending houses.
38:13
And I think it's a reflection of average Japanese preference.
38:18
These blending houses are trying to go after the largest domestic
38:22
market they can probably. And like not ever.
38:26
Most Japanese people are not educated in the appreciation of
38:30
matcha and. I would say that's a very old
38:34
preference, yes, like something very interesting that our.
38:38
Older generation. Older, older generation.
38:40
It's modern if you really zoom out.
38:42
Like like like something we saw very interesting in the in in
38:46
duo and in Kyoto is that we were sitting in the tea store.
38:51
The demographic of consumers entering the store were largely
38:56
just to be two groups of people clueless, a tourist and
39:00
foreigners, foreigners and like very, very old Japanese
39:06
gentleman that probably had decades of, you know, experience
39:09
in drinking Marsha and just straight up went there to the
39:12
counter point at the exactly that he wants.
39:15
Interestingly, no female, no female consumer.
39:18
So just point at the tea that he wants and then take the tea and
39:21
left and all of the coolest kaijin just wandering around the
39:25
shop and like, oh, what kind of tea is this?
39:28
What is that? Can I have Macha?
39:31
What is Sencha and asking all these?
39:32
Questions and the retail staff is there's not a criticism, but
39:37
very few of them speak English. That's a lot of Google Translate
39:40
that we saw going on or some limited language skills from
39:43
people on both sides. But I was surprised that there
39:48
wasn't more knowledge transfer to get anyone to appreciate
39:52
anything. Honestly, if I was super into
39:54
matcha and was coming to Japan and trying to learn, this is the
39:58
wrong place to do that. Japanese consumer retail for
40:02
matcha is not the place to learn.
40:05
Yeah, the information is very not transparent.
40:09
It's the opposite of transparency.
40:11
It's top down positioning. This is good, this is bad, this
40:14
is the best. And then at one of these
40:16
conversations, we purposely tried to experience what it
40:19
would be like if you tried to learn at these stores.
40:22
And I was asking a bunch of questions and Sam was helping me
40:24
translate. And I was like, what makes this
40:27
so good? What makes this high quality?
40:29
And she's like, we use better ten shot.
40:31
What makes the 10 shot better? I don't know.
40:33
Better ten shot, Like they don't know.
40:35
And. I think that our question
40:37
actually made that guy very uncomfortable.
40:40
He was like, very like trying to divert answering some books of
40:44
questions, yeah. So it's even the the training
40:48
that goes on at a lot of these places.
40:50
And I'm going to bring this full circle, actually.
40:52
It's very interesting. All of the good places in New
40:55
York, for example, the training obviously is like one of the
40:59
biggest barriers to hiring staff to provide retail experiences or
41:05
tea experiences for people because they need to be able to
41:07
hold the conversation to tell someone else what's special.
41:10
The best way I've seen that is that it's a conversation to
41:14
dialogue and everyone kind of feels out where your knowledge
41:17
is and then they kind of meet you where you're at.
41:20
The worst implementations I've seen of it.
41:22
This is super rare. This is some of the best matcha
41:25
that's ever been imported to the United States.
41:27
You should appreciate it. We fly this in all the time and
41:31
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it feels like you're being
41:33
lectured at and it's very condescending.
41:36
Hate that. And then where you really see
41:39
the top best way to learn about any of this, honestly, I think
41:43
is in Bangkok. It's when you walk into a place
41:46
like MTCH, they will not only meet you where you're at, but
41:50
everyone is trained. And we got to see some of the
41:53
training that was being done at MTCH.
41:56
They have like everyone that goes through and works and is
41:59
able to interact with the customer.
42:01
They have these booklets, they have these quizzes.
42:03
Everyone is so well educated and everyone is trained kind of like
42:08
at the highest levels of like nice hotel luxury that you can
42:13
go to, right? Like there's so much training
42:17
that goes into meeting someone where they're at to make them
42:21
feel comfortable. And I think that's what makes
42:23
Bangkok so special, is that they're just so much better at
42:28
holding these conversations in a way that makes it approachable.
42:32
I think that's the ultimately a cultural difference, right?
42:35
Like like people in Bangkok, I think the very intentional or
42:40
the methodology that they're applying here to the customer, I
42:44
would say it's identical to how they learned matcha in the 1st
42:49
place. They want to help people enjoy
42:52
matcha the same way as they approach matcha and end up
42:55
learning and knowing and liking matcha.
42:58
All of this information was so gated in Japan.
43:00
Is that matcha to be honest, was not for the common people, no.
43:05
In the past. It's very much a luxury for the
43:09
nobles, for the liberatis, for people that can afford the
43:13
luxury of having people carrying their tension jaw all the way
43:17
from the store to their home and hand grind them at their house.
43:21
With all the equipment and the bowls and the whisks.
43:25
Yeah, it's really the modern technology invention, the
43:29
innovation that made Masha so accessible today.
43:32
Your average Joe is not drinking this stuff.
43:34
It takes hundreds of people literally to make a can of
43:39
matcha back in the days. They were importing special jars
43:42
to age the tensha from China. Like this is not something and
43:47
this is back in the day when China was making way like a
43:50
completely different connotations.
43:52
So I know it was making the best ceramics in the world.
43:56
There's a reason why the Ming dynasty emperor and matcha or
44:00
morta like he grew up from a peasant family and probably saw
44:05
probably even participate in making more child in China.
44:10
And it's really just hundreds of people serving one dude buying
44:16
that jar. It's kind of ridiculous.
44:19
The privilege of writing this very nice poem about this
44:22
experience for how many people's lives had to bring it to him.
44:26
Yeah, so once he crowned himself as emperor of China, you know,
44:31
from day one, he issued a policy to ban Mwatak.
44:35
Let's stop making this. So in many ways, it's actually a
44:38
modern miracle that we can buy this 36 gram can of matcha for
44:44
$6 and then have it be something that looks beautiful and tastes
44:48
probably very great when you use it in certain contexts.
44:51
And then for not that much more and you get something that is
44:54
really a work of art. Yeah, that's true.
44:56
Sorry, Goku. Mukashi, I'm sorry for shitting
44:58
on you. You're great.
45:00
Even over the course of this conversation, it's like, you
45:03
know, it's just different perspectives.
45:05
There's a totally rational argument and I can evangelize
45:09
this matcha or I can completely give it a hard time and it's
45:13
just different perspectives. So to have this go full circle,
45:17
it's not about truth seeking about what's good, what's bad,
45:19
what's authentic or traditional or blah, blah, blah.
45:22
You know, it's really just perspective searching,
45:26
perspective seeking. So if we contradict ourselves
45:30
over the course of this or over the course of many episodes.
45:34
Great. We're learning.
45:35
We don't wanna make the judgments.
45:37
We are sharing our learning journey in Matcha.
45:39
We just want to search for these different perspectives, which is
45:42
why we find this industry so interesting.
45:44
So that's the end of this episode, the end of this topic,
45:47
I should say. We've exhausted.
45:49
Our journey in Japan continues exactly.
45:52
We are still in Kyoto. We are going to visit more tea
45:55
farmers in Wuji in the upcoming days.
45:58
And then Yamai and. We are going to travel to Izumo
46:01
and then Yamai and then we are going to come back to Japan in
46:06
the future. Very, very near future for
46:09
harvest season. Yeah.
46:11
We've been invited to pick some tea, I hope.
46:13
Just extremely exciting for us. Yep, Yep, in one of the very
46:17
traditional heritage farms that we're beyond honored.
46:21
For me, I personally had I think my favorite matcha in my life so
46:26
far in that farm, so that was great.
46:29
Crazy moment. It's we are beyond touched.
46:32
Yeah. So we have many other topics.
46:34
We have notebooks full of notes. And then we are going to slowly
46:37
organize and we'll keep recording and try to share as
46:41
much as we can. All right.
46:43
That's I think all the time we have today in a full week in
46:47
Kyoto. I still haven't done any
46:49
sightseeings. Ryan to do some sightseeing.
46:52
It is a Sunday. All right, let's go.
46:54
Let's all. Right, let's go.
46:55
Thank you so much for listening. Yeah, see you in the next
46:57
episode. If you enjoyed this podcast,
46:59
please consider giving us five stars.
47:01
And we're gonna go get some lunch.
47:03
And we're very grateful for your listenership.
47:05
All right, all right. Bye.
47:07
Bye.