Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / 2025 Harvest Season with Marc from Ooika

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2025 Harvest Season with Marc from Ooika · Specialty Matcha Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
• 0:02
  My name is Ryan. This is Michael Ho Zhongjun, who
• 0:04
  also goes by Sam. Hello.
• 0:05
  Hello. And we're the cofounders of
• 0:07
  Sanko Matcha Products. Yeah.
• 0:09
  We launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey in
• 0:11
  Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
• 0:14
  And today we are here again sitting at this really beautiful
• 0:17
  view of Uchikawa. And we are again having Mark
• 0:22
  from Oeeka joining our conversation today.
• 0:24
  Welcome, Mark. Hello.
• 0:26
  Hey guys, good to see you again. How fun is this?
• 0:28
  Look at this view. It's so nice.
• 0:29
  So lucky that this is an audio only podcast.
• 0:32
  Unfortunately, you can hear the birds hopefully in the
• 0:34
  background. So we wanted to focus this
• 0:37
  episode on the 2025 harvest here in Uji and elsewhere in Japan.
• 0:41
  And you have tons of relationships with different
• 0:44
  farmers all across Japan and wanted to get a sense of what
• 0:47
  this year's going to look like, especially in these really
• 0:50
  unique conditions we are in, given the overwhelming demand
• 0:53
  and shortage of good matcha. Yeah.
• 0:57
  For you guys at home that want to buy matcha and restock and
• 1:02
  you're excited the harvest is here, you have some bad news.
• 1:04
  There's not a lot of volume this year.
• 1:06
  There's very little volume, although this is a particularly
• 1:09
  interesting harvest because the quality seems to be exceptional
• 1:14
  from what I've seen. It hurt.
• 1:15
  For any particular reasons? Yes, I think my best to relay
• 1:19
  what I've kind of heard from the farmers, but just as a general
• 1:22
  kind of a backdrop. At least in Uji, we had a very
• 1:26
  intense summer previously, previous year and it was
• 1:29
  scorching hot. Many of the T bushes.
• 1:31
  Not exactly quantifying what when I say many, but T bushes
• 1:35
  died, T bushes got injured from from the heat and this harvest
• 1:40
  we're actually still feeling some of the fallout.
• 1:43
  Some of the tea bushes are under producing this year because of
• 1:46
  that. The other thing is this year
• 1:48
  it's just less volume in general, but it's also because
• 1:50
  it was cooler. So like larger temperature
• 1:52
  swings in general? To my knowledge there hasn't
• 1:55
  been any frost that have have really damaged things, but what
• 1:58
  I've heard from the farmers we work with is this year low
• 2:02
  volume and pretty exceptional quality.
• 2:04
  One of the farmers said that the MI Dory that he harvested this
• 2:10
  harvest is maybe better than he's ever seen in his lifetime.
• 2:14
  Wow wow. I mean.
• 2:16
  Generational harvest and what do they look for?
• 2:19
  Like how can they tell before it's gone through like all the
• 2:22
  processing and aging and milled in Tamasha?
• 2:24
  Like what are the quantifiers that give them that impression?
• 2:29
  Yeah, that's a really good question.
• 2:31
  They don't go through all that yet.
• 2:33
  So for example, right now the farmers take the the Shin Mei,
• 2:38
  the the raw tea leaves, they bring it to the factory, they
• 2:40
  process it immediately. And at the end of the
• 2:42
  processing, you can just look at it and you can see traits that
• 2:45
  are desirable or not desirable, such as the glossiness of it,
• 2:48
  the shininess of the pika Pika, they call it, the aroma of it.
• 2:53
  So all of these things kind of contribute to a general sense of
• 2:56
  it. But you also do the testing.
• 2:58
  You take the tea, you pour the water on it, and you brew it
• 3:01
  like sencha, even though it's tenscha at the factory, they
• 3:04
  have a small room. It's the Haiken Yaa and the
• 3:06
  observation room. And then you taste it, and you
• 3:08
  can actually get a sense of similar to what it will be.
• 3:12
  Even though it's a racha, it's still not fully processed.
• 3:14
  Yeah, it's not ground, obviously, but it gives you a
• 3:16
  sense of what it will be like. And this year's the Emmy Dory
• 3:20
  that I'm talking about. I got to experience it and smell
• 3:23
  it and taste it. And it was overwhelmingly sweet.
• 3:26
  It tasted like it had been jukes, tasted like it was, but
• 3:29
  it wasn't. It was raw.
• 3:31
  And I tried the Asahi too, from this particular farmer you saw.
• 3:34
  He still needs time. It's still a little too raw.
• 3:38
  But that's why I'm saying the, I mean, Dory is particularly
• 3:40
  fantastic. And, and this is what I'm
• 3:42
  hearing from many of the farmers working with this year's
• 3:44
  harvest, smaller but arguably better in terms of its quality,
• 3:50
  which which is actually not Taishi mentioned to me what my
• 3:53
  my tea farmer friend said that this is actually not what they
• 3:56
  want. They want this year, we need to
• 3:58
  catch up on volume, but we're not getting volume this year.
• 4:01
  Yeah. Yeah, that will definitely just
• 4:03
  translate into price this. Year is going to be expensive,
• 4:06
  yeah. It seems like it's being shoved
• 4:08
  into the realm of like it's moving from specialty to luxury
• 4:13
  almost just because there's just such a lack of supply.
• 4:17
  Do you get that impression as well, or because there's just so
• 4:19
  little tea? We were walking around Shirakawa
• 4:22
  here in Uji and for hours, and it just gave us a new sense of
• 4:26
  scale of just how small Uji is. So it's so tiny.
• 4:30
  Let let me give you some numbers and just kind of talk about this
• 4:33
  generally before before that, let me just say I actually don't
• 4:35
  exactly agree with you. I don't think we're specialty
• 4:38
  moving into luxury. I think that the market still
• 4:41
  doesn't recognize that specialty matcha exists yet.
• 4:44
  I think most of the market is just treating matcha like a
• 4:46
  daily commodity and everyone is about to get very punished
• 4:51
  because I believe the prices of tensha and matcha are going to
• 4:56
  use much more aggressively high over the next year, 2-3 years.
• 4:59
  But I think the benefit of that is more people are going to
• 5:01
  realize, wait, why is this material so expensive?
• 5:04
  Is this a specialty product? And more people will, I think,
• 5:08
  recognize that matcha is more than just like the equivalent of
• 5:11
  flour to a bakery. It's actually a fine product
• 5:13
  itself. Yeah, it's not a commodity.
• 5:16
  Yeah. And build the context to
• 5:18
  appreciate it. Fully I I think so.
• 5:20
  Yeah, that's good. One of the cool things about
• 5:22
  being outside and doing the podcast outdoors is the chaos of
• 5:26
  life surrounds us. And that's absolutely the beauty
• 5:28
  of matcha too, at the single origin matcha.
• 5:31
  So touch on what we were saying before I forget what was the
• 5:33
  question. About how small the key was.
• 5:35
  Some numbers Uji. As of now, there are 3536
• 5:40
  farmers in Uji, OH. Wow, smaller than I realized.
• 5:44
  That includes micro farmers, so people that have like a small
• 5:47
  field that they don't advertise, they don't sell material as
• 5:54
  their own tea, they just kind of give it to a tea company, right?
• 5:58
  3536 farms in all of Uji. Of those nine, do Hanzu.
• 6:06
  OK, it used to be 10 last year. Now it's 9 and I'll probably
• 6:09
  continue shrinking. So to give you an idea of matcha
• 6:12
  in all of Japan, 6% of all the tea in Japan is matcha.
• 6:16
  That that might change this year.
• 6:18
  This figure might be from 2022. Maybe after the podcast I'll
• 6:21
  check the date but. It's still remarkably small,
• 6:24
  right? Yeah.
• 6:25
  People keep talking about 4000 ton in total might be a little
• 6:28
  bit of a increase for this year, but still very little tea
• 6:32
  that's. The point, so we're talking
• 6:33
  about a very niche product. Japanese tea is niche to begin
• 6:37
  with, just in, in terms of the world.
• 6:40
  But in Japan, such a niche part of the tea industry.
• 6:46
  And uji represents 0.04% of all tea.
• 6:51
  Yeah. And how much Uji Cha has sold.
• 6:53
  That's the point, right? So I, I think that these are all
• 6:57
  kind of the context, the numbers that we're talking about.
• 6:59
  And, and, and it goes smaller every year because
• 7:03
  infrastructure, right? So you have a farm, you build a
• 7:05
  new highway and then you lose. That actually happened with Tai
• 7:07
  Chi's farm. So his farm was there for 300
• 7:10
  years and they built the highway.
• 7:11
  Now that was not recently, but these things happen and the land
• 7:15
  mass gets smaller. And all this is just to say that
• 7:18
  in my opinion, the price of Macha and Tensha right now is
• 7:23
  grossly underpriced. I think for what it is, for the
• 7:27
  quality, for the limitations, the price of the most expensive
• 7:32
  matcha that Oika sold was something like 400 five, $100
• 7:35
  for 20 grams, which is like what, $4050 a bowl around that?
• 7:39
  Yeah, compare that to any other specialty product, right?
• 7:41
  That's what I'm saying. It's a joke.
• 7:43
  You know, chocolate. Right.
• 7:46
  Or even coffee now. Like ridiculously cheap when put
• 7:49
  into full context, especially within the Canon of the other
• 7:52
  products that exists. That's what I'm saying.
• 7:54
  I think the market isn't there yet.
• 7:57
  I think it's underpriced because there's not an awareness of
• 8:00
  Matcha being a fine food and being a specialty product.
• 8:03
  But you both are directly challenging that in a way.
• 8:08
  And it's it's good. People should know that this is
• 8:10
  something very rare and specific and special.
• 8:13
  And yes, that means the price will go up.
• 8:16
  Yeah, no, that makes sense. And we really hope that's the
• 8:19
  industry, the direction the industry is going.
• 8:22
  And it was interesting. We were hand picking tea last
• 8:24
  week and doing Tizumi under Honzu and we were picking tea
• 8:28
  for three hours or it was back breaking labor like we and like
• 8:33
  we're basically city people. We're not used to this kind of
• 8:35
  work. Our back, we were in pain, like
• 8:37
  people's like suffer pain bringing these products to
• 8:41
  market. And that's what I told myself.
• 8:43
  I will never take anything to zoom me and ever mix it with
• 8:46
  anything but water. And I will judge other people
• 8:49
  who like turn that into a latte. It's just so much effort.
• 8:52
  It's so historically all of the sacrifices that people make.
• 8:57
  It's it's a little unusual to me walking around macho retail with
• 9:01
  an Uji and how all of that is abstracted away.
• 9:05
  It is, yeah. It much has like historically it
• 9:08
  feels being two people trying to learn about it gate kept at
• 9:12
  every single point, including the preparation and consumption.
• 9:16
  I agree, yeah. Yeah.
• 9:17
  And, you know, in teen ceremonies, you learn about the
• 9:19
  weight of whisking the tea. You learn about the history of
• 9:22
  the wares, the utensils, all of the cadence.
• 9:24
  You kind of make turn it into a showroom of your collection of
• 9:28
  the antiques. But you never learn about how
• 9:31
  the tea was made itself. Like you learn about all of
• 9:33
  these artifacts and artists, but never about the farmers.
• 9:36
  Yeah, that's, that's maybe a little critical, but I, I agree
• 9:39
  with you. And the thing about tea ceremony
• 9:42
  is tea ceremony is, is about the art of matcha.
• 9:45
  It's using matcha as a metaphor. And that's a lovely, wonderful
• 9:49
  thing to do for sure. But it has very little
• 9:52
  connection to the craft of matcha, right.
• 9:55
  So that craft is, is the key because the art of matcha has
• 10:01
  made people think of matcha as this very Zen meditating thing,
• 10:04
  which has has functioned in matcha becoming a worldwide
• 10:08
  known product, but it hasn't contributed or helped people
• 10:12
  considering it as a specialty fine food.
• 10:15
  That will only come from the appreciation in the knowledge
• 10:18
  from the craft side. And in my opinion, and this is,
• 10:23
  to be honest, maybe a little aggressive to say, but I don't
• 10:27
  think that there's really many people out there that are
• 10:31
  focusing on that, either by design or by a lack of knowledge
• 10:37
  on their part. Like for instance, for instance,
• 10:39
  like matcha influencers, It's all very surface level and
• 10:42
  doesn't get into the craft. Yeah, deep into it anyway.
• 10:45
  At least for a lot of the influencers, I agree.
• 10:48
  But even tea companies, like, there are a lot of big tea
• 10:52
  companies that OECA competes with and maybe doesn't compete
• 10:55
  with, but many of them don't put out content and from information
• 11:00
  that goes really deep to understanding the actual
• 11:03
  production cultivation. Yeah.
• 11:05
  You know, at least that's how I feel because when I got to shoot
• 11:08
  in, there was nothing, Yeah. Accessible.
• 11:11
  But weirdly enough, now trying to like meet farmers ourselves,
• 11:14
  like a lot of it's still gate kept.
• 11:16
  Like it's hard to learn. It's like really on the bleeding
• 11:20
  edge of knowledge, at least for someone who it's not in the
• 11:24
  sphere. Yeah, yeah, I think by design is
• 11:27
  interesting point because like imagine or if you can calculate
• 11:31
  how much tea gets produced here in Wuji and how much teas get
• 11:36
  sold as Wuji tea, you know, there's a discrepancy over
• 11:38
  there. If you look at the incentive
• 11:40
  model, I mean everyone's making money off of bringing in Aracha
• 11:44
  from other places and selling it as uji tea.
• 11:46
  Everyone's complicit in it except the farmers themselves
• 11:49
  here. There's a lot to say about that.
• 11:50
  Maybe that's a whole nother episode, which is look at all
• 11:54
  that. Wow.
• 11:54
  So you guys can't see this, obviously, but we've been
• 11:57
  sitting at the riverbank, it's been fairly calm, but all of a
• 11:59
  sudden there is a massive swarm of flying insects that just
• 12:04
  appeared maybe 20 feet above us out of the.
• 12:07
  Blue, so fascinated about our conversation.
• 12:10
  It's true about specialty. Macho so bad.
• 12:13
  Like a school of fish. It is.
• 12:16
  So that's this is a really interesting topic and it's one
• 12:19
  that I've talked to the farmers about directly, which is, wait a
• 12:22
  minute, if Uji Cha can be made with product that's not from
• 12:26
  Uji, why don't you all band together and change the term?
• 12:30
  And the answer to that is a lot more complex and more
• 12:34
  interesting than you might think.
• 12:36
  It's a trademark, isn't it? It's a trademark issue.
• 12:39
  But but it's not one that it's a double edged sword.
• 12:43
  It does hurt in some ways, but in some ways it does help.
• 12:46
  And there's a specific story of another part of Japan that had
• 12:50
  AT with a trait. You heard about this?
• 12:51
  Well. You told us about it the other
• 12:52
  day. All right.
• 12:54
  Cool, cool. Story but maybe I'll audience
• 12:56
  might be OK. Let's say this for another time,
• 12:59
  because I'd rather do that conversation when I note the
• 13:02
  name of it and I forgot it off the top of my.
• 13:03
  I can give you the specifics, but just so I'm not gatekeeping,
• 13:07
  basically there's another region that allowed something like this
• 13:10
  to happen and the farmers actually managed to get it
• 13:12
  changed and it resulted in such a small region that was
• 13:15
  producing this hyper local specific product that it lost
• 13:19
  all its fame. And then those farms like kind
• 13:20
  of failed over time. Sort of interesting,
• 13:22
  Interesting. Yeah, sort of like balsamic.
• 13:26
  You guys know about the model of balsamic?
• 13:28
  Vaguely. So this is actually fairly
• 13:31
  interesting. So Balsamic is a very, very
• 13:33
  niche, hyper niche product that has almost no production
• 13:37
  capability and it got unbelievably famous.
• 13:41
  So the Italian government had an issue, which is we have this
• 13:44
  niche cultural product that's very specific and we can't
• 13:47
  produce more of it, but the world demands it.
• 13:50
  So how are we going to benefit on this?
• 13:51
  So what they decided is they produced a new type of balsamic
• 13:56
  that has a lot of corners cut during production and they gave
• 13:59
  it a specific designation. So now there's 2 balsamic
• 14:02
  designations. 1 is like the real real real real stuff that's like
• 14:05
  $1000 for like 10 grams or whatever.
• 14:08
  Then there's the mass produced but still technically from Italy
• 14:12
  version. I feel like Uji could have
• 14:14
  something like that but it doesn't currently and it doesn't
• 14:16
  because of the politics of like maybe the tea companies and
• 14:19
  factories blending all that stuff.
• 14:21
  Again, that's a whole nother topic.
• 14:22
  Well, I mean, it makes sense too, because I mean like, if
• 14:25
  just the tourists that come here and buy tea retail, there'd be
• 14:29
  no more Uji tea left for anyone else left in the world.
• 14:31
  There just isn't enough of it and I'm sure they wouldn't pay
• 14:33
  these prices that that type of tea demands.
• 14:36
  Right. And that's sort of The thing is
• 14:37
  other places are getting popular.
• 14:39
  Yami Cha is getting popular. If all of a sudden Fuji Cha
• 14:43
  became this product that only one out of a, you know, 100,000
• 14:47
  people could get so rare and limited that no one buys it, no
• 14:50
  one gets it, then it's likely that it's fame will diminish
• 14:54
  over time. And that's sort of what happened
• 14:55
  in some other regions. So you're doing something pretty
• 14:57
  unprecedented, arranging a matcha tour where people can
• 15:00
  really experience first hand, not only hand picking, visiting
• 15:03
  tea farmers and getting access to like watching tan cha
• 15:06
  processing. So how did that come about and
• 15:09
  how's it going? I know you're probably pretty
• 15:11
  tired. It's day one, the end end of day
• 15:13
  one of the first day. Day one went a little too deep.
• 15:16
  Probably should have kept it light, but yeah, it's fun.
• 15:19
  We did a matcha tour, so students got tickets.
• 15:21
  They flew to Japan, and we're visiting a number of producers,
• 15:26
  and the producers we're meeting are not producers that typically
• 15:30
  would allow tours to come. So I'm kind of spending a little
• 15:33
  bit of my, I guess, social capital to allow me to bother
• 15:38
  them during the most busy time in their entire life, which is
• 15:41
  the harvest. But we're visiting multiple
• 15:43
  first place winners, the national tea competition, we're
• 15:46
  visiting multiple Hanzu farms, 3 Hanzu, 4 Hanzu farms.
• 15:50
  So it's pretty once in a lifetime experience.
• 15:54
  And I'm very grateful to the farmers and the other producers
• 15:57
  such as the Chasen makers, Potters for the store.
• 15:59
  So we're going to be spending eight days going across Japan
• 16:02
  and kind of visiting everything from Takiama Chasen makers to
• 16:06
  Potters, bees and Potters, and of course the farmers.
• 16:08
  So behind us we actually have a number of people that were on
• 16:12
  the tour today and they got to experience a lot tea farm,
• 16:20
  matcha workshop and also the tea factory which was in production.
• 16:24
  That's cool. Yeah, with Asahi, I guess this
• 16:27
  is like the first, like tea experience, tea production
• 16:30
  experience for a lot of them too.
• 16:31
  Yeah, I think so for sure. Well, should we invite them?
• 16:36
  Over and you guys want to join us over here and jump on the
• 16:40
  podcast and talk about some of your experience today I'm Kevin
• 16:43
  yo Kevin I know you guys but. Your reputation precedes you.
• 16:46
  I was gonna chime in earlier, but I figured maybe later is the
• 16:49
  right. Time welcome, Kevin.
• 16:51
  Appreciate it. Nice to meet you and.
• 16:53
  Hi, my name is Peter. Peter, nice to meet you, Peter
• 16:56
  and John. Awesome.
• 16:59
  Cool. So actually, what brought you
• 17:02
  guys to Japan and how did you know Mark in the first place?
• 17:05
  Well, I was first exposed to Oyka just through Instagram, as
• 17:08
  many people were, since we have, you know, a pretty international
• 17:12
  group it seems, and sort of the interests just grew from there.
• 17:14
  And where are you based? I'm based on California.
• 17:17
  Oh nice. Cool.
• 17:18
  Yeah, same thing. I just, I found we got through
• 17:20
  social media. I personally have a cafe in
• 17:23
  Chicago and so we've been focusing more on matcha.
• 17:25
  And so that's originally how marketing of social media has
• 17:29
  kind of pointed be towards Mark. And so I think Mark is a great
• 17:32
  asset to the macho community. And when the opportunity came up
• 17:37
  for me, it was kind of like a no brainer to kind of just come
• 17:40
  along and just meet him and everyone else and just
• 17:44
  understand macho community more in depth.
• 17:47
  That's awesome. For me, yeah, for me it was that
• 17:51
  I think, I think I've tallied up everyone that I probably the
• 17:54
  only one that's coming into this store with the background in
• 17:58
  China. You I started like 4 years ago,
• 18:00
  but still as you got your longer term practitioners of some sort
• 18:04
  of teeth and you know that it's lifelong.
• 18:06
  Yeah. So I like, I think like I think
• 18:09
  overheard you guys say how like you learn about all these other
• 18:12
  things, but you really talk about the tea itself.
• 18:14
  That's right. I also I had A at one point in
• 18:18
  time about a year ago, appreciation for the chassen
• 18:20
  itself and we also never talk about that.
• 18:23
  In. T school and how it's even such
• 18:26
  this disposable objects well, not necessarily one time you
• 18:29
  sold me, but still you use it for like a year and you burn it
• 18:32
  and. Yeah, in China, you now in
• 18:35
  today's cafe and you are one of the sunset case.
• 18:40
  So it's part of just deepening my knowledge for T industry
• 18:44
  itself. I could never suppose.
• 18:46
  I guess I don't know all the science behind it and like Mark
• 18:51
  definitely not has it, has it better than I do, I guess.
• 18:55
  That's wonderful. Have you guys learned anything
• 18:58
  from any of the other people on the trip?
• 19:01
  How does like the collective group and the conversations
• 19:04
  change their perspective, both in the questions that they ask
• 19:08
  or like the knowledge they contribute?
• 19:09
  I mean, I think certainly it's the group is sort of self
• 19:12
  selected to be people who are at a bare minimum matcha
• 19:16
  enthusiasts. So everybody has a baseline sort
• 19:20
  of cursory knowledge of matcha in general.
• 19:22
  I think when it comes to the group that we're travelling with
• 19:24
  today, a lot of it also comes from a business perspective too,
• 19:29
  since a lot of the individuals here are business owners or
• 19:33
  maybe prospective business owners.
• 19:34
  OK. And so they're thinking about it
• 19:37
  through that lens as well. Yeah, that makes sense too cuz I
• 19:40
  find a lot of much education at the surface level, it's just all
• 19:43
  kind of the same thing. But when everyone's at the same
• 19:46
  starting place or similar but much deeper in like, you get so
• 19:49
  much more enriching, especially being around other people who
• 19:52
  are interested in the same thing, right?
• 19:54
  It's a cool, cool community that can form too.
• 19:57
  Still day one so and it's a big crowd still getting to know
• 20:01
  everyone on that aspect. Cool.
• 20:05
  Well, so I go back to question, back to Mark, how was day one
• 20:09
  like for all the other audience right here listening to this
• 20:12
  podcast who didn't have the opportunity to participate?
• 20:16
  Like how is it? Well, we started the morning in
• 20:19
  the tea farm and got our super, super money.
• 20:21
  Nice. You know, it's great.
• 20:24
  It's interesting because I feel like Taishi and I know each
• 20:27
  other really well. So it's sort of those things
• 20:29
  where you guys probably recognize kind of like finish
• 20:31
  each other's sentences all the time.
• 20:32
  So it was, it was really quite interesting to talk about deeper
• 20:36
  topics in tea that I would not normally have access to talk
• 20:40
  about because in content like what Oika does is is usually
• 20:43
  more short form. But having longer discussions
• 20:46
  where we talk about all of the components of tea growing and
• 20:50
  how the local weather effects these bushes and why they're
• 20:54
  doing things like Hanzu and really getting to the nitty
• 20:57
  gritty of like everything about Hanzu and having you guys
• 21:00
  actually there under the Hanzu and experiencing it is such an
• 21:05
  opportunity for me to geek out about it.
• 21:08
  I'm not going to like go to Taishi, be like Taishi, dude,
• 21:10
  let's talk about Hanzu. So it's a really cool experience
• 21:13
  to get an opportunity to kind of walk through stuff.
• 21:17
  Plus, a lot of what I learn is through the questions that I ask
• 21:21
  and when I have these guys here and another one who joined us,
• 21:24
  they ask questions that I don't think about really and kind of
• 21:28
  opens the door to thinking about things deeper.
• 21:31
  Did you want to say something today that you found kind of
• 21:34
  interesting or you didn't expect?
• 21:37
  Well, no, I guess you guys got to experience Hanzu like for the
• 21:41
  first time. How was that experience like?
• 21:44
  What? What did you feel?
• 21:46
  Because it felt amazing for us. We were on another day, you
• 21:50
  know, also doing home Soo picking and also in a very nice
• 21:52
  sunny day. I guess that's very important
• 21:54
  because you really see the lighting effect underneath
• 21:57
  Hongzhou. Prints traumatic difference
• 22:00
  between seeing the light come down through Hongzhou versus
• 22:03
  Kanisha. That's right.
• 22:05
  So it was, yeah, I had no idea that would really affect the
• 22:09
  matcha and the coloring to come out in the final product itself.
• 22:12
  So it's great to say. I will say too, after seeing the
• 22:16
  Hong Zu in person, I had asked Hausi a question about can any
• 22:21
  of this be replicated in sort of like a contained environment?
• 22:24
  Could you do this under grow lights?
• 22:26
  Can you do this indoors? After seeing it in person, I'm
• 22:28
  convinced that you cannot do it any other way.
• 22:31
  It's really one of those things where you have to experience.
• 22:33
  I think it's like when they say that, like seeing like an actual
• 22:37
  famous painting is so different than looking at a photograph of
• 22:41
  it. It's like Konzu is like that
• 22:43
  times 10. Like the way the light scatters
• 22:46
  and the color and like the temperature of the color is just
• 22:49
  the. Temperature of the color for
• 22:50
  sure, and that affects the plant because you're blocked.
• 22:52
  So the conratia is black, so it absorbs all the frequencies of
• 22:55
  light. The conratia.
• 22:57
  Actually, if you have a camera, when you take a picture you'll
• 23:00
  notice that the color temperature is different.
• 23:02
  You can't, like literally cannot photograph this every time we
• 23:05
  pull out our phone or even on your nicer camera sound like it
• 23:08
  just doesn't look the same. Yeah, it's not even close.
• 23:11
  The light is scattered in a very unique way underneath Hanzu and
• 23:15
  also like the smell too. It's really a multi dimensional
• 23:19
  sensory experience. It makes good oyica.
• 23:22
  The other thing is too when you're under the conratia is you
• 23:24
  feel cooler. It's way cooler in terms of
• 23:27
  temperature than under Conratia. It's like a greenhouse effect in
• 23:30
  Conratia, which is the black tarp.
• 23:33
  And complexity loves coolness. That's why China has like some
• 23:38
  of the arguably best teas in the world as opposed to like II's
• 23:41
  not producing incredible teas compared to China because of
• 23:45
  temperature. It's because of coolness,
• 23:46
  because of, you know, you want to have the bushes grow in an
• 23:49
  environment that gives it challenge, which builds
• 23:52
  character and people are the same.
• 23:54
  It's like the unique, yeah, the unique tawa in like Yunnan or
• 23:58
  like Wisan, you know, you have like their radical temperature
• 24:01
  changes throughout, you know, days and nights.
• 24:04
  And you also have this is sort of topic of Ponzu, but some of
• 24:08
  the best growing Tawas or Intel walls YIN in China, which are
• 24:12
  going to be more misty, more like obfuscated, more cloudy,
• 24:17
  more canopies of other trees and other vegetation on the bushes.
• 24:23
  These kind of wet, cool at night, you know, hot days.
• 24:28
  These are great growing regions and Hanzu kind of replicates
• 24:31
  some of that. That makes sense.
• 24:33
  Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
• 24:35
  Speaking about the terroir in general, we've been tasting a
• 24:38
  lot of back-to-back samples of fertilized and unfertilized tea,
• 24:42
  like more natural methods and non and places where use a lot
• 24:46
  of fertilizer. And I don't know if I even agree
• 24:49
  with this statement yet myself, but how would you react to the
• 24:52
  that the statement that fertilizer is more important
• 24:56
  than tarwar and that's actually driving the flavor and
• 24:59
  complexity more than the environment itself?
• 25:03
  I would agree when it comes to umami.
• 25:04
  Probably like nuance, other character aromatic notes, maybe
• 25:09
  not so much, but umami, I'd say that's probably true.
• 25:13
  And I think that for a lot of producers, umami is the goal.
• 25:16
  So if your goal is more umami, then yeah, fertilizer is going
• 25:19
  to play along with the shading, which is how the plant is going
• 25:23
  to take in that fertilizer is going to be a pretty necessary,
• 25:26
  like component to it. And I think it'd be the same for
• 25:28
  Fogua. Like if we're talking about
• 25:29
  Fogua, if you want fatty liver, like yes, the terroir is going
• 25:33
  to affect the flavor notes of the liver.
• 25:36
  If it's from a particular region, duck is from that region
• 25:39
  versus like just the sheer amount of food you put into it
• 25:42
  to fatten it's liver fats, the gold and yeah, food is going to
• 25:46
  be how you get there. I think with Hans with
• 25:49
  fertilizer it's probably similar.
• 25:51
  For that particular parameter. For that parameter, which for
• 25:54
  many I don't know how to quantify this, but for generally
• 25:58
  speaking for producers that is maybe one of the primary goals.
• 26:02
  Is that umami taste? Yeah.
• 26:03
  And it's one of the biggest like sort of IP protection, right,
• 26:07
  especially with an UJI is the fertilizer composition.
• 26:10
  Yeah. People ask me at Oika sometimes.
• 26:11
  Like is the, is the fertilizer synthetic or is it natural?
• 26:15
  There's no information about it. It can be both.
• 26:17
  It can be 1. Can be mixed too.
• 26:19
  A lot of them are. Mixed.
• 26:21
  The thing is with the fertilizer.
• 26:22
  Synthetic fertilizer is very good at getting a quick
• 26:25
  injection of nitrogen into the plant, but natural fertilizers
• 26:29
  are good for a longer sustained thing.
• 26:34
  So they a lot of farmers use both, but they're very specific
• 26:36
  on how they use it and like what they use it.
• 26:39
  You know when it's applied? Most places do it multiple times
• 26:43
  per year or like right before harvest or.
• 26:45
  Both. Some producers do it more or
• 26:47
  less, some do it kind of regularly.
• 26:49
  Some producers actually go out and I don't know if I'm supposed
• 26:53
  to say the name, but there's a producer in Uji that goes out
• 26:55
  and like feels his Bush everyday at the shininess of the leaf.
• 26:59
  And the glossiness of the leaf is an indication of the
• 27:01
  fertilizer according to this farmer.
• 27:03
  Interesting. So if he sees it needs more
• 27:05
  gloss, he will apply some more fertilizer.
• 27:07
  OK. This is a producer that's known
• 27:09
  for like hyper umami. OK, So yeah, The thing is this
• 27:14
  is a black box. Not even I have like really
• 27:17
  clear picture on this, but many producers have their own
• 27:21
  schedule, their own thing. They're hyper protective of it.
• 27:23
  Fertilizers like the big secret lemon herbs and spices kind of
• 27:27
  thing. Well, the other secret is tea
• 27:29
  planting. Yeah, like chashi, I guess they
• 27:31
  have their own fertilizer. She.
• 27:33
  For sure, for sure. Chashi is also like an amazing
• 27:36
  part of Japanese tea culture that it's not an area I have a
• 27:39
  lot of knowledge in just because I'm single origin based, but
• 27:42
  that's a super interesting topic.
• 27:44
  And as a lot of these uji farmers and and ones in Yamai
• 27:48
  too read, superstar status can basically if they want sell
• 27:51
  their tea directly to consumers. Single origin single cultivar.
• 27:55
  Like in theory if you go back 5-10 years they were suppliers
• 27:58
  and basically ingredient suppliers.
• 28:01
  Yes, that's like massive change. How have you seen or heard about
• 28:05
  the ripple effects of that change?
• 28:07
  That's like a pretty huge change considering they're literally
• 28:10
  producing some of the best tea in Japan.
• 28:13
  Like what's happening to these high end blends at these
• 28:15
  traditional blend houses when they literally cannot find the
• 28:19
  components to make them? This is such a hard topic
• 28:22
  because it's so expansive and it's wonderful and it's a
• 28:25
  beautiful topic. Plays into the future of Uji and
• 28:27
  the future of of matcha. But yes, there are more single
• 28:31
  origin companies in the West. There is more demand for tea
• 28:37
  coming from specific farms. And how will the tea companies
• 28:40
  respond to this? I don't know.
• 28:42
  I, I don't know in the short term, right now, it doesn't look
• 28:46
  like there's too much pushback because it's small amounts.
• 28:49
  Like Oheka, for example, is not buying like, you know, 100
• 28:54
  kilograms of a Sahi single origin to sell.
• 28:58
  So that I don't think there's enough of an inconvenience to
• 29:04
  the tea blenders where this is an issue yet.
• 29:06
  But the farmers and the tea companies are not at odds with
• 29:10
  each other. They're collaborative and
• 29:12
  they're working together to help preserve UGI tea culture.
• 29:15
  UGI tea culture includes blending.
• 29:17
  So I don't think it's ever going to go away and I don't think
• 29:20
  it's ever going to not be prioritized because the history
• 29:24
  of UGI is a history, a shared history of the farmers in the
• 29:27
  chashi. And I think that I can't speak
• 29:30
  for the farmers, but I would imagine that they will provide
• 29:35
  more material to the tea companies at the request of the
• 29:38
  tea companies, I would assume. Where the established
• 29:40
  relationships. Are and for for our experience,
• 29:43
  the entire Wuji do feel like a very tight community, like
• 29:47
  everyone is out there to help each other.
• 29:48
  Out Wuji is also very special because of how ancient it is.
• 29:52
  You might have a hard time, for example, if you wanted to start
• 29:57
  a tea company now. Good luck.
• 29:59
  It's going to be pretty hard with how limited material is in
• 30:02
  Uji, but this is sort of a funny story.
• 30:06
  I won't go off on a long tangent on this, but I made that
• 30:09
  statement once and a member of my audience sent me, I'm not
• 30:14
  exaggerating, something like 20 something screenshots of farmers
• 30:18
  agreeing to send him material sort of as a way for him to
• 30:21
  prove that I'm not right. But but this kind of plays it to
• 30:25
  my point. If we're talking about farmers
• 30:29
  in Shizuoka or Kagoshima or farmers that are in like Wazuka,
• 30:33
  not that there's anything wrong with them.
• 30:35
  They're a necessary part of the Japanese tea industry and one
• 30:37
  that Oika, we sell Wazuka and we will sell Kagoshima.
• 30:40
  We don't yet, but we will. But these are not producers that
• 30:43
  are like established for 300 years in Naka Uji doing Hanzu,
• 30:50
  right. So I think I'm saying all this
• 30:52
  because it may be that as single origin gets more famous and more
• 30:56
  demanded, there will be farmers in regions like Kagoshima that
• 31:02
  are selling single origin directly to the West, you know,
• 31:06
  with their name on it. They'll get awards
• 31:08
  internationally. But I believe that Uji is still
• 31:11
  going to be this like very hard nut to crack and something that
• 31:15
  they're going to have, in my opinion, and this is totally
• 31:18
  conjecture, but more allegiance to the tea companies than to the
• 31:23
  West. That's interesting.
• 31:25
  Talking to a lot of other macho small business owners or people
• 31:28
  thinking about starting brands. It's interesting that all of
• 31:33
  these Rockstar farmers that everyone's heard of, basically
• 31:36
  if you can get them to sell you something, it's in very small
• 31:40
  quantity and literally it is basically impossible to build a
• 31:43
  small business out of sourcing directly out of here.
• 31:47
  Like everyone, it feels like it's almost marketing and then
• 31:50
  you need to go someone who is a more reliable supplier.
• 31:53
  Right. And putting it.
• 31:54
  In cold terms. Right.
• 31:55
  Exactly. And then on top of that, not
• 31:57
  only do they have an allegiance to the preexisting tea blenders,
• 32:00
  but also these companies, these like Rockstar named farmers.
• 32:04
  They're sort of a, I want to be careful how I word this, not a
• 32:07
  pecking order, but the relationships that came before.
• 32:10
  You are going to get preferential treatments.
• 32:12
  For example, just to talk about Oheka, there are many farmers we
• 32:15
  work with, but if you contact them through Oheka, you will be
• 32:20
  after Oheka in terms of. Time to build these
• 32:24
  relationships was 5 or 10 years ago.
• 32:26
  I could totally like ruin all my relationships and then you guys
• 32:28
  could be like. Anyway, stupid joking aside,
• 32:32
  this is true and there are farmers that I want to work with
• 32:35
  that have other foreign companies that are prioritized
• 32:37
  above above me and it restricts me.
• 32:40
  There's only one that I can think of off the top of my head,
• 32:42
  but these these things do happen.
• 32:43
  So you're right, five years ago it was very different than it
• 32:46
  looks now. It's a little bit sad for me.
• 32:48
  I think that's the unspoken damage of the matcha shortage is
• 32:51
  what it's doing to all of these small businesses that actually
• 32:54
  help make these people famous, these origins famous, the
• 32:57
  processing methods famous. And it's impossible now to build
• 33:01
  a business on top of it because in cold business terms, they're
• 33:04
  very unreliable suppliers that can literally just stop talking
• 33:09
  to you and ghosting you not to. Like if if your livelihood
• 33:13
  depends on it, it's very hard. So my theories, a lot of people
• 33:16
  are going to push into new regions that typically would
• 33:20
  have just been dumped and blended into Uji Cha.
• 33:22
  Really interesting and have cool stories to tell.
• 33:25
  Yeah, and here's the thing, I don't think, I mean, obviously I
• 33:28
  love Uji and I love Yami, but other regions have a lot to
• 33:31
  offer. There's a lot of cool stuff
• 33:33
  happening in other tea growing regions.
• 33:35
  One of the things that I want to do with OECA is right now we
• 33:37
  only focus on really two regions primarily.
• 33:40
  We do have a few other regions, but it's mostly, you know, Yamai
• 33:43
  and and Uji. And I think that exploring those
• 33:46
  other regions is attractive, but also necessary given how limited
• 33:51
  the material is here. And with Oika growing her now
• 33:55
  wanting to look at the future, what other producers can we
• 33:58
  offer who are doing interesting things?
• 34:00
  Interesting. Not all of it is is super
• 34:02
  traditional. Like one example, there's a
• 34:03
  producer we work with in Wazuka and something unique about him
• 34:08
  is he has 90 year old tea bushes that outside eye and we have a
• 34:13
  90. Kushu again?
• 34:15
  Right. And that doesn't exist in
• 34:16
  Japanese tea. But he has these bushes.
• 34:19
  We buy the tension from him. We make matcha out of it.
• 34:22
  So that's not traditional, but it's super interesting.
• 34:25
  And Oika is not about selling luxury matcha.
• 34:28
  We're about selling educational matcha, which usually happens to
• 34:32
  be luxury, but sometimes it's not.
• 34:34
  That's very cool. And we are also seeing a lot of
• 34:36
  these tea farms out there, you know, outside of traditional
• 34:39
  attention production regions starting to convert into
• 34:42
  tension. And there's, I would say vacuum
• 34:44
  of knowledge actually exists even within Japan that a lot of
• 34:47
  these people just don't necessarily know how to make
• 34:50
  tension. 100% and even if they know, if you don't have
• 34:53
  attention processing facility, like OK, here's an example.
• 34:57
  In Yame there's a gentleman named Shima.
• 34:59
  He's one of the farmers. We we sell his tensha, his
• 35:02
  matcha from. But Ashima won an award from the
• 35:05
  MAFF minister for some fisheries.
• 35:09
  So he want it not for his tea, but what he want it for is
• 35:14
  getting farmers together and forming a new Co-op that cooled
• 35:18
  enough money together that they can open a tensha processing
• 35:20
  facility to save the growing region.
• 35:23
  Because if you don't have attention processing facility,
• 35:25
  you can't make tensha. If you can't make tensha, you
• 35:28
  can't support Sentia and Kokoro because there's just not enough
• 35:31
  of it being sold. The prices of Sentia are
• 35:34
  bottoming out right now. Interesting.
• 35:36
  So point is that there's regions that once Tenta processing
• 35:42
  facilities arise, there will be more expansion.
• 35:46
  This is sort of an interesting question.
• 35:48
  Once someone asked me will there be enough macho to meet global
• 35:51
  demand from Japan in the future? And they say that's 100%.
• 35:55
  There's definitely enough growing regions, it's just
• 35:57
  there's not the infrastructure yet and there's not time yet
• 36:01
  because it takes 5-6 years after you plant the Bush to get the
• 36:04
  new material. Yeah, from what we've been
• 36:06
  hearing too, there's a lot of government incentives to help
• 36:08
  fill that gap. Huge.
• 36:10
  There's so much money right now. I shouldn't say so much, but
• 36:12
  there's a lot of money going towards helping farmers switch
• 36:16
  over to tensure production. But there's just not a lot of
• 36:18
  information, and a lot of the farmers that have been doing
• 36:21
  sencha may not know how to produce excellent tensha.
• 36:25
  Yeah, that makes sense. But they will.
• 36:28
  Is there like some sort of a mechanism to help these new
• 36:31
  farmers to learn about tension production?
• 36:33
  I'm sure, I'm sure there's I'm sure, but I don't know.
• 36:35
  But one thing I will say is one of the farmers we work with is a
• 36:39
  multiple first place win a national tea competition in
• 36:41
  another tea, not in tensha. OK.
• 36:44
  And he he has a tensha field and we buy attention from him.
• 36:48
  And he sent his son to Uji to visit with another of Oeka's
• 36:54
  farmers and they met each other through Oeka.
• 36:56
  How wonderful. So he went here to learn from
• 36:58
  him to gather more skills and knowledge and tension
• 37:01
  production, which is like amazing.
• 37:03
  How cool is that to facilitate that?
• 37:05
  I didn't do it directly, but even still, that's really cool.
• 37:08
  But I think that happens, and I think that there probably are
• 37:12
  other programs that exist that are more formalized to help.
• 37:15
  That's wonderful to hear. This is actually just a very
• 37:17
  nerdy question that I have. What's the energy source for the
• 37:20
  tension ovens? Is it typically like gas or is
• 37:24
  wood? No, it's electric.
• 37:26
  It depends. I believe it's usually crude.
• 37:28
  It's oil. It's oil.
• 37:30
  And it burns so clean there's no smoke.
• 37:31
  Interesting. Yeah.
• 37:32
  Yeah, because we've been learning a lot.
• 37:33
  Usually there may be other factories that use other.
• 37:35
  As we know, it's super energy intensive.
• 37:37
  Yeah, it is. Yeah.
• 37:38
  Yeah, I've been seeing some of these, like oil tanks, like
• 37:42
  heavy oil, like they use it to power ships, like large cargo
• 37:45
  ships. They do burn super clean but
• 37:47
  it's out of the technique to kick start them.
• 37:50
  It is and and even once they kick start it, once they get the
• 37:52
  machines running, some of the factories take time to heat up.
• 37:55
  So one of the factories in Yamai, it takes 24 hours to get
• 37:59
  hot enough that you can use it anyway.
• 38:01
  There's so there's so much cool stuff to talk about and like the
• 38:05
  production of of the tea is so interesting.
• 38:07
  Just like they heavily guard the fertilizer, they also, as you
• 38:11
  guys found out, they heavily guard the numbers on the control
• 38:15
  panels in the factory. Like do photos all you want, but
• 38:18
  don't take a picture of the the numbers here.
• 38:19
  Oh, I want the. Other farmers to see the
• 38:23
  settings they set. Interesting the.
• 38:25
  Tea factory and also another cool thing is some of the
• 38:27
  factories, most of them are not collaborative.
• 38:30
  So like farmers go in and they make their tea in a part of a
• 38:33
  Co-op, but they don't like confer with other farmers what
• 38:36
  they're doing. They kind of do their own thing.
• 38:38
  But the fact that we went to today in Uji, they're completely
• 38:42
  collaborative. So they help each other with
• 38:44
  everything and they all know their numbers and they all know
• 38:46
  everything and they even like help each other.
• 38:49
  That may or may not be typical, but in this factory it happened.
• 38:52
  Other factories have been too. It's usually not that
• 38:54
  collaborative. That's such a cool feedback
• 38:55
  loop. It's like the old world, like
• 38:57
  salons and like the old cafes in Vienna.
• 39:00
  People are critiquing each other.
• 39:02
  Or a Cafe de Flor. And like all the artists, it's
• 39:05
  coming together 100%. Super cool exactly how it is.
• 39:08
  It's. It's why the tea so good here.
• 39:12
  To Joraisan. Joraisan.
• 39:14
  There's a few other members of this collective, but yeah, it's
• 39:16
  very much like that old school salon.
• 39:18
  And you see them just sitting around the tea, like picking at
• 39:22
  it and like tasting it and talking and brewing it.
• 39:24
  And it's really cool. It's really, really exciting.
• 39:28
  It's awesome. I think we should end it.
• 39:29
  Yeah, that is a great place to end it.
• 39:32
  And the sun's starting to set, getting cold.
• 39:34
  Thank you so much, Mark, and thank you for everyone who
• 39:37
  participated. Well, good luck on your journey
• 39:40
  for the following days and you know, we hope to learn more from
• 39:44
  you along with, you know, all the other people participating
• 39:47
  today. Yeah, cool.
• 39:48
  It'd be awesome to do a before and after too.
• 39:51
  Oh, maybe when it's over. I'm always, I'm always
• 39:53
  appreciative and I don't take for granted how amazing it is
• 39:55
  for you guys to allow me on your podcast.
• 39:57
  I really enjoy your podcast. So thank you so much for
• 39:59
  allowing me anytime you want to chat please please.
• 40:02
  Love talking about this stuff, obviously.
• 40:05
  Yeah, us too. Awesome.
• 40:06
  Awesome. So if you enjoyed this podcast,
• 40:08
  please consider sharing with friend and we'll see you in the
• 40:10
  next one. Thanks.
• 40:11
  See you.